Our best resources for pastors and ministry leaders.

Latest Post

Pastor Gift Guide for Christmas: What To Get Your Pastor

It’s Christmastime and that means many things…Advent services, meals, volunteering, and gift giving. In your planning for gifts, you’ll be considering plenty of people, but don’t forget your pastor. Christmas is a great time to show your pastor your love and appreciation for him and...

How Summit Church Benefited From Online Training In A Rural Community

As the church has grown, there has naturally been a larger need for volunteers to serve across all of their ministry areas. Kim says that every time they attempted to do in-person training, they always had a difficult time getting volunteers together for their meetings. After hearing about TrainedUp on a podcast, she was instantly…

An Inside Look Into How Volunteers At Substance Church Reacted To Online Training

Does this sound familiar? For all too many churches, a consistent, sustainable training system seems like a pipe dream. That was the case for Kaylee Elrick from Substance Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a multi-site church of 3700. They had attempted to do live training to provide a consistent experience, but the majority of people could…

How Foothills Church Streamlined Their Training Process And Increased Volunteers By 30%

This ability to get everyone trained from the comfort of their own home enabled Foothills to recruit 100 small group leaders with a 30% overall increase in their volunteer base. With the larger number of volunteers, who were also better trained, Foothills saw their largest Wednesday night attendance ever at 551 students — a 77%…

Church Partners & Course Templates: When it Comes to Training, More is More

In early 2017, we redesigned everything from scratch, adding some innovative new tools like record-from-webcam and our streamlined course creator. We also launched our library full of done-for-you video courses that you could use as-is or modify to fit your needs. Now with almost 30,000 leaders and learners experiencing the benefits of online video training…

How To Give And Receive Feedback With Your Church Volunteers

This post has been adapted from episode 16 of our podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast here or read the transcript below.  Kevin Fontenot: Hey there, I’m Kevin Fontenot and I’m here with Scott Magdalein. We’re your hosts of the Thriving Ministry Teams Podcast, where we talk about all things related to church leadership, discipleship and…

Top 8 Most Effective Church Outreach Ideas for Spring, Summer, and Fall

Outreach initiatives are cross-generational. Millennials and Boomers will engage in an outreach initiative…well, maybe not Gen-Xers, but that’s because the punk rock generation still has issues with institutions and authority. (Kidding!) Not all church outreach ideas are equal. Some outreach is more effective than others. In my experience, the best outreach ideas are ones that…

How To Pastor Your Church Volunteers

This post has been adapted from episode 16 of our podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast here or read the transcript below.  Kevin Fontenot: Hey there, I’m Kevin Fontenot and I’m here with Scott Magdalein. We’re your hosts of the Thriving Ministry Teams podcast where we talk about all things related to church leadership, discipleship and…

How to Create a Welcoming First Impression for Church Guests

Have you ever been to a restaurant and immediately been turned off by the experience? I know I have. Whether it’s employees who walk past without saying anything, a rude hostess, or just an unclean building, a bad first impression instantly sets the tone for the rest of your experience. Chances are your overall impression…

5 Reasons Your Volunteers Are Underperforming (And How to Fix It)

In the volunteer world, underperforming can look like a lot of different things. Sometimes volunteers will underperform by showing up late on a Sunday morning. Other times volunteers will underperform by not being prepared to lead a lesson or by just having a bad attitude. Most of the time it’s easy to spot a volunteer…