Preparing Your Teams for Their First Service Day

It’s critical that your men’s team ministry’s first service day goes well so that you can begin to establish healthy patterns that will last for years. At the same time, your first service day will be different from all other service days because it will be more of an introduction time for both your men and your care receivers than it will be actual service.

Here are the steps you’ll need to take as you execute your first service day.

1. Make sure all teams and care receivers know when the first service day is.
2. Assign care receivers to their teams.
3. Send (email) all team members their rosters with team member and care receiver contact information.
4. At the beginning of the week prior to your first service day, send out a mass email to all care givers and care receivers reminding them of the upcoming service day.
   • Include the day, date, time and place of your devotional hour.
   • Explain what you want them to accomplish on this first service day (see below).
   • Remind the “team callers” to contact their care receiver and then their team members.
5. On the Thursday or Friday of the same week, contact each team caller individually to make sure they have contacted their care receiver and team members. (Inspect what you expect.)
6. Early in the week following your service day, individually contact the team callers again to see how things went.

As I mentioned above, your first service day will be a time of introduction for both your men and their care receiver. Encourage your teams to sit down with their care receiver and spend time introducing themselves and getting to know each other. Then ask your teams to walk through and around the home with their care receiver and list potential projects they can help with. Have the teams prioritize the projects with their care receiver and make plans on how they will go about doing them. Encourage your teams not to start with huge projects, so they can get used to the process and see what they can do together as a team.

By following these simple steps and maintaining clear communication with your team callers, you will ensure a smooth first service day and lay the groundwork for healthy patterns for years to come.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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