Volunteering is a great way to get plugged into your church, feel like part of a community, and serve Jesus at the same time. God has uniquely equipped every person in the Church with specific skills and gifts. As Christians, we are tasked with utilizing these gifts in our community and within our local church. Using your God-given skills as a volunteer is a fantastic way to serve the church while simultaneously lightening the load of a church’s staff.
Church Volunteer Opportunities
Volunteering has a spiritual benefit as well. By volunteering, an individual will often want to dive deeper into the life of the church. At the same time, they serve not only as a helping hand but also as a witness of the Gospel message within the community. However, while many may want to give of their time, it can be difficult to align schedules and balance other obligations. So while the desire to volunteer may exist, people often run into roadblocks that prevent them from giving of their time.
Many people travel for work, others live far from their church, and some have families who claim their time during the week. And everyone has unique God-given gifts. So it’s critical for churches to be inclusive and provide a variety of opportunities to volunteer. That’s why we’ve put together a comprehensive list of different volunteer opportunities for your church that will help engage your congregation in creative ways. We’ve divided them into 5 categories to help you determine what might work best at your church.
Holiday Or Special Event Opportunities
One-time events are ideal volunteer opportunities for those whose busy schedules don’t allow them to commit weekly. Christmas and Easter services tend to take more hands to pull together all the details, and numerous volunteers are needed. Normal Sunday volunteer roles are multiplied; more greeters, more children’s ministry volunteers, and more parking attendants.
Here are a few roles you could implement for holidays or special events:
- Fellowship volunteer: have this person pick up donuts, snacks, or bake cookies, and prepare coffee for a table at the front of the event. Great opportunities for this are at Christmas services, Easter services, special events, or group meetings.
- Carnival volunteer: have someone volunteer to set up or tear down games, run a face painting booth, or host a table of crafts.
- Handyman: know a dad or granddad (or lady!) who is great with a hammer? Put them to work building things, helping with set designs for special holiday programs.
- Set up and tear down: this person is particularly vital if you are a portable church, but you will always need someone to fold up chairs and direct others where they go or reorganizing rows of chairs into the right order. This person could also make sure all the technical parts are put away and secured.
- Children’s ministry holiday volunteer: this person could help organize holiday parties, make valentines or halloween treats, find creative holiday themed programming for Sunday school or church preschool classes, help make laminated or cutout projects, organize supplies and colored paper, and so much more.
- Organizer for Christmas child boxes: Operation Christmas Child is a fantastic way to get little kids excited about being generous during the holidays. This person could set up a way for people to get assigned to a box, turn it in, make sure all the pieces are correctly submitted and coordinate mailing them off. This person could also do similar volunteering roles with an Angel Tree or caring for a specific family or coordinating with a homeless shelter to bless a family during the holidays. Another great way to do this is to organize a “Christmas in a box” – including presents, dry goods/ingredients for a Christmas dinner, ornaments, lights, and a small faux tree to deliver to someone who otherwise wouldn’t have a Christmas.
- Organizer for holiday military care packages: deployed servicemen and women are appreciative of care packages, especially at the holidays. Have someone coordinate and organize supplies, packing, shipping, and all the details to keep track of who and where to send it, and what you can and can’t send. This could be several volunteer roles, too.
- Christmas decorating volunteer: include someone who has a great taste for design and decor in decorating and trimming the entire church with Christmas cheer!
- Easter egg hunt egg stuffer volunteer: this person is vital to a successful egg hunt. Several volunteers could make a great assembly line of stuffing candy and treats into plastic eggs.
- Children’s Christmas program/play director volunteer: designate your theater teacher/play director/actor/actress at your church to pull off the best Christmas Pageant ever.