It’s All About the People
A very insightful colleague on my volunteer team recently gave me a book a friend of his wrote about church tech directors. On the inside cover, he wrote a personal, short, but heavy admonition: “It’s all about the people.”
I sat back and looked at my goals list. It was a large, lengthy list of goals that were all of a technical nature – new initiatives, maintenance, creative aspirations. But very few had to do with people.
Ouch!
Granted, working in a technical and creative ministry capacity, we understand, often in a distant sense, that what we’re doing affects people. But it’s so easy to be troglodytes in our little caves – to get caught up in the process and the models – that we lose sight of relationships. Sometimes we never see the fruits of our labor, and we deal behind-the-scenes so much that we’re often physically (and consciously) separated from the people we minister to. But I have to ask the question – if I’m not caring for people, what in the world am I doing in ministry?
Isn’t it a shame when we reduce ourselves to a mere technical (or a creative) support service, that we lose sight of the fact that we’re actually ministers, meant to build relationships?
It’s so easy for entire churches to get wrapped up in that. The business-like structure that defines church staffing often confines us to an environment that hinders, not builds, community. Unfortunately, volunteers often see the worst of this. That’s because a lot of departments see them as simply extra sets of hands. I’m trying to make it very clear from the start that my role is not as a leader, but as a servant. My job on a staff is not to manage them, but to empower them. Volunteers are the true ministers, and it’s my job to support them in that.
This year, with a new set of goals on the white board, I’m taking steps to live that out. I’ve committed to three priorities:
1. Empower my volunteers to take more ownership.
I’m beginning this long, arduous process by allowing my team members to ‘dream’ a little bit – to submit an idea or a change they would like to see happen in our ministry – and to act on as many of those ideas as I can (and positively acknowledge the ones are not possible). This empowerment will stem into several other priorities as well.
2. Pray for a different volunteer each day.
If prayer is the frontline of ministry, why am I not doing more of that? To live that out, I’ve started asking a different volunteer every day how I can prayer for them specifically.
3. Get to know more of the congregation individually.
How do I ‘know’ my audience if I don’t really know them? While I can sit here and acknowledge my ability to communicate visually, I’m a fool to believe I can do that effectively by gauging a mere demographic. So how do I get to know them if I’m busy during worship? Share meals, help someone with yard work, volunteer with a different group of folks. Anything I can do to counteract ‘business’ with community.
Discussion time: what are some of the ways that you are making it ‘all about the people’?
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