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A ministry board can be more helpful than you ever imagined!
If you want more support for your ministry, create an advisory board (sometimes called a ministry board). It makes decisions easier and ministry more fun! Here’s how.
Being in a small church, it is often difficult to feel like you’re understood, supported, or that your leaders understand the vision and direction for your ministry and your church. This is especially the case if you lead as a volunteer or team leader.
Oftentimes, you are looking for support, encouragement, and direction.
Questions of …
- Where should we go next?
- What should we do?
- How should we handle this?
Let’s be honest. The lack of enthusiasm and buy-in causes you to wonder if you’re in this alone.
Or you have a great idea and were so excited, but when it came to instituting your idea or plan, the wind was knocked out of your sail by the lack of interest, assistance, and perhaps even pushback that occurred.
What Is An Advisory Board?
An advisory board is a group of volunteers between 3-6 people who offer insight, feedback, encouragement, as well as direction for your ministry. Often, it is made up of people who have served in that particular area of ministry or are impacted by the ministry.
An Advisory Board Is NOT The Same As A Ministry Team
While ministry team members are the hands and feet of ministry, involved in the doing and the serving, advisory board members help with planning, decision-making, and advising. They typically meet less often and are often behind the scenes. They are the support mechanism for a ministry area.
How An Advisory Board Can Help In A Small Church
Create Buy-In
We all need support, and the best way for you to gain influence and share your vision is by having people who know you, and understand your vision and ministry. Think about it as a small group of people who can give you advice, support, and feedback, whether for a fun event, a new idea, or a difficult situation. Especially for the difficult situations, imagine you have an entire board who now is in the know and supports you in the decision. It’s a great feeling, knowing you’re not in it alone!
Get Advice & Feedback
We often have a great idea, but we are not sure of all the logistics. If you have an advisory panel, you have people empowered to help you make the best decisions for your ministry and your church.
Accountability
Along with offering advice and feedback, an advisory board also offers you accountability by meeting together and naturally following up with the items from last month as well as future planning. If you have recruited long-timers, they may even be able to predict what you should be looking ahead towards. An advisory board can also hold you accountable for setting and accomplishing your goals for the ministry year or when you might be getting off track or overworked.
Collaboration
Isn’t it nice when you work with a great partner or a team? By having an advisory board, you have a team at your side to help you succeed. Not everyone on the board will assist you with hands-on, but we always need cheerleaders to get others there, spread the news, and share the excitement. And we need prayer warriors to cover our event/meeting and pray for kingdom success and safety. By having an advisory board, you have a team to collaborate with each step of the way!
5 Steps To Start An Advisory Board For Your Youth, Children’s, Men’s, Or Women’s Ministry
1. Pray
This step should be obvious, but usually, it’s the step we spend the least amount of time on. So, stop right now, and pray. Ask God if this is something you should pursue.
2. Talk With Your Small Church Leadership
You most likely already have a “board” at your church, so you don’t want to confuse the two. The advisory board is not about making the big decisions for your church; it’s about your health as a leader and the ministry’s health. If the idea of an advisory board is too confusing or formal, you can rename it. I called mine the Children & Youth Advisory Panel. Just be sure to help your church leadership understand the need and see the benefits of creating an advisory board for your ministry. I created a short proposal to submit to our church board before I started seeking members.
3. Pray & Ask God Who You Should Invite To Be On Your Advisory Board
Once you have the go-ahead to start, pray again. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you in building an advisory board.
Who are the people He would have for you to ask? You might be surprised and blessed by the names. I would suggest creating a list. Then pray over that list for 2-5 days. The people you might already have in mind might not be the people God leads you towards.
4. Create A Write–Up & Invite People
If you haven’t already created a write-up for the advisory board, create one now. When you ask those people to consider being on the board, they will know exactly what you ask of them.
Think “job description.” What is their role? What are they being asked to do? How often will you meet together?
5. Meet Together
Plan for your first meeting. You can choose a date and include it in the ask/write-up. Or you can choose it together once everyone has been selected.
Usually, I like to choose the date ahead of time, and then at the first meeting, I talk about schedules with everyone in the same room. When you meet together, remember people like to have fun! This meeting isn’t a formal board meeting; this is an advisory board. Help people to get to know you and each other! Most importantly, help everyone feel like they are a valued part of the team and that each of them has an important voice to share –– that’s why you invited them to join.
Need Some Ideas Of Who To Ask?
People Who Are Not Currently Serving In Other Areas
We like to ask the same people over and over again. I know you have a superstar leader, but this is not the person to be on your advisory board. They already assist you, and you already have an established level of trust and enthusiasm. Think of asking people who aren’t as active in serving. This could be someone who served faithfully many years ago and has “retired.” It could be a busy mom. It could be a businessman.
Visionaries
These are the people who are able to see long-term. They have shared with you their hopes for the future, and they are in line with your vision. You need people who care about the same things as you and can help share the vision God has given you for your ministry and your church.
Connected
It always helps to have someone who is the relationship builder and knows the people in your church, especially if you are in charge of a ministry that is always looking for items or in need of volunteers.
Idea People
This is not the person who is always emailing you with an idea for how you should run your ministry or a new program to launch. This is a person who can build on your ideas when you share them. Someone that when you say, “I was thinking about an underwater theme for VBS … ” and they start listing amazing décor/snack/activity ideas.
Hopefully, this has helped you understand better why starting an advisory board in your small church for your ministry can help you: share your vision, plan ministry around your vision, feel better supported by a team, and be encouraged in both your weekly ministry as well as with tough decisions.
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Love this post! Great idea and a great plan to get it started!
It not the most exciting thing to do – but SOOOOO important! Thanks for letting us know you appreciate it too!