Investment Throught Involvement - Unconference Topic

Unconference Discussion Group - “Investment Through Involvment”
Idea Initiator: Mitch Matlow
Discussion Facilitator: Carl Isaacson

Summary: We all know that most of the time you get out of an opportunity pretty much in proportion to what you put into it. If you invest a lot of your money in a good risk, you can get a solid financial return. College classes are a good non-financial example of the same principle. If you do the homework, study, read, join in class discussion, attend class regularly, participate in a study group, and generally do the work to learn, you’ll get a lot more benefit out of the class. Likewise, in a relationship, if you take the time to talk and spend time together and are honest with the other person, you’ll be more enriched by the relationship. It will impact you more.

We think it’s the same with being in the Journey. If you invest your time and energy and skill and passion into the Journey, you’ll receive more of the potential spiritual benefit that the Journey has to offer. One important way that you can invest yourself is by getting involved in various aspects of the Journey.

About 6 or 8 of us sat in the unconference and discussed some ideas related to this…. here are our notes, and we welcome your input. (Note, Mitch Matlow brought up the idea, but wasn’t able to attend the second segment of the unconference, so he asked me to facilitate the discussion for him. Therefore, I hope that Mitch will jump in on the discussion and share more of what he had in mind, because we just had to go with the brief sketch he gave me, and then run with our own ideas.)

How do you make investment through involvement happen? How do we encourage people to invest in the Journey by getting involved.

1. Set an expectation that, at the Journey, that’s what we do… we get involved.

   • Have up front examples / “testimonies” of how getting involved has impacted people (variety)
   • Find out what people are good at
   • Teach from the front that spiritual growth / faith includes involvement (without guilt, of course)
   • Acknowledge and celebrate involved people

2. Make it easy to get involved

   • Periodically / regularly offer sign up tables and/or a ministry opportunities fair
   • Encourage meeting new people, introduce people to others, especially those that can mentor others
   • List ways to get involved on this web site… make it clear on the site how/where people can get involved
   • Ministries - descriptions of the various groups and teams that exist
   • Jobs - listing and description of jobs that need people
   • Contacts - names/emails of leaders in various areas, especially with pictures so that people can recognize at the Journey
   • Advertising - publicize through this web site, the printed handout on Sundays, signs near the doors, email lists, paper mail

3. Communicate Regularly

   • Ask people to get involved
   • Make it easy (as listed above)
   • Advertise (as mentioned above)
   • Success stories / examples / testimonials
   • Let people know that the sooner they get involved, the better… they don’t need to wait a certain number of weeks/months or years

4. Foster Leadership - keep training leaders… the more leaders, the more teams and opps to get involved

5. Ongoing method for forming involvement groups - such as this website, opportunities to meet or publicize new groups, etc

6. Regular carve out times on Sundays to meet in specific groups

   • For instance, on the first Sunday of the month, a chunk of time during Sunday will be allocated to meeting as ministry teams. Partly this could be a 15 minute touch base meeting to accomplish some brief work, but also it could be a “first try” meeting to get to know who is on a ministry team without committing or actually even doing it the first time
   • The second Sunday of the month could be age group meetings for 15 minutes…. Jr/Sr High, College, 20’s, 30’s, 40+
   • These of course would be optional, like everything at the Journey

7. Homework - Before coming to the worship experience, have genuine homework available to do ahead of time in preparation.

   • A section of the Bible to read and study, write about, answer questions
   • Discussion with others
   • Assignments of things to try
   • Not just application after the Worship experience, but something to prepare in advance
   • (I know, I know… it has to be optional)

These were some of our ramblings and ideas…

For the people that were in the discussion group on Sunday, please chime in with your ideas that didn’t get recorded here, or that you have thought about since then.

If you weren’t there, but something here sparks your interest… please chime in.

Invest yourselves in the Journey… get involved!