Today’s reading: Psalms 138-139; Acts 6
Reading Acts 6 this morning has me thinking about the ways churches utilize (or fail to utilize) their people.
At the beginning of the chapter there is a need in the church for oversight of a ministry. The apostles rightly recognize that they don’t need to be the ones handling this situation, as it would take away from the ministry God had primarily called them to, so they call on the people to provide men to take this on. On the one hand, they don’t just wait for people to naturally recognize the need and volunteer to step into it, but actively call on the people to step up to solve it, and on the other hand, they don’t feel the need to even be the ones to appoint the right men, but allow the community to set forth the men whom they commission for the task.
Warning: From here on, this is mostly just a brain dump of things I’ve been thinking about over the last couple years on this topic broadly…
First off, I have to call out that a lot of churches get this very wrong. When important needs arise in a church, those aren’t things to entrust to a volunteer (or volunteers) stepping up, but those are things to have the paid staff handle. In all reality, the issue of some of the widows being neglected could have been incredibly divisive in the early church and is the kind of issue that, if allowed to fester, could have ruined things in a big way. So is that really wise to entrust to someone that’s not on your church staff? What if they drop the ball? Or what if they start to lead things in a way the pastor doesn’t prefer? Definitely safer to just have the pastor, or maybe some other paid staff member, handle it! This is the reality for many churches, and when they do have things handled by volunteers, they tend to be either trivial and/or are aimed at the retired people in the church, like showing up mid afternoon on a weekday to decorate the sanctuary for next Sunday’s service.
The church where I first came to know the Lord sought to buck this trend by pursuing a model of “every member ministry.” They wanted everyone to have the opportunity to participate in meaningful ways in the ministry of the church. The outworking of this, in that church, was largely focused on home church leadership and discipleship. Rather than the central focus of church life being Sunday morning services, the central focus was on individual home churches that operated with quite a bit of autonomy. The problem was that, while this provided opportunities for people gifted in evangelism, teaching, and leadership to do significantly more than they would get to do in the average church, it didn’t provide all that much outside of those roles. People were often told to look around for a need to fill, but very often, especially in the scope of a home church, there weren’t a lot of needs that were easily seen. And when it came to bigger needs, things at the scale of the broader church, they were often approached in a much more traditional way, either having someone currently on staff take care of it, or hiring someone to fill the role, rather than raising the need to the broader community and asking for faithful men and women willing to step in and meet the need.
I started to see a bit more of this when my family moved to a new church around a year and a half ago. The move, for us, wasn't based on any problem or issue with our previous church, but based on the fact that we wanted to be part of a church in our community that was trying to serve the same neighbors and families we were. The church we ended up joining currently meets in a school rather than having a dedicated church building. The result, whether intended or not, is an all-hands-on-deck approach to really every aspect of church life and community. It takes teams of volunteers to show up early Sunday morning, set up sound and music equipment, convert classrooms into kids' sunday school spaces, setup signs out front and in the hallways, etc., and then to tear it all down and haul it all away when the service is over. Without dedicated infrastructure in place, more people are needed for sound, lights, powerpoint slides, etc. during the service, and more people are needed in greeting people on their way in and helping them find where they're going. On top of that, you have the more common needs like a ton of people to serve in kids' ministry, play music in the band, etc. It creates an atmosphere where, if you really want the church to be able to meet and welcome people from the community on a Sunday morning, you have to get involved in making it happen.
It has left me reflecting back on our old church quite a bit because I think both churches could really learn and grow from one another. Our first church provided a lot more opportunities for people to be involved in ministries related to the Word and discipleship (teaching and home church leadership), but there was a significant void for people who were still learning the Word and/or were unable or unwilling to teaching. Our current church provides a ton of opportunities for practical involvement in making the church function (as well as in various ministries in the community), but very little for those able and interested in teaching others the Word.
Our old church doesn't have as much practical need because it has its own facilities, but why aren't those facilities used to create opportunities to participate practically in the life of the church? Why not, instead of paying a small crew to clean and maintain the buildings, rely on the people in the church to step up and do that needed work? Why not get a large volunteer crew together that can handle setting up tables and chairs for a wedding on Saturday and then getting the space set back up for the teaching on Sunday morning? Why not, instead of paying someone to take care of the gardens and cut the grass, solicit a team of people willing to serve the church by maintaining the grounds? I get that coordinating such crews would take more work and add more risk than just paying people to do the job, but it offers members of the church the opportunity to contribute in meaningful ways to the practical workings of the church.
I think it is an important responsibility of church leaders to seek out and create opportunities for people in the church to serve and invest in the church in meaningful ways. Just like the apostles in Acts 6 didn't sit back and wait for someone to see the need and step up to fill it, nor did they step in to fill the need themselves, but went to the church and asked for the people who would step in to meet that need. When we have people able and willing to serve, church leadership tend to be the people in the best vantage point to recognize or create the points of need for those people to fill. At times, I think those in leadership need to look at the skills, giftings, and availability of their people and prayerfully ask, "What has the Lord brought these people together to accomplish?" so that they can then rally their people to the task. At other times, I think those in leadership need to recognize the resources the Lord has made available to them and step back a bit, relinquishing control over various aspects of the church's life and ministry to the people the Lord has placed there to carry things out.
The other area I think churches tend to go wrong in this regard is holding too tightly to things once they have started. Yes, in Acts 6, there were widows getting overlooked in the distribution of food, and there were complex cultural and sociological issues at play that caused that to happen. But as the church grew, matured, and developed, do you think that same ministry was always necessary? Did they continue to need to allocate some of their best and most faithful to overseeing a ministry to make sure nobody was getting overlooked? I'll bet not. But too many churches aren't able to pivot. Maybe it's because they hired someone to oversee the program, and to admit it's not needed would cost that person a job now, or maybe it's because the church has hung it's hat on that ministry for so long to show how faithful and loving they are, or maybe it's just that they aren't paying enough attention to notice the need has changed. Other times the Lord provided someone specific to meet a need, like a youth pastor, worship director, teaching pastor, small group coach, etc., and when they leave, or otherwise step out of the ministry, there is nobody who could replace them. The reality may be that there isn't one person who could replace them, but maybe there are two, three, or four people whom the Lord has brought together to collectively fill that role. But if it's a paid staff role, how is that going to work? It won't... So rather than utilizing the people the Lord has raised up, the church starts a hiring campaign, looking to bring someone in from outside the church to try to match, as exactly as possible, the person who left the role.
But what if, instead, we trusted that the Lord has placed every member in the body, exactly where He desires, for the building up of the body in love? What if our first assumption was that the Lord wants to use the members of our church as a blessing to those in the church and/or as a blessing, through the church, to the broader community? What if, before hiring someone to meet a need, we asked how it could be met by God's people already present? What if, when we see someone willing to serve, but unengaged, we defaulted to asking where the Lord was wanting to use them among us? What if our first inclination for how to keep people in our churches was not to try to make a more engaging spectacle out of Sunday mornings, but was to call those people into meaningful engagement?
If you can't tell, this is something I have been thinking about a lot lately, something I feel passionately about, and something I think we, in each and every individual church we may be part of, need to strive to do better.
Maybe someday these thoughts will solidify into something a little more cohesive, but this is what reading Acts 6 got me thinking about this morning.
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