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05 April 2011
I still remember the day I changed my strategy for recruiting and training volunteers. It was a cold winter morning in 1987 and I had just accepted a new position as a children’s pastor at a church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I was frustrated because yet another volunteer had informed me they were stepping down. Like most children’s pastors, I was one of the last ones to leave the building. This memorable day, my pity party was approaching epic proportions when I bumped into the head usher, Phil Winn.
When I saw Phil I thought, “I wish I had the people that Phil has in his ministry.” (It seemed to me that the best men in the church were on the usher team. It was like the Marines.)
I heard that still small voice inside of me say: “Why don’t you talk to Phil? Maybe he knows something that you don’t know” I explained my problem to Phil. “What do you do if everybody wants to quit and it starts a domino effect?”
Phil looked at me with his patented, incontestable gaze and stated, “We don’t let our people quit. Sometimes the Lord will promote them and lead them to another ministry, but if they just want to quit, we don’t let them.”
As I thought about Phil’s comment, he said something I have never forgotten: “We find that when people get involved in serving at church, they stay in church. The reverse is also true. If people don’t get involved in ministry, they end up leaving the church. I don’t like losing good people, but more importantly, I want them to stay connected to the church. If somebody wants to quit, I always ask him or her: “What ministry are you going to serve in?” If they don’t know, I stay connected to them until they either come back to the usher ministry or hook up with another ministry.”
A light turned on. To get someone involved by serving in children’s ministry is actually in their best interest.
Phil wasn’t just trying to get something out of people. He really cared about the spiritual well-being of his team. Phil was doing something that I didn’t know how to do. He was “pastoring his volunteers.”
“Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.” (I Peter 5:2-3)
Peter tells us how we can pastor our volunteers. Next week we will continue.
