Plan a Worship Team Interest Night to Recruit New Volunteers

  If you’re wanting to get more people involved in your worship ministry, I highly recommend you do a Team Interest Night. I just did one. I got 40 new cards of people interested, and I think you will, too. I’m going to share with you what is a Team Interest Night and how do you pull one-off at your church. Let’s go. If you don’t know, I am new to my church and we have no team, and I am building my team from scratch, so be sure to subscribe so that you can follow along with the journey. I’ll be teaching you what I do each step of the way. But we have no team, and I need to get people involved fast. I did a cattle call announcement in the church and said, I’d I’d love to meet any of you who are interested in tech, in worship, in singing, in playing, in art, in creativity, in videography, photography, and said, I’d love to have you come to an interest meeting. An interest meeting is not an audition. It’s a low pressure environment. It’s a way for you to just connect with different creatives in your church, find out who they are, what they do, what their experience level is, and then you get to decide who you follow up with. That’s what I did. I got 40 of these cards, and I’m excited to start following up with these people to get them plugged in to serving the Lord in their area of gifting and at the level of their experience. And so if you’re interested in doing an interest night, I’m going to share with you exactly what I did. One, to get them there, two, what we did while we were there, and three, what I plan on doing to follow up with them now that I’ve got their information. So Starting with number one, how did I get 40 people to raise their hand and self-identify as, I’m interested in knowing more? Well, there are three methods I use to market this event, and the third one is probably one that you’ve never thought of before, so I’m going to save that for last. But the first way we marketed the event was a simple announcement from the stage at church. And it’s really important how you word the announcement. You want to make it very broad. And so what I did is I got on stage and I said, Hey, if you are a creative or you’re interested in creativity, if you are someone who likes music or likes to sing or you play an instrument or you do graphic design or photography or videography or you’re interested in any of those cameras in the back of the room. If you’re interested in any of that stuff, I would love to meet you and find out who you are. We’re having an interest night. I will feed you. In fact, ours an interest breakfast because breakfast burritos are better. But I will feed you. Come to this interest breakfast on Saturday, such and such date, and you can RSVP here, and then you give them a URL. So make sure you create an RSVP form so that you know how much food to provide. That’s very important. Plus, you get to collect their email and any other information that you want to put on that form. So create an RSVP form, promote the URL, do a cattle call, wide, broad announcement, and make sure they understand that it’s not an audition. Say, Hey, it’s very low pressure. It’s really for anyone who’s just interested in seeing how their gifts might be used at the church. If you say that, I guarantee you people will step forward and say, I’m interested. That sounds very non-pressure. And the whole idea of an interest night or interest breakfast is just a connexion point. It’s basically gathering all the fish in a barrel so that they’re easier to shoot later. I know that sounds very morbid. Don’t kill anything, okay? But gathering all your people together to say, who are you, what do you do, and how can I help you take your next step in serving? So cattle call announcement on the stage, and then we sent a few emails from our mailing list that we send out every Thursday the day. But the big win was guerrilla marketing. What do I mean? Well, I created a little video, a one-minute video of me saying, Hey, if you’re creative, someone sent you this, that’s because they think that you should be at this event. I’d love for you to RSVP, and I put a little button in there. In fact, I’ll just put the video below this video so that you can watch what I said. But what I did is I took that video and I targeted specific people, and I said, Hey, you’re well connected in the church. Can you forward this to any of the musical or creative people in the church that you know? And then I sent it to our Spanish Ministry and said, Can you forward this to your Spanish Ministry creatives and let them know. I forwarded them this link that they forwarded to others. And in the video, if you really wanted to go viral, say, And if you know someone else who should be there, forward this video to them, too. And so that way you’re hitting one, two, three, four layers of people, and you’re targeting very specific, well-connected people in your church. So that got us a lot of signups. So targeted guerrilla marketing is the best way. Not the big cattle call, not the emails. Those are too indirect. You want to actually hit the person that you’re trying to hit with a direct invite from someone else. Human connexion is everything. So guerrilla marketing, try that, make a video, put a link to the registration page in that video, and then send it off to your well connected peeps in the church. Okay, so That was how we got 40 people to show up. By the way, if you’ve been leading for any period of time, you know that you need to follow up with reminders. And so once I had them in the registration form, I sent out two or three email reminders. Hey, see you this Saturday. And then a few days later, Hey, see you this Saturday. And then one last one on Friday night. Hey, I’ll see you in the morning. Okay, so make sure you’re following up. We got 40 people showed up. So what did we do once they were there? I’m glad you asked. Here was our agenda line by line. So when people came, I had everything ready. The food was ready, the tables were ready, all that. I’m not going to teach you how to be a good host We know how to do that. So I welcomed them at the door. I gave them the name tag. I said, please fill this out. I’m so glad you’re here. What’s your name? Put the name tag on. Boom. I had other people at the other door doing the same thing. I said, grab a seat at the tables and fill out one of these forms while you’re waiting. So they’re filling out this form. In fact, I will put a link this form. Just put your email in. I’ll email you this word doc for you to edit if you want to change any of the questions that I put on here. But basically, it’s a talents and gifts survey. So you can learn how long they’ve been at the church, what they feel gifted and called to, where they’d like to grow, and potentially some areas in your church where they could potentially serve so they can circle one of those. Again, I will link this one below. Just put your email in and I’ll send it to you and you can use it for your own interest night. Once they’ve filled that out, we prayed, they grabbed food, they fellowshiped, and about 10 minutes into their fellowship time, I I interrupted them with an icebreaker game. We played Two Truths and a Lie. If you don’t know how to play that game, just Google it. But you can play any icebreaker game that gets people sharing who they are, facts about themselves. When people start to share facts about themselves, it creates connexion points and bridges and builds bonds between people. I want this group to start interfacing with each other more. We did two rounds of Two Truths and a Lie. Once they finished the first round, we switched up the table so they could meet new people and share those facts with the other people. That’s how we created some connexion in the group. After we We did our icebreaker game, I got up and I shared heart and cast vision. It was about a 15 minute spiel. If you want to hear it or see it, you can click the link below, open in a new tab and watch it after this video. Don’t expect to be impressed or anything. It was just me literally sharing with my community. Here is some scripture to ponder about what it means to be a creative and what it means for us to use those gifts for God’s glory. You can watch that. If you’re curious, I would encourage you not to copy me verbatim. You are your own leader. Your people are their own people. Your church is your own church. They need to hear what the Lord puts on your heart. But maybe my speech will give you some ideas. After I shared vision, then I invited some of my other leaders up. We had our production director share what he does and which positions are available to get involved if people are interested in the tech side of things. And then we closed with a worship song. Now, here’s a little tip. During the song, listen to the people in the room and recruit some of your leaders to position themselves at different points in the room to listen to the people around them. And if they hear someone who sounds good or who’s singing harmony, then tap that person on the shoulder and be like, Hey, you sound really good. Would you like to be involved? So that’s a small pro tip, try that when the worship song is happening. Of course, do your best to worship, too, but also spy on the people around you. After the song, I prayed, and then I said, If there’s anyone who’s interested in seeing the tech booth, go with Brian right now. He’s going to take you on a little tech tour and show you the different positions if you’re interested in serving. So about 10 people left and went with Brian upstairs to look at our tech booth, and he shared and got them inspired and made some connexions with them. So hopefully he’ll be able to get some people involved in his tech ministry as well. While he was upstairs in the tech booth, I stayed to mix and mingle and meet people on a more personal level. I had a few people approach me and say, Hey, I’d love to serve in this area, or I want to sing, and how do I audition? And so I was able to give them the next steps and make more connexions. And so I would encourage you to not dip out right after this is over, but to mix and mingle and make some good connexions, even had some good spiritual conversations as well. So that’s what happened while we were at the event. Now, what do I plan to do moving forward? Well, that’s actually the most important part. It doesn’t matter if you catch a bunch of people, if you don’t actually help them take their next And so my next steps are I’m going to go through all these cards and see if there’s anyone who really stands out as someone that I should get involved right away based on their experience, and I’ll reach out to them directly. For the rest of them, I’ve already emailed them and said, thanks for coming. I would love for all of you, if you’re interested to join our choir next month because you sounded so wonderful when you were singing, join our choir. That would be a great first step for you. And that way I can get to explore and learn more about their skillsets and who they are as people. And then I’m also planning a workshop a few months from now that’s going to be a creative workshop day. And I’m going to have a videography workshop going, a photography workshop going. I’m going to have singing and then musicians and different instruments, and we’re going to break off into rooms. And so I’m going to invite all of them back to that. And that’s how I’m going to really spy on them and be like, okay, this guy, he knows what he’s doing, or this kid needs more development. I’m actually going to get to hear them in those workshops. And so that’s a safe next step. I don’t ever want to promise anybody anything other than, hey, I want to help you develop in your gift. And so a workshop in the summer is going to be our next step, and I would encourage you to consider that as well. So I’ve got their information. I’m going to hit direct targets on the ones that I think are interested. The rest I’m going to invite into some low level activities like choir, and then a workshop to develop them and also spy on where they’re at in their skillset. That is how you run an interest meeting. Now, if you want help auditioning or onboarding those people, I have a free mini course right below this video that will teach you how to recruit, audition, and onboard people, so you can grab that. Also grab this form that we created that you can use and tweak for your church, and watch that video of me giving my spiel if you want to. And make sure you subscribe because I’m building my ministry from scratch, and I will show you exactly what I’m doing each step of the way so that you can do the same at your church. If you want to fast track your growth as a leader, I encourage you to check out the Worship Ministry Training Academy, which I run. It’s an online platform that gives you all the tools and all the training you need to build a world-class worship ministry. It’s only $1 to try for 15 days of full access to our 10 in-depth courses, our live monthly trainings, our expert interviews, our done for you template systems and docs to save you time and streamline your ministry and reduce your stress. So check it out, worshipministrytraining. Com. It’s just $1 to try. So I will see you either in the academy or in the next video. But God bless you and continue building your team..