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More Slots Than Workers?
Vacancies can alert you to a better way of doing ministry.
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Carla couldn't find enough workers. With a growing Sunday school, children's church, and full-scale Wednesday night program, Carla struggled constantly to staff the children's ministries at Stillmeadow Church. Carla needed 91 workers for the three major ministries. Or she would have, if she had found 91 people able and willing to work every week. She didn't. So Carla divided some of the jobs into once-a-month obligations. Now she needed 187 workers. At First Presbyterian Church in a north Indiana town, Gus felt stymied in his attempt to grow the adult Sunday school. As education director, he wanted most of the congregation's adults to be active in a Sunday school class. That would mean increasing the number of adult classes from four to nine. Gus was finding little enthusiasm among potential attenders, and he was having trouble finding teachers to start new classes. At the same time the associate pastor, Ron, was finding it harder than expected to grow the church's small group ministry. He too was having trouble finding leaders. Both programs seemed stalled about halfway to their goal of total congregational involvement. In most of the churches I work with I hear, "Every year we have trouble finding enough workers." Rarely do I hear anyone say, "We have too many positions to fill." Whenever we have more slots than people to fill them, we automatically assume we're short on workers. Could it be that the root problem is not too few workers but too many slots? Case 1: Cut the pieces biggerI asked Carla, "Do you have 187 people at Stillmeadow who feel called to work with children?" She rolled her eyes. If even 91 people had been eager to work with children, she would not have had to chop jobs into smaller pieces. Carla knew that some of her volunteers were helping with children only because of the worker shortage. Quite a few were mismatched to their assignments. So Carla streamlined the children's ministry. Though the church had grown to 650 in worship attendance, they were still using a small-church class structure—small classes with solo teachers. Carla combined the children into larger groups of 20 to 30 with each group led by a ministry team including a master teacher. That produced several important advantages. The ministry teams allowed each team member to work in his or her area of giftedness rather than having to do everything (teaching, worship, crafts, care giving). The teams created a support system for workers. And the switch to ministry teams eliminated the need for seven department supervisors since each team became basically self-organizing. In restructuring, the 187 slots were cut to just 60. Every volunteer was working every week, not every four or six weeks. The consistency was wonderful for building stronger relationships between children and adults. With fewer slots, Carla lined up all the workers for the fall programs by June—a first. Every position was filled by a person whose heart was in children's ministry. |             |
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