Workdays Part One: A Great Way to Get People Involved—Short-and Long-Term

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As you seek to engage people in service, providing a variety of both long and short-term opportunities inside and outside of your faith community is essential.  Many of your members and visitors need the chance to check out several ways to get involved before committing to a longer-term thing.  Our church not only offers high-commitment, high-responsibility ministry leadership and participation offerings, we also make sure we provide ways for everyone of every age and ability to do one-time community work.

We’ve offered workdays at a local low-income health clinic—on a Saturday—helping clean up their parking lot and grounds and plant new landscaping.  Our young-adult group provided the 20 people needed for this event—enjoying the camaraderie as well as the meaning of the work and the work itself. 

Two summers running, we signed up over 80 people to serve on Sundays at Ironman triathlon events.  We attracted many people who had not helped with other one-time events, as the focus of this endeavor was to aim for the highest diversion rate for waste materials—from landfill to recycling.  We worked alongside thousands of athletes and spectators who participated in the races or cheered the runners to the finish line—all while gathering and sorting loads and loads of trash.

As one of our members, in his 70’s said, “In addition to learning a lot about recycling, I enjoyed the social scene, chatting with old friends, making new friends, helping educate athletes and spectators about the importance of recycling and composting, and soaking up a lot of sunshine. It had never occurred to me that being a trash collector would be a form of Christian outreach, but it was. We represent the church while doing community service, demonstrating our commitment to being good stewards of the earth, and providing low-key opportunities for the curious to enquire about our motives.”

An added benefit was earning a $2,000 donation for our church.  And, people were willing to dig through the bins at the end of the day to increase the diversion numbers…happily risking smelling like garbage in the process. In the end, on the three weekends, we successfully diverted 83%, 93%, and 95% of the waste materials from landfill to recycling and composting facilities—breaking the previous records for the Ironman events and for our recycling partners.

Our longest-running workday commitment has been at a local elementary school—the same place where we also run a Kids Hope USA mentoring program for at-risk kids.  Over the years, we have done thirteen medium, large, and huge workdays with this school, including helping them move from their old building to their new building several years ago.  Our smallest was 25…our largest was over 250 people. 

We have continued both the ongoing mentoring as well as one-time engagements with this same school.  Last year, we provided 30 people to help run their annual Carnival fundraiser.  This year, we provided 20 or so Mile Marathon assistants as teachers and students and some parents ran a mile around the school—for fun and for health.  On teacher appreciation days, we ask those in our church who like to cook and bake (and who may never have been able to do a work day) to provide food for the faculty and staff.

The list is endless.  They key is to develop relationships in your community.  Ask THEM what would be most helpful to THEM.  Invite your congregation to get involved—make it easy to say “yes!”

 [See Workdays: Part Two for more on this subject.]

 Shirley Giles Davis, author of the God. Gifts. You. Your Unique Calling and Design workbook, is a consultant, coach, facilitator who has worked with faith-based organizations, nonprofit agencies, and law enforcement leadership for over 30 years.  She has worked with leaders and organizations in 47 of the United States as well as having clients outside the U.S.  Contact Shirley.