Sharing Ministry Wins Part 2: The Where
Photo by Matthew Osborn on Unsplash
Knowing how you’re successful is vital to your ministry. But you don’t want to just collect all that data and sit on it. You’ll be like the foolish man in the Parable of the Talents. He kept his master’s money and buried it. The Master was furious and took it away. If you don’t talk about how your successful, people will draw their own conclusions. Unfortunately, they may assume you’re doing a horrible job. No one wants that.
For years I wrote a weekly email to all my volunteers. I called it the Friday win. I found one good story of how we were successful that week and shared it with the team. My volunteers loved it. However, the rest of the congregation and my leadership had no idea. Even though I was collecting my wins and sharing them, only a select few actually knew about them.
My problem was not collecting the wins. I had that down pat. My problem was sharing it with the right people at the right time. If you share the right message at the wrong time, it’ll fall on deaf ears. If you share the wrong message at the wrong time, you’ll be irrelevant. Knowing when and where to share your wins is just as important as knowing what they are.
This is the second part of my series How to Share Your Wins. You can read the first part here.
Going back to the Parable of the Talents, the one who received the talent from the foolish servant had already made 10. He knew where and when to invest his money. Similarly, we need to do the same with our wins. With this in mind, here are 3 vital places to share your wins for the biggest impact.
1. Announcements
Chances are there are a lot of things going on in your ministry, especially if you’re in NextGen. There’s always another outreach, fundraiser, or outing planned. We always want to get as many people to come as possible. One of the biggest tools we can use is the stage announcement. You have a significant part of your congregation as a captive audience. Your job is to sell them your idea.
A lot of churches make announcements differently. It doesn’t really matter if you do it or someone else does. What does matter is the message.
Not all of us are writers, so getting the perfect copy can be tricky. However, this is where your wins come in handy. If you remember from my first post, I said your stories are your highlight reel. The announcements are your chance to share one of those stories. If you’ve done your event in the past, share how it impacted one of the people who attended and the difference that it made. If you’ve never done it before, then share the vision for the event and what you want to see accomplished. This is way more motivating than, “You don’t want to miss it!” or “You’re going to love it!”
Before you end, share a clear call to action. Personally, I prefer to send people to a single event page. Whatever yours looks like, you need to tell people where to go. I talk more about these kind of announcements in this post.
2. Social Media
Similar to church announcements, a social media post can be seen by a lot of different people. On Facebook, I suggest you have one church page and a group for each of your ministries. I talk about why and how here. Sharing your wins in that group is essential and the best way to boost engagement. Pictures and videos are the best, but a well-written text post can be good too. The key is to share your stories. Some people love numbers (me!), but they don’t move people. Sharing a story pulls on people’s emotions. They’re far more likely to remember one salvation story than the fact that 10 people accepted Jesus.
Whether you’re using Facebook or another platform, you don’t have to post a win every day. You’ll run out pretty quickly. I’d start with your big events, then, monthly, bi-monthly, and finally weekly. Weekly can be tough and it’s part of the reason I stopped writing the Friday Win. However, your win post can be something your people look forward to every week. If you need more help creating social media posts, you can see my guide here.
If it’s a really good win, like a great salvation or baptism story, try to get that on the church’s main channels. Remember, the goal is to get the whole congregation excited about what’s happening in your ministry. That’ll never happen if they never see it.
3. Parent Meeting
My most effective tool to talk about my wins is my annual Parent Meeting. At the end of January, I invite all my parents for a 30 minute meeting. There, I lay out all my events and preaching calendar for the year. Parents come for that information, but I always start off with my wins. Like I talked about in the first post, your vision is the goal, your numbers are your scoreboard, and your stories are your highlight reels. I share all these in this meeting. I think of it as a State of the Union.
Your parents of students in youth or kidmin are the ones with skin in the game. They care way more than a random member in your congregation. They’re the ones who are most likely to volunteer and talk to other people about what’s happening in the ministry.
If you’d like to hold your own parent meeting, I have two posts about them here and here. And starting this week, I’m sharing all the materials I use for the meeting, my notes, slides, and calendar. You can get your planning kit here.
These are just a few places to share your wins. There are many more. The key is to remember whenever you’re in front of a group of people, you need to talk about how your wins. Share your vision, your numbers, and most importantly your stories. People need to hear them. People want to hear them. You’re not bothering them. Rather you’re showing them that you’re leading a wining team, and they’re missing out if they’re not a part of it.
Where have you found to be the best place to share your wins? Let me know in the comments!