Welcome to Starting a Men’s Team Ministry in Your Church. This is the fourth video in our series. Today we’ll be talking about Holding an Orientation Meeting, Forming Your Teams, and Planning Your First Service Day. Let’s begin by talking about Holding an Orientation Meeting.

Holding an Orientation Meeting

As I mentioned in our last video, you want to be sure to hold your orientation meeting on the same day of the month and at the same time as you’ll be holding your service day. The reason for this is because you want to weed out men who are not going to be able to meet on a particular service day. This will be one way to do that.

Be sure and arrive an hour early so that you have plenty of time to set up and get everything organized. I encourage you to avoid serving breakfast and coffee just to keep everything simple. When you go to work you don’t get breakfast. This is work. This is good work. We want to encourage the men to be thinking in terms of work, not just sitting around eating a breakfast.

Make sure your AV is working. You might want to check that the night before just to make sure everything is working in tip top shape.

Then set up a table at the back of the room, or maybe outside the front door of the room, and on that table you want to have name tags, a registration form to get first and last names of your men along with their email address, which is very important. Place workbooks on this table, along with pens or pencils. Set up chairs in a semi-circle, which tends to make things a lot more relaxed for men. Be sure and leave about 3-4 inches between chairs. Men are bigger than women, they just need more space. This is going to be a longer meeting, so men need to be comfortable. They need to be able to relax.

Be sure to start on time. I’m a stickler for starting on time. If you start late because you want to wait for men to show up, you’re rewarding the late guys and you’re penalizing the guys who are there early or on time. By starting on time you send a message to the men who are late that you do things by starting on time.

Whoever is hosting the meeting needs to open in a word of prayer, welcome men to the orientation meeting, explain a little of what the men’s team ministry is about, and then introduce the video.

The video is very important. This video has been used in hundreds of churches to start men’s team ministries. It’s been very effective. Our desire is to make it as easy and simple as possible for you to start a men’s team ministry in your church.

Go ahead and play the video. There is a place for a ten-minute break in the video. The ten-minute break is important because at that point you’re are going to ask you men to decide whether they are going to participate in the ministry. Up to this point it’s been an informational meeting. The men are learning about the ministry. Now you’re going to ask your men to decide whether they want to be a part of it. During the break invite men who are not going to be a part of the ministry to leave and invite the men who are staying to form teams. We’ll talk more about how they will form teams, but they’re going to form those teams during the break.

At the end of the break, you’ll form your teams and pass out your background check permission forms. Background check permissions are important. Most churches do background checks for people who are working with their youth or children. This is a ministry where we are sending men into the homes of vulnerable people: widows, young single moms. It’s important that churches do background checks on everyone who is participating in this ministry.

Collect your team forms and background check permissions from your men. It’s important to get all of this information from your men.

Then you want to finish the rest of the DVD. This is where you go through some practical aspects of the ministry. We talk about safety issues and other things that are involved in the ministry. Finish the DVD and then announce your first service day. You’ll need to explain the difference between your first service day and regular service days.

The first service day is a get to know you time, it’s a time when the men are going to introduce themselves to their care receiver and their care receiver is giving a little bit about her background. You’ll do a walk-through with the care receiver in the home. You walk through the home and yard looking for potential projects. Then they list those projects and prioritize them with their care receiver.

They’re not doing a lot of work during that first service day. They’re primarily just getting to know each other and making plans for future service days.

Forming Teams

At the end of your break during your orientation meeting ask your men to find three other men. These could be men that they know. These could be men that they don’t know. It really doesn’t matter who is on what team. You don’t need to obsess, for example, about getting a contractor on each team. The reason why is because, as projects come up, if a team doesn’t have someone with a skill that they need, they can always borrow someone with that skill from another team. It’s not important how your teams are formed. You don’t need to devote a whole lot of thought to that.

If someone doesn’t know anyone in the room, just tell him to find three men that they don’t know and that way they are going to make three new friends. Because they are going to become good friends over the years that they are on this team.

Have each team choose a team caller. Explain what the team caller does: he calls the care receiver, finds out what the project(s) is, then calls his team members and explains the project(s) to them. Have them record their contact information on the team card that you gave them. There should be one card for each team. Number the teams and have spaces for the team members to list their names, address, phone numbers and email address. Be sure you have your men hand in their team cards along with their background check permissions. That’s very important because you’re going to be sending them rosters that you’ll make from these cards that they’re handing in.

Planning for Your First Service Day

At the end of your orientation you’ll know how many teams you have. This is important information because that’s going to tell you how many care receivers you can recruit.

As soon as possible, whoever is going to be recruiting care receivers should begin contacting them privately and individually in consultation with your church leadership.

Some care receivers are not going to want a team. They may have a little pride and think they don’t need a team. Go down your list of potential care receivers until you have enough to assign at least one to per team.

Be sure you do your background checks on your men. Then email each team their roster with their contact information and their care receiver’s contact information. Remind them about the first service day and ask the team caller to call their team’s care receiver.

Four to five days before your first service day, send out a mass email your team members and your care receivers, reminding them that their first service day is coming up and that the team’s caller should be contact the team’s care receiver.

On the Thursday or Friday before your first service day, individually contact the team callers to make sure that they did what you asked them to do: call their team care receiver and their team members.

Here’s the checklist:

 Hold your orientation meeting.

 Form your teams.

 Contact potential care receivers.

 Do background checks.

 Email your team members their team rosters with care receivers assigned.

 Send out a mass email to all team members and care receivers 4-5 days before your first service day.

 Follow up with an email to all team callers on the Thursday or Friday before your first service day.

This transcript first appeared in New Commandment.org.

Published: November 28, 2023

Updated: August 10, 2026