One time in my pastoral experience I invited a new family over for dinner and asked them how they’d like to be involved in the church. “Would you like to teach Sunday School or work in our youth group?”
Typically I never asked newcomers to get involved right away, but it was a particularly desperate time in our church and I had heard from many others that I needed to “get new people involved right away” if I wanted to grow the church.
So I tried. They never came back to church after that meal. I don’t know if it was because of my question about involvement, or if my wife’s lasagna was repugnant that night, or what.
I was never comfortable asking for volunteers for church work. Typically the worst person possible raised their hand. You can’t very well say you need a position filled and then not fill it with a person who volunteered to fill it.
Usually I asked an individual who I thought would be good at the position to do it. If they said no, I got rid of the position until I found someone who could fill it and wanted to do it.
I eliminated a lot of ministries and ministry positions. No one wanted to do anything really. So we didn’t do much.
I do believe the Bible says to be careful about putting new people in positions of church leadership. Having any sort of spiritual leadership is a serious position. People who take on that role will have added accountability on Judgment Day.
I don’t know if churches consider that enough. Asking some immature person who just wandered into your church to teach kids is not only potentially damaging to those kids, it might add heaps of guilt and chastisement to their life and potentially in God’s judgment.
Paul says a qualification for a bishop is that they are “not a novice” (1 Timothy 3:6). They can’t be new to the faith. Later in 3:10 he says that a person who wants to be a deacon should first be tested.
Now you may think that Sunday School teachers of kindergarteners or leading singing isn’t a bishop or deacon position, but Paul is establishing the point that positions of leadership in the church should be vetted.
The qualifications for pastors and deacons are nothing more than a description of what a mature believer looks like. Maturity in the faith should be an essential requirement for leadership.
I think the testing can be used for smaller, non-leadership roles in the church, things like cleaning, stacking chairs, (Lord knows we need qualified people for that job), greeting, etc. Anyone who joyfully performs these duties should be discipled for opportunities to lead.
Not only does begging new people to get involved potentially compromise those new people and who they might lead, it also reflects poorly on the church.
A church should act like it’s been there. It should have its stuff in order. If you walk into a new church and they are tripping over themselves to get you to do stuff, watch out! Why are they so disorganized and desperate?
Many churches expand their ministries and are forced to plug warm bodies into leadership roles. Anyone will do; we just have to keep the machine rolling.
This will not only destroy the people in the roles and who they are leading, it will eventually destroy the church. Only have ministries you have people qualified to lead. Yes, you will have to cut some ministries. Yes, people will get mad. Yes, Judgment Day will go better for everyone involved.
Church Growth advice is heavy on getting new people working in the church as it forces them to have to show up.
For every example of a church that exploded in growth by plugging new people in immediately, there are probably ten churches that were massively damaged by such a thing. No one writes books about or has those pastors to conferences. Only the winners get book deals.
Be careful out there. As the pastor you are responsible for what’s going on in the church. It falls on your shoulders, if not today, then at least on Judgment Day.
Church is serious business. The new people you beg to do stuff in your church probably go to work during the week. They have bosses that don’t go around plugging new people into skilled positions without some vetting first. And if they do, no one is happy about it!
At least pretend church is as important as the places that employ your people.
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Failing Pastor 