<aside> <img src="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" alt="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" width="40px" /> Pre-service huddles make recruitment and retention much easier. Creating a volunteer engagement cycle that includes weekly face time with each other and yourself (or another trusted leader or staff) makes your ministry the one everyone wants to serve on because people are known and cared for in a contagious way.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" alt="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" width="40px" /> Pre-service huddles give you a ready-made environment to engage those who serve rather than just using them to perform a task. Your volunteers are as much the object of your ministry as those they serve, just in a different way. Pre-service huddles insure the right kind of engagement necessary for developing a ministry that will truly develop people.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" alt="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" width="40px" /> Pre-service huddles automate the aspects of your leadership that you are most concerned about forgetting. These include often forgotten essentials like vision casting, training and development, appreciation, and the critical function of prayer. Because they are a regular part of these short but meaningful pre-huddles, you don’t have to search the calendar to plan opportunities to make them happen each year!
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<aside> <img src="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" alt="/icons/arrow-right_orange.svg" width="40px" /> If you want to make followers of Jesus (disciples), you have to recruit them to a TEAM and not just a JOB. Pre-service huddles create that team environment for them. Jesus formed the model for us: huddle people up in a larger group and work through their issues with the task, other people and themselves in real time. Brief and debrief. Send them out in pairs so they are not alone. This makes sure they are not just responding to a planning center schedule but are being noted for their faithfulness and growth. This allows someone to know when it is time to go the next level with them like Jesus did.
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Our 10-15 minute pre-service huddles are structured so that these 4 important aspects of a healthy team culture are always covered, no matter what, every month:
Week 1 - Vision
Week 2 - Training
Week 3 - Appreciation
Week 4 - Prayer
You can easily “cherry pick” huddles from these 4 categories below, using as much or as little as you want to adapt them to your context. Note that they all follow the “Inspiration, Information, and Prayer flow for each individual huddle.
Because they are virtually plug and play, handing them over to your emerging leaders to run point on is a great way to equip these men and women as they grow in ministry as well.
<aside> <img src="/icons/warning_red.svg" alt="/icons/warning_red.svg" width="40px" /> This version of the Pre-Service Huddles was designed to be fully interactive and customizable using Notion — our favorite productivity and collaboration tool. ➊ Create a Notion account ➋ “Duplicate” this template (top of your screen) ➌ Watch the video below to see how you can customize everything
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<aside> <img src="/icons/notion_gray.svg" alt="/icons/notion_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Like Notion? It runs 90% of my workflow and has essentially replaced the mess of Google Drive for all my team collaboration. And, Notion’s AI can pull action steps from meeting notes, re-write or draft content, and scan your entire workspace for answers to questions. You can even duplicate this page as a template so you can customize it for yourself. Get started by creating an account & testing it out for your team →
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