Simplify Your Men’s Team Ministry So it Lasts for Decades

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I like simple things. Maybe it’s because I’m a simple person. Or maybe it’s because I don’t like unnecessary work. Dr. Howard Hendricks, my professor at Dallas Seminary, had a mantra he repeated often, “Don’t work harder. Work smarter.” And my childhood pastor, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, had a more abrupt mantra. “KISS,” he’d say. “Keep it simple stupid.”

When it comes to the men’s team ministry to their widowed and single parents in your church, keeping things simple is critical to its long term success. The more complex your men’s team ministry is, the more likely it is to wear your men (and you) out. Men quickly identify frivolous tasks and do everything in their power to avoid them. Think of these tasks as roadblocks to your goal of maintaining a ministry that lasts ten years, twenty years and more.

The men’s team ministry at my church as existed for over sixteen years and we have every reason to believe it will last for many more. One primary reason for its longevity is because we’ve made it extremely simple to maintain.

Here are some of the things we’ve done to streamline our men’s team ministry.

• Keep the goal clear and simple. The purpose of this facet of the men’s ministry at our church is to provide a team of three to four men for a widow, widower, or single parent in the congregation and/or community one Saturday morning a month for two hours to do whatever needs to be done around their dwelling for as long as they need a team. We’ve guarded this goal with our lives because we know that anything added to it is like barnacles on a boat, it slows everything down.
• Set a specific time or times during the year to recruit men. If you are constantly begging your men to join your men’s team ministry, they will soon tune you out like we do panhandlers at a stoplight. We have a clearly defined time in the year when we highlight the ministry and recruit men.
• Have your training material printed out so you can give it to your new recruits. (Warning! Blatant ad promotion ahead.) You may have your own training material prepared or you can join Meeting to Meet Needs and download our tried and true training material and make as many copies of it as you like at no extra charge.
• Hold your service day on a different Saturday than your men’s breakfast (if you have one). Your men’s breakfast has a different purpose (fellowship) than your men’s team ministry service day (service to people in your church who are in need). Trying to combine the two adds a huge amount of complexity to both and makes your service days excessively long. Our church solves this problem by dong men’s team ministry monthly on the second Saturday of the month and the men’s breakfast quarterly on the first Saturday of the month (and having women volunteer to cook the breakfast so the men’s ministry leaders can spend time in fellowship with the men during the breakfast instead of cooking pancakes back in the kitchen).
• Hold only one weekly men’s Bible study. Our church already had a men’s weekly Bible study on Friday mornings at 6 a.m. It’s been going on even longer than our men’s team ministry. For the first ten years, our men’s team ministry met at 7 a.m. for prayer and Bible study, but it was competing with the Friday men’s Bible study. So we stopped doing the Saturday men’s team ministry prayer and Bible study time and now go directly to our care receivers’ homes at 8 a.m. instead. Much better.
• Post your men’s team ministry roster online. Perhaps you can do this on your church’s website. This way all your men and care receivers have access to an updated roster at all times.
• Utilize a mass email service. I use Constant Contact. Mail Chimp is another good resource. Uploading your men’s team ministry email list into these services makes contacting your men and care receivers convenient and professional.
• Make it easy to maintain personal contact with your teams. I have to admit, now that we’re not meeting for our prayer and Bible study time before our teams go out, this has been a constant struggle for me. What I’ve done recently is add another team member to my team. That makes me a “fifth wheel.” Now I spend the first service hour with my home team and then visit other teams during the second hour.

Remember, the love of Christ never ends. And neither should your men’s team ministry. Keeping it simple will help you accomplish that goal.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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