Hi Folks,
I’m working on recruiting members of our congregation to serve as IT volunteers at our various campuses. While we’ve had AVL volunteers for a long time, IT is a new realm. I’m wondering if other churches are using IT volunteers and if you have any formal application / training processes? Also, methods for retaining?
Thanks,
Dave
We have not used IT volunteers. I am part time with a church of 2200 and a PK-8 school that share the building.
Will be interested in posts on this; our school is moving and I will then only work for the school, so will need a replacement at the church.
We do have volunteers part of our IT Ministry. We meet weekly on Monday nights, from 6:30pm - 10:00pm (at the latest), and focus on three areas:
We started our volunteer ministry in 2006, about a year after I came on board. We have approximately 10 volunteers on our roster, with 5-8 attending in any given Monday night. All of our IT volunteers are IT Professionals. Although most of them are members of our congregation, we do have one volunteer that is a member of another church here in town, but attends our Monday nights every week to be part of the community. Here’s a brief look at the three areas:
Serving: This could be anything from planning and strategizing, to hardware and software installs. We have done preventative maintenance with the team, as well as cable runs. Our biggest project we have accomplished was over the past year and a half. We had construction on five out of six of our campuses over the last year and a half, with the sixth campus relocated during this time. As a team, we did all of the IT infrastructure in-house across all campuses. The largest was about 140 cat 6 cable runs and a fiber run, and the smallest was about 15 cat 6 cable runs. It was intense, but God showed up in amazing ways through the team.
Discipleship: We started a discipleship element a few years ago and it’s been awesome. We will do a bible study as a team, as an opportunity to grow deeper in our faith together. As iron sharpens iron, so can we sharpen each other as we learn from each other and share our stories, prayer request, and celebrations together.
Fellowship: Although fellowship happens each time we are together, this element specifically focuses on specific nights that involve food and fun. It’s a time to stop, and just hang out. We try to hold a fellowship night at least once per quarter.
It’s been great! It gives an opportunity for like-minded, IT Professionals and Christian’s, to come together to serve and have fun. Each night is different too. Most of the time we will focus on one element for the night, but sometimes we may do two… i.e. A bible study and a smaller service project. And, most of the time we wrap up between 9:00-10:00pm. Sometimes earlier, but never later (with a few rare exceptions over the years).
One last thing… from a scheduling aspect, I have my IT Staff come in from 1:00pm - 10:00pm on Monday’s. This is not their area to volunteer in, but rather an area they lead in as part of their job requirements. As such, I flex their schedules on Monday’s. Myself and our Admin Assistant are usually there on Monday mornings to hold down the fort.
Hope this helps anyone who might be thinking about starting an IT Volunteer Ministry, but would like some starting points of where to go with it.
Thanks for posting this. It is exciting to see how you have this working. I’ve tried working with volunteers on a couple different occasions and have never really had success. It is good to see something that is working and how you are making it work with your team.