Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Oh, That's Easy
MMI wonder "How do you fire a volunteer?"
Here is what I am driving at - the church is NOT about programs with pros and amateurs doing those programs. The church is a collection of individuals at different levels of spiritual development, seeking together to do the work of Jesus Christ on this planet. By virtue of calling, some of those people draw a paycheck.
Let me put the shoe on the other foot for just a minute. Sometimes the volunteer can do the job better than the "pro." What then? How often have I heard a sermon preached by a young person recently out of seminary that I could have preached better in my sleep? "Oh, that's a teaching opportunity," is the usual retort.
Well, guess what - needing to "fire" a volunteer is a teaching opportunity as well. But then so is their volunteer work.
You see, the key to this is that volunteerism is not simply filling a role in the great machine that is your congregation. Volunteerism is that person stepping up to their ministry. As the person charged with operating a given ministry your role is not to find people to do the job, your role is to help those people find their gifts, talents, and most importantly, spiritual maturity. "Your" volunteers are as much or more your charges as the people at whom the ministry is aimed.
You don't fire volunteers, you help them, as you should have been helping them all along. If you are doing your job in discipling "your" volunteers properly, by the time events get to a point where a "firing" would be necessary, the volunteer will probably have figured it out for themselves.
I have to be honest, I find this whole idea a little off-putting. The mere question implies such a misunderstanding of how the Body of Christ is supposed to function. I am beginning to wonder if in our supposedly egalitarian evangelical world we have not developed a genuinely new priesthood, not of believer, but of paychecks. As if being on staff somehow grants us maturity and authority beyond our years.
The bottom line is this - church is not something done by some for others. Church is something done together by believers. Anything else is just entertainment in spiritual disguise.
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Peter Hamm writes: "I think it's possible that the hardest thing we have to do in ministry is letting a volunteer go. Sometimes it's because they do something they shouldn't (this happens a lot in Youth Ministry... Go figure), sometimes it's because it's a bad fit for them and their giftedness, sometimes it's because they just can't do the job. For instance, what if your welcome team has someone on it who never smiles and insults people as they come in?...Let's start with a deeper question - WHY? do you fire a volunteer. You see the first thing I note when I read this piece is that it concerns itself not in the least with the well-being of the volunteer, only "the ministry." Ask yourself this - Why do we have volunteers to begin with?
Here is what I am driving at - the church is NOT about programs with pros and amateurs doing those programs. The church is a collection of individuals at different levels of spiritual development, seeking together to do the work of Jesus Christ on this planet. By virtue of calling, some of those people draw a paycheck.
Let me put the shoe on the other foot for just a minute. Sometimes the volunteer can do the job better than the "pro." What then? How often have I heard a sermon preached by a young person recently out of seminary that I could have preached better in my sleep? "Oh, that's a teaching opportunity," is the usual retort.
Well, guess what - needing to "fire" a volunteer is a teaching opportunity as well. But then so is their volunteer work.
You see, the key to this is that volunteerism is not simply filling a role in the great machine that is your congregation. Volunteerism is that person stepping up to their ministry. As the person charged with operating a given ministry your role is not to find people to do the job, your role is to help those people find their gifts, talents, and most importantly, spiritual maturity. "Your" volunteers are as much or more your charges as the people at whom the ministry is aimed.
You don't fire volunteers, you help them, as you should have been helping them all along. If you are doing your job in discipling "your" volunteers properly, by the time events get to a point where a "firing" would be necessary, the volunteer will probably have figured it out for themselves.
I have to be honest, I find this whole idea a little off-putting. The mere question implies such a misunderstanding of how the Body of Christ is supposed to function. I am beginning to wonder if in our supposedly egalitarian evangelical world we have not developed a genuinely new priesthood, not of believer, but of paychecks. As if being on staff somehow grants us maturity and authority beyond our years.
The bottom line is this - church is not something done by some for others. Church is something done together by believers. Anything else is just entertainment in spiritual disguise.
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