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Home > Articles > Want-to, Can-do Workers
Want-to, Can-do Workers
Turning your church into a place where people serve willingly and well.
Sue Mallory

Topics:Calling, Delegation, Empowerment, Management, Recruiting, Supervision, Volunteer care, Volunteer recruitment, Volunteers
Filters:Discipleship, Elder, Pastor, Volunteer coordinator
Purpose:Discipleship
References:Ephesians 4:11-12, 1 Timothy 4:14, 2 Timothy 1:6
Date Added:July 12, 2007

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  • Match authority and responsibility. Give workers power to succeed.

A Christ-centered ministry mindset makes every effort to discover a person's unique gifts and calling, and to encourage each person to serve where God has equipped him or her to do so.

Interviewing a new member, I discovered a young man with a burden to serve the homeless. My role was to connect him with a community agency that had a place for him to serve, to send him off as a representative of the church, and to commission him in worship to be a minister in the community. I resisted the temptation to try to plug him into an opening in one of our church programs.

A ministry mindset starts with the assumption that a local church already has all the gifted people it needs to accomplish the ministries God intends it to have right now.

Bruce Bugbee, who developed the Network resource for lay ministry, says that mobilizing the laity "is about the right people in the right places for the right reasons." When that happens, people want to succeed, just as much as pastors need them to succeed. That makes motivation and effectiveness much easier.

The freedom to fail

To reorient a church's mindset starts by assessing how the church currently relates to the people who serve there. The tip off is often what you overhear.

For instance:

» "Volunteers just aren't dependable."

» "Using volunteers will cause the level of quality to go down."

» "What can you expect? She's just a volunteer."

» That sort of language signals a volunteer-management mindset.

» Another issue is trust: Does your church communicate that it really trusts lay people to accomplish the ministry?

» People who are placed in the right ministries will "live into their commitments."

This can be undermined when a church leader delegates a responsibility only to take it back if it is not being handled the way he or she expected.

Once during a stewardship campaign, a pastor came to a stewardship committee meeting already in progress. The leader of the committee was not present because of a prior work commitment and had appointed a committee member to chair the meeting. The pastor assumed the lay leader had not followed up on a few details for the meeting. The pastor expressed his concerns to the group and then later made several follow-up calls. Each call proved him wrong. That embarrassed him and offended the lay leader.

In contrast, another pastor trusted several lay leaders to develop a plan to address the needs of the pastoral and support staff. While many of the staff felt anxiety about their roles being redefined by laity, the senior pastor didn't meddle in the process. He believed in the talent and commitment of the lay leaders, and that the Holy Spirit would work in the process. The result was a plan that honored and protected the pastoral staff, freeing them of much administrative responsibility.