How to Make Training Meetings Magnetic
If you have challenges getting volunteers to attend training meetings, you’re not alone. Borrow these best practices for boosting your meeting attendance.
7 Tips for Magnetic Training Meetings
1. Create a compelling reason to come.
Don’t just promote ministry skills and calendar updates. Instead, include and highlight “can’t-miss” experiences in the meeting invitation.
2. Build community.
People have two primary motivations behind their ministry involvement—it’s a social opportunity and they get to serve God. If you don’t provide a positive sense of community and fun interaction, people will find all the reasons in the world why they can’t make a ministry team training meeting.
3. Start and stop on time.
A lack of punctuality communicates disorganization and irritates schedule-pressured people, so honor their time.
4. Include informal interaction and refreshments.
This 10 to 20 minutes may be the only time some people can “push pause” during the week. Limit this time, though, for the sake of the more task-oriented people.
5. Teach lessons that help the minister and the individual.
For example, teach children’s ministry staff how to improve their parenting skills, not just in the context of ministry. Personal growth and self-help are strong motivators.
6. Tell stories.
Your team members love to hear that they’re making a difference. Most adults don’t see what’s happening in the children’s areas, and kids often don’t speak their appreciation, so convey it for them. Let your staff hear stories from parents and kids.
7. Communicate value.
Remind people in advance how excited you are to see them at the meeting. When people are absent, drop a friendly note, email, or voicemail, to let them know some of the fun stuff they missed. The give them an overview of the meeting. Make it positive, but don’t just ignore their absence.
Alan Nelson
Fort Collins, Colorado
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