Well, practically speaking, this is often defined by physical involvement. If there are large numbers of people coming to what we are doing, we assume people are connecting. However, just having people show up in the same room at the same time doesn’t mean they are connecting with one another—especially across generations. And that’s important to differentiate.

It’s one thing to get people to something and even have them serve in some capacity. But it’s an entirely different thing to help people connect inter-personally with others and bridge the generation gap. This is more difficult to do than just having people show up. It takes more time and an entirely different strategy.

Here are THREE practical ways you can work to become a connected church across generations and do so in sustainable ways. I will categorize these into Long-Term, Mid-Term and Immediate ideas to keep in mind and implement.

Long-Term. To build a culture that is connected inter-generationally, the people involved must be motivated by the gospel. I’m not trying to sound over simplistic or super spiritual. I really mean this. The reality is, people who have only accepted the benefits of the gospel and have somehow missed the call of the gospel will only serve as a hindrance to becoming a truly connected church.

The gospel, at its most basic level, calls us to be selfless (Mark 8:34), with a unique focus on Jesus and others knowing Him. The gospel motivated Paul to use his personal liberties for the sake of others (1 Corinthians 8:13) and it led him to give up his personal preferences so that others might come to a saving faith in Jesus (1Corinthians 9:22).

This is the mentality that feeds relational connectivity. True and sustainable connectedness will be robbed unless the most basic principles of the gospel are serving as the motivators for the people involved. Our gospel presentations, then, must include both the benefits and the call of the gospel.

Mid-Term. Be very intentional with the terminology you use. Whether it’s in a one-on-one conversation or from a massive stage in front of thousands of people, we must talk about the unifying aspects of everyone involved.

For instance, when we use the word “family” in church contexts, we are most often referring to individual family structures. Our motivations are good, but if we are not extremely careful we can alienate college-age people, anyone else that is single and possibly someone that comes from a broken family.

To be a connected church we ought to redefine words like family, as the “family of God,” which allows everyone to have common ground. It’s in little nuances like this that change a culture and lead to being a connected church.

Another facet is to stay away from terminology like, “Big Church” because it inherently carries an “us and them” tone.

Immediately. Actually connect two people on some sort of common ground. This can be any facet of life, really. Take vocation, for example.

Consider connecting two people from two different generations for one cup of coffee and do so over the common interest in a particular industry. Maybe an older woman in your church is an engineer and you know a college student who is interested in engineering.

Ask the older individual if she would mind sitting down with a younger woman who is interested in this field of work just to “talk shop” and be available to answer any questions about it. This type of inter-generational exposure to people is what cultivates a connected church. Not every one of these connections will become an intimate relationship, but many of them will. And if connecting people like this is a pattern in your life it will, in fact, lead to your church being a connected one.

Chuck Bomar is the pastor of Colossae Church in Portland, OR, co-creator of XP3 College, and author of numerous books including his latest, Better Off Without Jesus.

Over the course of the eight years that Special Hope, our special needs ministry at Montgomery Community Church, has existed, there have been a few times when we have not always made people (mostly parents) happy. Not because we didn’t want to, but because our expectations were not the same. As a ministry, we were very intentional in the beginning days of setting goals, objectives and expectations of our ministry. This was crucial for us because as much as we would love to be everything to everyone we knew that there was no way we could. We had to be honest with ourselves and the families that we served, to say: “We can do these things and we are going to do them as well as we can, and then there are these things that we can’t do.” Unfortunately, we sometimes have parents who think we should be focusing on things that as a ministry we have not agreed to do. This is where the next three chapters of Leading a Special Needs Ministry: A Practical Guide to Including Children and Loving Families comes into play. I only wish that we would have had this book and its resources eight years ago at the start of it all.

I am going to be honest; nothing bores me more than statistics and laws. So, when I saw that Chapter 3 of Leading a Special Needs Ministry was all about those two things I got a little bummed. But, to my surprise and happiness the chapter was great—just like the rest of the book! Here are some things that I took away from Chapters 3, 4 and 5.

Chapter 3 – Special Needs Statistics, Terms, Laws and Trends

• 1 in 5 U.S. Residents, have a disability. Think about that—really think about that.
• Up to 30 percent of individuals with autism do not have an intellectual disability.
• Use the word difference rather than disability.

Chapter 4 – Establishing a Mission for the Special Needs Ministry

• The educational and therapeutic settings are all about achievement. But that isn’t what a relationship with Jesus Christ is about. He loves us exactly as we are and He wants a relationship with us regardless of our performance.
• A ministry is much more likely to retain its volunteers and the families it serves when a hard and fast devotion to certain education and therapy philosophies are kept out of the church environment.
• As church leaders, part of our job is to create ministry environments where serving is a pleasure—we need to set volunteers up for success!
• As special needs ministry leaders, our most crucial objective is to facilitate successful accommodations for the child with special needs so that mom and dad can receive their own spiritual nourishment.
• Clarify what the ministry can and cannot do—everyone wins when the parents, volunteers, and church leadership start the ministry on the same page, with everyone understanding the purpose and capabilities of the ministry.

Chapter 5 – Developing an Accommodation Plan for the Child with Special Needs

• There is no single way for a church to do special needs inclusion that will please everyone.
• If a church doesn’t have the volunteers, the space, and the resources to launch a ministry with every base covered, let’s not chide them for getting it wrong. Let’s cheer them on for expanding their accommodation and striving to do it well.

This is a great chapter—my favorite so far! I love all the inclusion tips and the sample intake form. So often, I read a book that tells me “what” to do but doesn’t give me the “how” to do it—the meat and potatoes—that this book does!

Think on This:
What are the goals that your special needs ministry has? Is serving really a pleasure in your ministry? Think long and hard about this question.

Kristy Moser is the early childhood pastor at Montgomery Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. She lives in Mason, Ohio, with her husband and their four kids.

Prez: Live to Serve Event
What’s Included:
* Event Guide
* Production Notes
* Tech Notes
* 1 QuickTime Video featuring Reggie Joiner interviewing Brian White from Disney
* Production slides that will help you design transitions that will keep everyone engaged
* Image files for postcards and posters that will help you promote and publicize the event
* Discussion Notes with questions to get you talking with your teams

Description
The purpose of this event is to enable you to create a day for casting vision, stimulating conversation and providing inspiration and training for your family ministry. Sounds like a hefty task? Here’s the thing, whether you are brand new to Orange or have been Orange for years, communicating the vision and helping your volunteers understand the significance of what they do is something that people need to be reminded of regularly.

We also know that Sunday is coming, you have curriculum to prep, volunteers to recruit, emails to answer and lots and lots to do! So, where do you find the time to put together an event that will train your team? Well, wait until you see what we have in store for you! Live to Serve is designed so you can create an event that is achievable for any size and type of church.

SESSIONS: Selected Messages from Ministry Experts
Mike Clear
How to Host a Volunteer Training Event
Your training events are a first impression of what it is like to serve in your ministry environment. We all know that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, don’t just throw together a meeting; instead, create an experience for your volunteers in a way that casts vision for the future of your ministry.

Tony Morgan
Simply Strategic Volunteers
In case you haven’t figured it out, you’ll never have enough money to hire enough staff to accomplish your ministry vision. The only way it’ll happen is if you engage volunteers. Tony shares 10 simple strategies to connect people in serving opportunities at your church. These proven principles will help you grow the impact of your ministry while reducing the need to hire staff.

Rodney Anderson
Leading and Maintaining Student Volunteers
What motivates people to leave the comfort of their seats and get involved? We think it’s possible to create the kind of student volunteer experience that attracts and keeps great volunteers. Learn with us as we continue to explore new opportunities to find the kinds of student leaders that we are all looking for.

PREZ: Why They Leave
Jared Herd
If you walk through the halls of most of our churches on a Sunday morning, you will see children and teenagers learning about God and growing in their faith. We pour countless hours, blood, sweat, and tears into making sure their experience within our walls keeps them coming back. But are we protecting our investment? Right now, statistics are telling us that 65-80 percent of Christian teenagers are walking away from church and not coming back. To us as leaders of students, these are names and faces, not just statistics. In this breakout session, join Jared Herd, author of More Lost than Found and creative director of XP3, in a practical session about what we can do as church leaders to make sure the students that are in our care now stay engaged with God beyond our time with them.

PLUS:
Podcast: Role Definition
Hear from some top leaders on why defining the roles of your volunteers is so important.

Sample Job Descriptions
Need some examples of staff and volunteer job descriptions? We got those, and also descriptions for First Look, 252 Basics, and XP3

SOCIAL Plans: Messages and Images that Inspire Volunteers
Social Plan: Strategy 01
Social Plan: Small Groups 02
Social Plan: Leadership 02
Social Plan: Family 02

Want to test the measure of a leader? Throw a problem at him or her. Most people, when they come face to face with a problem, immediately look for someone else to solve it. We all start out that way. As children, when problems came our way, we called for our mamas. And that was completely appropriate for a child—but not for a leader; it’s a follower mentality. Leaders respond differently when facing a problem. They act to solve it. Those sorts of people are like Daniel.

Here’s how Daniel’s described in Daniel 5:12: “This man Daniel, whom the king called Belteshazzar, was found to have a keen mind and knowledge and understanding, and also the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve difficult problems.”

Daniel had a reputation for being able to solve problems. It’s a reputation you want to earn, too. But before we talk about how to solve problems in part two next week, there are a couple things you need to know about problems . . .

Not all problems are bad.
I often hear ministry workers wish they lived problem-free lives. Well, there are people who have a problem-free existence—but they’re all dead. The only people I know who don’t deal with challenges like stress, budgets, and relationships are stretched out in the cemetery. Notice I said “challenges” rather than “problems.” That’s no accident. I’ve found that some things I considered problems turned out to be tremendous blessings. They’re the very situations that helped me grow and changed my life for the better. Whatever problems you face in ministry, decide to view them not just as problems but also as challenges God wants to help guide you through. That attitude keeps you teachable—and invites God’s guidance.

You may look back at the problems in your life right now and thank God for them because they caused you to grow. And here’s why . . .

Some problems prepare you to handle more.
Problems season you, and prepare you for more responsibility. When David walked out to face Goliath it wasn’t the first time he’d fought a larger enemy. He’d already bested a lion and a bear. Goliath might be carrying a spear, but David knew he could place a rock in just the right place to drop the giant. David had faced down big, hairy problems before.

Think about your life. How many of the problems you’ve faced were just training? Warm-ups that prepared you for a larger problem that followed?

Some problems are tremendous learning opportunities.
I remember the day we decided to start a puppet ministry at my church. I’d never held a puppet before, but my roommate was on a college puppet team. My friend walked us through what we needed to know. And I took really good notes, because the next week I was going to be in charge. From Absolute Ignoramus to Mister Director in one week—quite a transformation. But that ministry was successful. If I’d seen my lack of experience as a problem, it would have stopped me cold. Instead, I saw it as a challenge, and in the process of overcoming it I learned a new skill.

What current challenges are teaching you something new?

In “Leaders are Problem Solvers, Part Two” next week, Jim Wideman will reveal characteristics of excellent problem-solvers.

Jim Wideman is considered to be an innovator, pioneer and one of the fathers of the modern children’s ministry movement. He has trained hundreds of thousands of children’s ministry and student ministry leaders from across the U.S. and around the world over the past 35 years. Jim currently oversees Next Generation and Family Ministries, which includes birth through college, at World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Jim and his wife, Julie, have two fabulous daughters, two handsome sons-in-law and the cutest grandson ever born!

I love summertime—fun, beach, pool, heat, BBQs, and no school for the kids! But I love it on the ministry front as well! Why? Because we get to go fishing!

Summertime is a great time to give our weekly serving people a break, inviting the church to step up and stand in the gap for them while they rest and refresh for the summer with their families! And yes! That means that every May, we begin to strategically invite a whole new group of “Summer Serve” people to jump on in!

Summer Serve has become a strategic part of our ministry rhythm! We have learned over the past seven summers that it not only affords our leaders a break, but it gives us the opportunity to meet a whole new “pond” of people to fish from!

What do I mean by that? All year long, our people experience amazing teaching and worship in “big church.” God is working in them and growing them into the likeness of Jesus! At some point, people will be ready to take a step of faith toward a serving role, and we have found that Summer Serve is a great time for them to make that first step out of their seats and into service!

What do we do? We put a laser focus on the serving experience in the summertime. We want new people to realize that serving is a joy. They come in willing to help! But when they experience Jesus working through them impacting kids, we hear them say: “I didn’t know it was like this!” “I loved it; when can I do it again?”

Every Sunday, we pray “God, show me today who to tap on the shoulder and invite into service!” It never fails. He does. Every week, somebody shines! And we invite. And we wait to see what God does! People come back. We get to see them and encourage them again. And by the end of the summer, we don’t even have to fish—they are jumping into the boat! And our rosters are full of new people to love on for the new season! And the “old” people return too!

Sound familiar? Jesus told some fishermen who had been fishing all night long, with no fish to show for it to cast the net on the other side of the boat this time! To trust Him. And what happened? More fish than they could imagine. Sometimes God puts us in situations where it seems like there is no answer. We have tried everything. We thought we knew what needed to be done. It worked before. Perhaps God is asking us to do something different; counterintuitive; something that doesn’t make sense!

Around here, we go fishing in the summer—and we cast a wide net on the other side of the boat. And we are never disappointed with the result, because we know those who get in the boat are supposed to be there!

Its summertime! Let’s go fishing!

Bobbi is the kids ministry pastor at Bent Tree Bible Church in Carrollton, Texas. Her passion is to lead her staff and volunteer teams toward creating environments where kids, servants and families can flourish. After starting her career in ministry with Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, she spent the last 15 years taking the leadership principles she learned and applying them to a small church children’s ministry in Michigan before landing in the heart of Texas! She and her husband, Paul, who is also a pastor at Bent Tree, have five children, the youngest two adopted from Rwanda, Africa.

Parenting Beyond Your Capacity, $14.99
Engage your family in a bigger story, a story that involves more than just your family – one that involves other influences who are on a journey to discover why a relationship with God really matters. We want to encourage you to establish a lifestyle as a parent in which you…

• Invite others to invest in your children so your sons and daughters have other voices that will help shape and determine the direction of their lives.
• Create a culture of unconditional love to fuel the emotional and moral health of your children.
• Tap into the power of quality moments together, building a sense of purpose through everyday experiences.

This isn’t a self-help book. It’s a get-help book. It’s about how you can increase your parenting capacity by connecting with available resources, some of which you know about and some you might not.

Losing Your Marbles / Playing for Keeps, $16.99
Loosing Your Marbles / Playing for Keeps is a book for anybody who will do anything with a kid or teenager this week. No, really. Anybody.

Playing for Keeps explores 6 things every kid needs over time, and provides 18 practical ideas for anybody who want to make what really matters matter more.

And Losing Your Marbles, well that’s a story about a middle-school kid named Simon, a little bit of rock music, a few zombies in a graveyard, and some Memphis BBQ.

Focus Porcelain Coffee Cup, $12.99
Double layer porcelain coffee cup with a rubber lid. On the back it has the words to remind the six things every kid needs; Time, Love, Stories, Words, Tribes, and Fun.

Candy Crush is a pretty simple game—you match up rows of candy, and then move on to the next level. On some levels you may have to clear the board in a certain amount of time, or get a certain amount of points.

The other day, as I was playing, I was busy racking up points and doing great—until I realized that I had missed the point of that level. It didn’t matter how many points I had, I needed to clear all the jelly. Which makes no sense to someone who hasn’t played the game, but perfect sense to someone who has been captured by the simplicity of this game. The point is, I missed how to win the level.

It got me thinking, how many times do we do this in our own ministries? We are working so hard at having the coolest looking environment, the perfect movie clip, just the right question, or the cutest craft, that we sometimes forget what the goal really is. We lose sight of the vision. Or maybe we have just never defined what a clear win really looks like in our ministry.

Do your volunteers know what a win looks like when they leave on Sunday morning? If they don’t, then they may leave your ministry, tired, discouraged and burned out. It’s hard when you are changing diapers all morning. A win to your volunteer may be not getting spit up on . . . but maybe we need to redefine this. Maybe a win in the nursery should be the fact that you are giving these babies a first glimpse of their loving heavenly Father. Wow, that’s a big deal!

Or maybe you work with a small group of 2^nd and 3^rd grade boys. Your win? Pure survival. Maybe this should be redefined. Maybe a win with your small group boys is helping them develop an everyday faith. A faith that helps them to think about the way they apply truth to their everyday circumstances.

Maybe you work with students, and a win for you is just trying to understand what in the world your 10^th grade boys are talking about or why your 9^th grade girls are crying . . . again. Your win, is the passion that you are developing in them, the desire to not just go to church, but be the Church.

Author Brian Tracy says: “A goal or objective that is not in writing is merely a wish or fantasy. It has no energy behind it. Unwritten goals lead to confusion, vagueness, and misdirection. . . . ” (Eat That Frog! p. 11)

Next time you meet with your team, try taking these steps toward clarifying your wins!

STEP 1: Try this with your team, “I’m going to say an age group, ministry area, event, or program. After I say one, I want you to write on your card what you think the overall goal of it is. Don’t look at anyone else’s answer. When you’re done, cover up your answer. Then when everyone is finished, flip the card over for everyone to read. We’ll look around the table and discuss what we notice.”

STEP 2: Did you know that only about three percent of adults have clear, written-down goals? What’s really amazing is that research shows that those who write down their goals and share them with a friend are 33 percent more likely to achieve those goals than those who merely formulated goals.

STEP 3: Did you know that there’s also something called the 10/90 rule? For every minute you spend planning, you can save up to ten minutes in execution later. Taking it even further, if you take just 10 to 12 minutes as a team once a week to revisit what you’re doing as age groups or in ministry areas, and also look at the goals for upcoming events and programs, you could save up to two hours of sideways work!

Take a glance at the calendar and think through your upcoming events or programs across the age groups and in other areas of family ministry. How can you make sure that your main goals are to move people relationally into more of a community and to take another step in their spiritual journey?

Clear wins make all the difference. When we know what the end result should be, we are more encouraged by the small increments we deposit to move us one step closer to the goal.

The above article was featured in our Clear Wins Challenge written by Cara Martens. For more resources on Clear Wins, check out our library of leadership resources at YouLead (www.WhatIsOrange.org/YouLead)!

From the time my son Wyatt was born, I was in a fog. I never really got out of that fog ’til he was about a year old or so. Watching my three-week-old go through more than most people ever go through in their lifetime took its toll on me. I had anxiety attacks and I didn’t even want to think about the future—there were too many questions that I was not ready for. Normally I was the strong one, normally I was the one telling people things would be okay. The ONLY thing that helped my husband and I (and our family) get through that time was the support of our church (and of course, the Lord). The women in our church, women who were moms of kids with special needs, knew exactly what I needed at the time. If I needed to cry, they were there. If I needed to whine, they were there. If I needed to just take my mind off of things, they were there.

The first section of Leading A Special Needs Ministry: A Practical Guide to Including Children and Loving Families by Amy Fenton Lee really hit home. Our church was amazing to us. But, we have had our share of individuals that have hurt us. When I look back on it, it really was not their fault. Honestly, they just didn’t know what to do or say. That is why this book is so encouraging to me, I wish every church would have a copy of it and read it and then teach their congregation about it. This way, no one would have to be hurt by others in the church and families who have kids with special needs would feel loved and accepted.

In the first two chapters, I took away these key points:

Chapter 1 – Loving the Family through the Diagnosis: At-birth Diagnosis:

• The most valued first encounters are typically initiated by someone with whom the parents are already comfortable—please respect a family’s privacy.
• Most parents experience anxiety over whether or not the church will accept and accommodate their child with special needs, so reassure them!
• Being present and listening to the family are two of the most important things that can happen.
• Parents feel a greater connection with their faith community when they observe visible ways the church makes accommodations for their child.

Chapter 2 – Loving the Family through the Diagnosis: Neurological-Related Diagnosis in Pre-School or Elementary School Years

• If the parent is hopeful, don’t judge them for being in denial. And if they are grieving, don’t urge them to look on the bright side.
• Some parents may not reveal their child’s diagnosis to the church for fear of exclusion.

I absolutely love the part in chapter two where Amy writes about healing and how it can be seen as very controversial in the special needs world. She does an amazing job of helping parents and church leaders alike understand why that, when prayers were lifted up, complete or partial healing was not found. My favorite part of section one is this:

“In fact, God may be working in and through their circumstances, and we can’t know completely how God is working through any situation during our earthly lifetime. But if the topic of healing is overemphasized, the family of an individual with special needs may miss the opportunity to be loved and accepted for exactly who they are and where they are in life. Again, the church’s role is to provide a safe, nonjudgmental environment that enables families to experience the love of Jesus Christ.”

AMEN!!! Preach it, Amy!

Think on This:
What are you doing to reassure families that you will accommodate their child? Are procedures set in place that will make things easy for a parent when they are ready for their child to participate in children’s ministry at your church? What parent do you need to reach out to this week?

Kristy Moser is the early childhood pastor at Montgomery Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. She lives in Mason, Ohio, with her husband and their four kids.

Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world, with one of the largest user bases on the web (most recent user total has climbed to 1.11 billion). Consequently, your community is probably full of Facebook users who interact with their friends, family and other loved ones regularly through the site. Leveraging someone’s passion for your organization to motivate them to spread the word about you to these trusted connections is one of the keys to a successful social media strategy. A Facebook Page is the perfect way to get started leveraging that passion to reach those connections.

Below we’ve assembled a list of five ways you can use your nonprofit’s Facebook Page to engage your community as well as those outside it, and motivate your supporters to share your work with those they know and trust. These tips move from basic to complex, so if you feel you’re already doing one well, by all means, move on to the next.

1. Extend Your Online Presence
Facebook is a great showcase for all the content you and your community create. It’s also a great place to input contact information where it’s easily searchable and located within an interface most people work in every day.  Thus, even if your Facebook is nothing more than a duplicate of the blog or news page on your own website, it places your content on another easy-to-find page where new eyes can reach it. And, if you output your normal content as updates from your Facebook Page, it will automatically appear on the Facebook News Feeds of all of your community members. This way people can see the latest news about your organization where they already are and won’t have to navigate to an external page.

2. Create a Sense of Online Identity for Your Community
People often attach themselves to a nonprofit to feel a sense of community; this community can (and should) extend into the online realm of social media. A Facebook Page is the perfect way to create an identity for this community based on the mission and aim of your organization. Posting information about what your organization does will keep your community informed, but specifically tailoring these posts to excite their sense of community will do something even better: By getting your community excited about their place in the group, they’ll be more likely to share your posts. Consequently, your mission will also be shared with their friends and family on Facebook through it’s built in “Share” Button, as well as original posts. Writing shareable posts will get you more engagement and build a precedent within your community of being vocal about your cause.

The key to shareable posts is to excite your community. Post messages about campaigns and events that your community will want to share, in order to show their friends what they care about. Keeping these posts brief will attract more eyes, as Facebook users often avoid “walls of text.” Facebook also includes built-in sub-pages for Events which are easily sharable and allow users to RSVP and invite their own friends as well. Square images with brief information about events (Date, Time, Location, etc.) can also be incredibly useful if the caption includes a call to “Share” the image on one’s own timeline or with interested friends.

3. Show Outsiders All the Great Things they’re Missing
Facebook is intended for natural social interaction and engagement, so you don’t want your page to come off too corporate or professional. One great way to build in that sense of organic interaction and community is to regularly post photos of your members and community actually engaging with your organization in person. Whether that’s volunteers working with kids, candids of a service, or posed group shots of happy participants, any photos that people will perceive as ‘normal’ people who are involved with your organization will be helpful. This makes it clear to people stumbling upon your organization for the first time through Facebook that you have a dedicated community who really loves what you do and is willing to support you. With any luck those first impressions will lead people to come in and see all the great things they’re missing.

4. Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
Though not intended as a fundraising platform, Facebook does have some fundraising potential if used sparingly. There are two key types of fundraisers that work well with Facebook: spontaneous and long-term community based. Facebook is absolutely perfect for spontaneous fundraising such as immediate assistance in the wake of disasters and accidents. An account can be set-up on an external donation site and a link can be quickly disseminated through your community in the wake of a crisis. However, this tactic will come across as pushy in most other contexts and should be used extremely sparingly. When your organization is holding a long-term fundraiser, Facebook is best used to motivate the community to stick to their goals as a group rather than recruiting new donors. For example, if you are putting on a fasting fundraiser you could use your page to post motivational words to participants as well as helpful tips and tricks or even fast-safe recipes. Another option is to post progress photos and/or Infographics which show community members what their donations are already doing, and what the next step will be if giving continues. The key here is to show what you’re doing with money rather than simply asking for it, which will go hand-in-hand with your community’s existing personal connection to your organization.

5. Build Small Groups Within Your Community
A great way to keep people engaged with your organization is to get them into a small group that meets regularly to socialize as well as to discuss your mission. If these sort of groups don’t already exist in your community or you’re looking to shake them up a bit, Facebook can be used to motivate the natural formation of these groups. Putting up a few posts pertaining to certain core groups and demographics in your community, you can encourage the formation of small groups in the comments section. The post would look something like this:

“Are there any 18-24 year old single guys looking to get a group together to talk about church and running? Comment below if you’re interested.”

The posts can call for groups as broad or specifically targeted as your community will allow. The key will be to monitor the comments section and encourage conversation if it starts to lull. If a post receives no comments, try something broader or encourage community members at an upcoming meeting to use your Facebook Page as a way to get involved in a small group.

Facebook is a powerful tool for engaging your community as a nonprofit. If you can find the right balance between informative organization-related posts and human appeals to the existing interest in your organization and its mission you can build a thriving online community through the platform.

Originally posted May 23, 2013, on Roar.pro. Used with permission.