Mobilizing Members for Ministry

One of the greatest needs in churches is to release the members for ministry.  A Gallup survey reveals that 50 percent of all church members have no interest in serving in any ministry.  Think about that!  No matter how much a church promotes involvement in lay ministry, half of its members will not get involved.  And that’s okay… people are extremely busy and have very full lives.

The encouraging news, however, is that this same survey reveals that most of the other 50 percent of members have expressed an interest in having a ministry.  This group is an untapped goldmine.

Americans today have less discretionary time today than they had in the 80s, so optimizing their volunteerism is essential.  If a person comes to me and says, “Pastor, I have four hours a week to give to the church” the last thing I will do is put him on some committee.  I want him to get involved in ministry, not maintenance.

There is a difference between ministry and maintenance.  Maintenance is “church work” – administration, budgets, buildings, legal matters, compliance with state and federal law, organizational matters, bills to pay, policies to write, and so forth.  Ministry is “the work of the church” – helping people, meeting needs, making disciples, and so forth.  The more people we involve in maintenance decisions, the more we waste their time and keep them from actual ministry, and create conditions for conflict.  Maintenance work also conditions people to think that their responsibility is fulfilled by simply voting on church business.

A common mistake made by many churches is to take their best and brightest people and place them on committees.  You drain the life out of people by scheduling a constant string of committee meetings.  We have no committees at PCC.  We do, however, have more than sixteen ministry teams.  I would like to see that number expand.

What is the difference between a committee and a lay ministry?  Committees discuss it, but ministries do it.  Committees argue, ministries act.  Committees maintain, ministries minister.  Committees discuss needs, ministries meet needs.

Committees also make decisions that they expect others to implement.  At PCC, the implementers are the decision makers.  We do not separate authority from responsibility, but trust people with both.  This makes committees irrelevant.  We don’t give decision-making authority to those who do not minister.

Who, then, does the maintenance (administration) at PCC?  The paid staff does. This way we don’t waste any of our members’ valuable time.  People really appreciate the fact that the time they volunteer is given to actual ministry.

I’m sure you can see how radical this approach is.  PCC is structured in the exact opposite way of most churches.  In the typical church, the members handle all the maintenance (administration) and the pastor is supposed to do all the ministry.  No wonder the church can’t grow!  The pastor becomes the bottleneck.  There is no way that one man, or a small number of paid staff, can minister to all the needs in the church.  He will eventually burn out or have to move to another church for relief.

Conversely, when 50 percent of the congregation is mobilized to do hands-on ministry, more needs can be met, more disciples made, more hurts healed, and more lives changed.  Why?  Because hundreds of ministers can accomplish more than one minister.

Once a church gets up to 300-400 in attendance, no single person or board can know everything that’s going on in the church.  I haven’t known about everything that happens at PCC for years.  I don’t need to know about it all!  You might ask, “How do you control it?”  My answer is:  “I don’t.  It’s not my job to control the church.  It’s my job to manage and lead it.”  Big difference.  Our pastors and staff are responsible to keep the church doctrinally pure, organizationally sound, on mission, and headed in right direction, but most of the ministry decisions are made by the people actually doing the ministries of the church.

We are serious about mobilizing our members for ministry, which is why we have streamlined our structure:  we can deploy people into ministry easily while minimizing unnecessary administrative involvement.  The more organizational machinery a church sets up, the more time, energy, and money it takes to maintain it –  resources that could be invested in ministry to people instead.

People are happier, more harmonious, and have higher morale when they are released to do ministry.  Fulfillment comes from helping people, not from administrative maintenance.

In war, you always find the highest morale and sense of camaraderie among those one the front lines.  You don’t have time to argue and complain when you’re in a fox hole dodging bullets.  Ten miles back, however, soldiers in the rear echelon grumble about the food, the lack of hot water for showers, and the lack of entertainment.  The conditions are not nearly as bad as those on the front line, but people are critical because they’re not occupied with the battle.  Whenever I meet critical and cantankerous Christians, I usually discover that they’re not involved in a ministry.  The biggest complainers in any church are usually committee members with nothing else to do.

My guess is that the average church would be healthier if it eliminated most of its committees and business meetings to allow for more ministry and relational evangelism.

Self-Directed Ministry Teams

There are a wide number of approaches to church government, from elder rule, deacon boards, Episcopal, Presbyterian, or congregational governance to name a few.  Yet, most forms of government have two features that dominate the church’s structure:  committees and majority rule.

The work of the church is usually assigned to a network of committees.  Most committees do not actually engage in ministry, as much as they make decisions for others to implement or abide by, which are then brought before the church for wider approval. 

The other dominate feature in the structure of most churches is some form of majority rule.  Whether it is in the form of a monthly business meeting, or simply how a committee or board makes a final decision, the raw democracy of majority rule is the tool employed.

Even though committees and majority rule are deeply entrenched within the life of most churches, it’s interesting to note that none of the terms or models can be found in the Bible.

Problems with Committees.  First, committees take people away from the front lines of actual ministry and move them to organizational matters, church business, or policy.  By doing so, the best and brightest people often become bureaucrats or power brokers which can result in micro-management and organizational paralysis. 

Second, committees separate authority from responsibility.  In other words, the people sitting on committees have all the authority while the people doing the ministry have all the responsibility.  This is a recipe for poor decision making, not to mention low morale.  The individuals who are intimately involved in a particular ministry are the best qualified to make the day in, day out decisions regarding that ministry.

Misgivings about Majority Rule.  Majority rule is deeply rooted in American democracy, and, as a result, has often been incorporated unthinkingly into the church.  An over-enthusiasm for democratic principles can render a church impotent of actually doing anything.

The biggest misgiving about majority rule, and one that is far more serious, is that the Bible teaches the church is a family (Galatians 6:10; Hebrews 2:10-12; I Peter4:17) and should be cared for and led by the most mature members in the family - not the immature. 

In most family households, the immature members (children) outnumber the mature members (parents).  When my children were little, if we had voted on everything, my family would have had ice cream for dinner every night, no bed time, and would have lived at Disney World.  But as the parents, my wife and I were the most mature so we had the authority to call the shots - to make the most important decisions that were best for family as a whole.

The church is a family too.  As a result, it contains members who are at different levels of spiritual maturity.  If every decision is made by the majority, instead of the most spiritually mature, then there is a very strong chance the majority could mislead the church.  It’s foolish to give someone who has been saved for ten days and another who has been saved for ten years the power of the same vote!

PCC’s Self-Directed Ministry Teams.  Since our beginning, PCC has used a structure of “ministry teams” to carry out our mission and ministries, as well as handling all the business of the church.  Here’s an excerpt from our bylaws:

PCC is made up of a variety of ministry teams, with each team or ministry having its own leader, and each team is entrusted with the responsibility and authority to make any decisions that concern their particular area.  The reason for this is simple: decision making authority is given to people who are actually doing the work because they can make a more “informed” decision than someone who is trying to control it from a distance. 

It should be apparent that ministry teams make committees irrelevant.

At PCC a ministry team is merely a small group of people with a complimentary assortment of gifts and abilities who are committed to a particular ministry that supports the mission of our church.  But for a team to function, the team must be self-directed, which means they own the process or the task at hand.  Only when given the responsibility AND authority to follow through on a task can a team have the flexibility to be responsive to changing events and demands.

LET ME OFFER A FOOTBALL ILLUSTRATION:  The coach and coaching staff train their teams - the offensive team, the defensive team, and special teams.  Once the game begins however, the coaches are on the sidelines and the team is on the field.  The coach can still call in plays from time-to-time, but once the ball is hiked and the play is in motion, the team is self-directed!  They have to be self-directed because the nature of the game demands it.  When the ball is handed to a runner, it is up to him to determine whether to cut left, right, or go up the middle.  While the offensive coordinator may have designed the play, selected the players, assigned them roles, and even trained them, it is the players who are the implementers and who must have the freedom to make split-second decisions in light of the changing realities of their situation.

It takes trust for this kind of structure to operate in a church, but as everyone knows, good people don’t need rules to tell them to act responsibility, while bad people always find a way around them (no matter the structure).  There is little doubt that mistakes will be made, but the gain for Christ through these self-directed ministry teams far outweighs any of the costs or concerns.  Besides, each mistake only adds another experience to the team and increases its commitment to mutual accountability. 

Here’s another excerpt from our bylaws:

Each team will be headed by an ordained pastor (elder), paid staff member, volunteer ministry director or leader, or any mix thereof.  All the ministries of the church will come under the direction of ministry teams, and all the teams combined will fulfill the total scope of the ministry of Pace Community Church.  Team members will be those persons who are spiritually gifted for the task and appointed by pastors.

Bureaucratic types, micro-managers, power brokers, and church controllers have always hated this system we use at PCC because they are given no decision-making authority unless they actually serve on a team, and even then, are limited to their area of ministry assignment.  The people who are happiest and stay the longest are those who sacrificially serve with other like-minded servants (in an area of shared passion) and together accomplish things for Christ.

At this moment, PCC has more than sixteen self-directed ministry teams that are actively serving and providing the ministries of our church.  All the teams combined involve about 140 team members.  Wow!  So if anyone wanted to “control the church” they would have to join all sixteen teams and gain control of each one - which is impossible.  More importantly, this form of structure has served this church very well for years, and is a main reason for our success.

Building on past success, I’m glad to report that we are experiencing a new season of team building at PCC.  2013 is going to be a breakthrough year for us!

T.E.A.M. – Together Everyone Accomplishes More