Revamping IT Volunteerism At GCC Part II - Building Community

Continuing from Part I ...

Building Community

Another focus point of our revamp was finding ways to build better community with our volunteers.
Not too many things speak louder than when we invest in our volunteers with time.
So we decided to hit the pause button on Tech Ops tasks the 1st Monday evening of each month and dedicate that time to just hang with our volunteers.

What's that look like?  For starters we're inviting all current and potential volunteers to dinner at an offsite location each month.  Usually it will be "pay your own way", but we'll occasionally hope to make it a free dinner.  The purpose is simply to create space for getting to know each other better ... and what better way to do that with a bunch of geeks than with food!  Occasionally we may use this dinner meeting to share big picture info with the team, but typically the agenda will be ... eat and talk.

We're initially calling this the GCC Geeks Gathering and our 1st event is already scheduled - see http://gcctechops.eventbrite.com
One challenge will be finding places to eat that can easily accomodate our group as we predict it will grow...hence the use of eventbrite and RSVP's to gauge needs.

Other future community time could be tackling a community service project as group, helping each other with home projects, etc.  And of course there's the spirtual aspects of building community.  Praying for each other when times are rough, celebrating when things are rockin', challenging each other to take our next steps towards Christ.

Ripple effects... What if this grew beyond just being an "GCC" IT volunteer thing.  What if our volunteers started inviting their geek friends and co-workers to these Monday nights?  What would it look like to have a community of geeks that gather together to do life together?  What amazing stories could come out of the collision between geeks for Jesus and geeks that don't yet know they need Him?  Oh baby, that makes my heart beat fast and my brain short circuit! :-)

What our you doing to build community in your volunteer teams?

Here's a snippet from our recent Tech Ops Volunteer Info night where I go over some of our new 'community' initiative (audio is weak so crank up the volume) 

 

More to follow in Part III...

Comments

[Travis Phipps]

Once again you guys are forging ahead and setting what I feel is a great example for how churches can/should do IT. It's not just about the technical pieces. What you're building is a community/home/cell/etc. group of like-minded people. People love to hang with others that think the same way they do.

I love what you guys are doing with this revamp and pray that everything goes incredibly well. And once again, I appreciate so much your open communication and dialog and sharing about it. I really want to setup something similar at our church with our all-volunteer IT group. This truly is a ministry opportunity!

[Jason Powell]

Thanks Travis