How can we show appreciation to our faithful worship volunteers? Should we buy them gifts? Do something special? How can we make them feel loved, encouraged, and cared for…especially those who have been serving on the team for a very long time? This was a question one of our academy members asked in our weekly Q&A session, and this was our response. If it helps you, please forward it on to a friend who needs to hear it!
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Transcript
Alex |
Hey, friend, here is a short bonus episode for you this week that comes right from within the worship Ministry training Academy. Inside of the Academy, we have a questions section where students can submit their own personalized questions based on their unique challenges and the unique situation that they’re facing in that moment, and they can get personalized responses from me and some of the other coaches via video. And so the episode you’re about to hear is my response to one of the Academy students’ personalized question, and I hope it helps you. And if you would like to be in the Academy and get that personalized coaching and guidance and wisdom and support and encouragement, you can try the Academy for just $1 for the first 15 days and check everything out. All of our courses, all of our resources, all of our docs, and a great, supportive community, plus these personalized responses to your questions. So check it out, worship Ministrytraining. Com. Sign up for your $1 trial. Also, before we get into this episode, I started a second podcast. Yes, you heard me right. I have a second podcast. If you search 1 Minute worship tips in your podcast app of choice, you will find a brand new podcast from me with one minute worship tips, daily worship tips for a whole year.
Alex |
You will get practical advice in less than a minute every single day of the year. So go ahead, search for One Minute worship Tips podcast in your podcast app of choice and subscribe and enjoy those one minute tips every single day for the rest of the year. And now let’s get into our question and response episode. Hey, Timothy, love that you want to encourage and appreciate your team members. And I have a few thoughts about how you can do that. Number one is don’t do it once a year really big. Yes, do it once a year really big, but don’t only do it once a year really big. Do it all throughout the year in small little tangible ways, small touches multiple times throughout the year where you’re telling people how much you appreciate them. Honestly, a simple text message goes a long way, or a handwritten card goes a long way, or a $5 or $10 Starbucks gift card in a card in the mail goes a long way, or a lunch out with your team member goes a long way. Like, hey, I want to take you out to lunch and just spend time together.
Alex |
That means so much. And then yes, do some big team appreciation thing where you pay for all the food for the whole team and tell everybody how great they are and celebrate them. And if your church has the money to do this, buy an iPad Mini and do a raffle and give it away to one lucky team member and then buy some cheap $20 KZ. There’s some really great earbuds called KZ earbuds on Amazon. They sound amazing, but they’re like 20, 30 bucks. Buy one or two of those, raffle those off, and just appreciate your team. That is a great way to do that. So another thing that you could do, and our church used to do this, is we never paid our musicians, but around Christmas time, our senior pastor would actually write checks to all the musicians just to bless them for coming every single week, multiple times per week, gas money or whatever. But it’s like a couple of hundred bucks. And then some of the musicians who served even more got five, six hundred dollars at the end of the year. And again, we’re in a very large church, so we can do these things.
Alex |
But something like that, it means a lot. And I read a book actually that when people expect a reward, it actually decreases their work output. But when they aren’t expecting anything and it’s random in a random interval, it doesn’t happen at a set period of time, or it’s not based on a specific goal that they hit. It’s just they randomly get a reward. They are more motivated and more excited to continue to serve and pour themselves into the ministry. So I love this idea of them not expecting anything, and then you just randomly bless them. And one way that we’ve thought about doing this is at the one year mark for our teams, we buy them a decent set of in your monitors. It’s their own set of in your monitors that they get to take home. And it’s just like the one year mark appreciation. So those are some thoughts, loose thoughts about try to encourage regularly in small ways, text messages, notes, small gift cards, lunches out, and then do a big team appreciation where you maybe make a bit more of a stink. And then if you can, really bless them financially to say thank you as a church if you can do that.
Alex |
Or like I said at the one year mark, mark their faithful loyal service by buying them a $40 pair of KZ earbuds from Amazon. So hope these thoughts help. But great job thinking about these things. Not a lot of leaders think about these things. We definitely want to appreciate our volunteers. It’s super important. So good job, bro. I hope this response helped you and encouraged you. And again, if you want to get your own questions answered by me and some of our other coaches, go to worshipministrytraining. Com. Sign up for your $1 15 trial. I would love to see you inside of the academy and meet you. I actually love getting to know the students in the academy. God bless you guys. I’ll see you in the next episode and keep serving the Lord faithfully.
