Okay, your men’s team ministry has been running for a few years and then you notice something: some of your teams have run out of work. On the one hand, this is a great situation and proves that your men have accomplished what they set out to do – meet pressing needs in your congregation.
But on the other hand, this is not a great situation if your men are just standing around at your care receiver’s home doing nothing. The first rule of men’s ministry is that men do not like you wasting their time. If this situation persists, you will lose your men.
So what to do? Here are some suggestions:
Assign a second and even a third care receiver to underutilized teams.
Assign multiple care receivers to a team and then rotate through them, one per month. This will allow time for projects to build up at each care receiver’s home. It will also maintain the relational nature of the ministry, though not on the same level that you would achieve with a team dedicated to one care receiver. I suggest you limit the number of care receivers to three so that their relationships do not become too shallow.
Have your teams start serving the neighbors of your care receivers.
We ask teams to finish their work each service day by standing out on their care receiver’s front lawn and praying for the block they are working on. If your teams are running out of work at their care receiver’s home, perhaps there are widowed, single parents or disabled on the care receiver’s block who have needs. What a cool testimony it would be if your teams could start working in the homes of two or even three care receivers on the same block.
Look for care receivers with greater needs outside of your church.
Let’s face it, churches tend to be segregated by race, social status and economic class. This means that some churches are going to find men’s team ministry a lot easier to do than others.
Are there churches in your area, perhaps in a depressed area of your city, that have a high ratio of widows and single mothers to men? Ask your pastor to contact the pastors of those churches to see if your men’s team ministry can help.
Do you have underutilized teams in your men’s team ministry? How have you addressed the issue?
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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