The WEC Servant Matcher is a great way to connect people to service opportunities. Specifically, this extension was created for churches or ministries to connect members and attenders to ministry service opportunities. We name anyone in a church who wants to help – servants – and that is where we get the “Servant Matcher” name. Some churches or ministries may call them volunteers or unpaid servants or helpers or “people to help”. Whatever their title, if you want to connect people who want to help, then this extension can help you do that.
As an example of how this could be used: suppose you are a leader at the First Church of Kasperville and you want to let them know about how they can help out at your church. You find all the ministry opportunities by contacting other leaders or pastors involved. From there, you receive the following opportunities: “Help in Children's Sunday School”, “Help With Yard Work At The Church”, “Teach Youth Club”, “Drive Van For Elderly”, “Be An Usher”, “Be A Greeter”, “Bring Snacks For Sunday Morning”, “Sing In Choir”, etc...and you may have 20 or 30 or more of these. Then, you would simply add each of these, with their appropriate contact person and information. Then you can add this to your website and voilà -- you have a way for people to connect with your service opportunities available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
This extension is very flexible and allows you to show and connect servants in various ways:
1) List by Ministry – show users all opportunities under a given ministry. Or you can list by ministries and let them choose several ministries they are interested in and see all opportunities under those ministries.
2) Select by Skills -- allow a user to select their skills / spiritual gifts / passion / talents and then it matches them with ministry opportunities that fit those.
3) List by Ministry Needs – let the user pick from ministry opportunities based on a given need/priority (i.e., “urgent”, “special”, “high priority”).
4) List by Last Added – allow user to find the ones that were last added so they can see “new” opportunities.
You can actually mix and match opportunities in any combination you want, depending on the size of your church and the number of opportunities available. If you have a larger number of opportunities (i.e., more than 25), you may want to assign skills/gifts to them so people can match opportunities that fit their “call” and passions.
Since ministry opportunities can be listed by ministry group, this extension will allow every ministry page that would like to have a “Look For Opportunities”/”How Can I Serve?” to then show all the opportunities to serve in that given ministry. So, your Music/Worship ministry can show all Ministry opportunities associated with it.
While in this document, we use the terms servant, ministry, and ministry opportunity, a broader definition might be:servant: person who wants to helpministry: categoryministry opportunity: a given opportunity or task that needs someone to help
Major features include:
Flexible ways to connect people to your ministry opportunities – use whichever way fits your church/ministry.
Flexible ways to respond – by commitment or contact form and/or by phone/email information listed.
Easy-to-setup, add, and modify.
Customizable look, layout, and colors.
Each ministry area can have a link in its own section that will just show opportunities for its ministry
Admin support where staff/owner can add/update their own opportunities that they are in charge of
The following are real-working examples of this extension:
http://www.ginghamsburg.org/serve/ -- this uses a variety of skills and is the basis for many of the great features and options
Below are some examples of what the Servant Matcher extension could look like:
This is the Ginghamsburg Servant Catalog
http://www.ginghamsburg.org/tj/
http://www.ginghamsburg.org/tj/
This shows how you can search by skills/interests
The Web-Empowered Church (WEC) is a ministry of Christian Technology Ministries International (www.CTMIinc.org). The mission of WEC is to innovatively apply WEB technology to EMPOWER the worldwide CHURCH for ministry.WEC will help churches around the world expand evangelism, discipleship, and care through the innovative application of Internet technology. WEC web-based tools and training will help make church ministries more efficient and effective, and will extend ministry impact to a world in need of Jesus (See www.webempoweredchurch.org/jesus). We want to fuel a worldwide movement using the Internet to point the world to Jesus Christ, to grow disciples, and to care for those in need. Our desire is to use the web to empower the church to become a truly 24 hours per day 7 days per week ministry that is not constrained by walls or distance or time.If you would like to find out more about WEC or our tools, or support us in any way, please go to our website for users: www.webempoweredchurch.com and for software/web developers: www.webempoweredchurch.org
