When we visited Maranatha on Sunday, one of the inserts in their bulletin was a full page giving the testimonies of each of their elder candidates. That got me to wondering what sort of selection and vetting process different churches use for choosing elders.

In my experience at Noelridge, here’s what happened: the existing elder board suggested men to serve as elder apprentices. Those apprentices had to be approved by the congregation. Once approved, they met with the elders at all the regular meetings, etc for some period of time – a year, maybe two. At the point the elders were comfortable with their qualifications and thought them ready to become full elders, the elders would recommend the apprentices names to the congregation for approval.

Things that, to me, were notably absent: any sort of in-depth theological examination. Granted, there were some one-on-one theological discussions in various meetings over the apprenticeship period, but there was nothing formal. It was assumed that you agreed to the statement of faith, and that was good enough. While we agreed that Alex Strauch’s idea of interviewing elder candidates’ wives to get their input was a good idea, in practice I never saw it happen.

So here’s my question for you, be you a church leader or just a church member: what sort of selection and vetting processes are in place for elder candidates? Popular nomination and election? Any sort of congregational examination? I remember hearing about Rae’s study sessions before his PCA elder exam, so I know some of the answer I’ll get from him, but I’m interested in hearing from the rest of you all.

David Swanson of Parkview Community Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, has an article up on Out of Ur that really hits home with me. Being a 30-year-old elder who has been serving in some facet of church leadership for the past 7 years, I have run into these challenges time and time again. I’m looking forward to Part 2 where he promises to provide some suggestions. I’m all ears.

Read the article.

I was going to make this part 3, but this all really ties together too much, so let’s just talk about it now. What about oversight? Too often I think of “oversight” with a negative flavor; the person overseeing is the one who either a) gets to be the disciplinarian when things go poorly or b) has to take the blame when things go poorly. No fun either way. But if oversight doesn’t kick in until things go poorly then we are failing.

So back to those evaluations where people said the Sunday morning service was good. I think one of the key reasons the Sunday morning service was good, and got better, was that we held weekly meetings on Mondays to critique and review. As a staff we sat down for an hour and discussed the music, the sermon, the rest of the service. What was good? What was bad? What could be done better for next time? Those meetings were good learning times for all of us. I can’t think of a single time, though, that we did that kind of evaluation for any of the other ministries I’ve been involved in at the church.

Why don’t we do oversight? First, I think it’s the negative connotation. We don’t want to be the bad cop who’s offering criticism when something is done poorly. Now sure, it’s more comfortable not to offer criticism, but we don’t usually shy away from it. Why do we shy away from it in church ministry?

1. We’re afraid of losing volunteers.
If the gal who runs the overhead projector or the guy who greets at the west door get criticized for doing a poor job, they may just decide that it’s not worth it at all. Then we may be out a couple of volunteers… and isn’t having someone that does a hit-or-miss job better than not having anyone? There are a couple responses to this one: first, teaching and shepherding of our people to have them understand the importance of service; second, making sure that we talk to folks regularly, so we have opportunities to praise them for doing an excellent job… which makes the sting of constructive criticism easier to take later on.

2. We feel guilty for overworking our volunteers
It’s the old 80-20 rule, right? 80 percent of the work gets done by 20 percent of the people. In some churches it’s probably more like a 90-10 rule. So when one of those 10 percent, a faithful, hard-working volunteer, is doing a poor job in a ministry, we hesitate to mention it because, you know, they’re already doing too much already, but we really need somebody to do this, and, well, they’re busy, and it’s hard to get it all done… so let’s cut them some slack. I am one of those 10 percent people. Even today I have responsibilities that I am doing poorly because I have too many things on my plate.

So what’s the response to this one? First, don’t overload your people. If somebody’s volunteered for too many things, tell them so. Then help them to prioritize so they can do a few things really well. Then get some of those 90 percent people to fill the gaps. If there’s no one to fill in, leave a hole there for a while.

3. We feel guilty because we haven’t trained well
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. To my silly engineering mind, most of these tasks are “easy”, so I tend to let them go with just a little bit of training. “Here, it’s just Powerpoint. Turn on the projector, use the remote to flip the slides, turn it off when the songs are done.” To most people, things aren’t that obvious. The best solution for some of these tasks is apprenticeship – get a new volunteer to work with an old, experienced volunteer for a while to learn the ropes. In times when that’s just not possible, set up a time to work with the new volunteer and train them until they’re comfortable with the task. Don’t just throw them into it on a Sunday morning and leave them hanging. I’m ashamed to say I’ve done it before… and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Active oversight

So here’s my call for active oversight of for every volunteer in every ministry going on in the church. Maybe a weekly meeting is infeasible, but a conversation or phone call every couple of weeks would work. As a leader, ask these questions:

• How do you think it’s been going? Good? Bad?
• Have there been any times that you felt unprepared or out of your depth?
• Is there anything I can do to help you do even better next time?
• How are things going in your life otherwise?

As a leader, be prepared to offer some feedback, too:

• How you actually think it went.
• Suggestions for improvement.
• Encouragement to continue well, and a reminder of why we’re all serving.

It is not the responsibility of the pastor to talk to all the volunteers every week, either – this oversight responsibility should delegate down. Let the nursery coordinator be the one that contacts the nursery volunteers on a regular basis. Let the head technical person keep in active touch with the folks who run sound and video every week. Then let the elder overseeing the nursery ministry talk to the ministry coordinator, etc. Flow things up. If everyone gets in the practice of talking to their two or three on a regular basis, everyone stays on the same page, and improvements get made. Just keep in mind the end goal: effective, well-done ministry, in service of God’s people, and for God’s glory.

The rest of this series:

• Introduction
• Part 1: Don’t Overload the Workers
• Part 2: Active Oversight (this post)

This seems like such a no-brainer that it shouldn’t even need to be mentioned, but based on my experience, it does. Sundays aren’t even the best view of this. Look at it through the week. Are the same people that are teaching Sunday School the same people that are hosting a Bible study at their home on Monday, leading kids’ clubs on Wednesday, volunteering in the church office on Friday, and showing up on Saturday to help with the work project and get things prepared for Sunday again?

Another place to look carefully here is at the impact not just on individuals, but on families. At one point in time at Noelridge we had six women serving as deaconesses, and of those six, three were elders’ wives, and the other three were deacons’ wives. Now I’m sure this isn’t too uncommon – after all that heart for service really should run together in couples, but as a leader, be acutely aware of the combined family schedule, especially for younger families that still have children at home. More than once I have had someone wonder why I thought I was so busy when I was only committed to two or three different activities per week(!) at the church. When I asked them to figure in my wife’s commitments, and then remember we have small children at home, well, suddenly expectations change a bit.

Discernment is required here to understand who truly has the time and desire to serve greatly and who is working from feelings of compulsion and guilt. We do not get the best service from our people when they have a dozen things on their plate. Something will get missed, and something else will be done poorly. To my shame, I have done this often enough myself. As leaders we need to be willing to protect those overly-willing servants by telling them when they have enough on their plate, and then to fill the gaps we need to get a fire lit under those who aren’t helping out.

I visited a friend’s new church website the other day and under the tab titled “what we do”, I found these refreshing words: “At Grace Central, we basically only do three things.” Wow, I thought, only three things? Now those spread out a bit in ministry, I’m sure – it’s not like there are only three events on their calendar every week. But still, the focus: only three things. If it doesn’t fit in one of those boxes, it’s not essential, and we’re not going to do it.

From their website again [emphasis mine]: “…we want to try very hard to limit what we do to only those things which we are convinced are essential. That way people are encouraged to take what they are learning at Grace Central and go out into their lives to apply it and to discover the radical implications of God’s grace. We think being a responsible church means our people should have time for relationships and activities outside of our church as well.” Amen.

Also in this series:

• Introduction
• Part 1: Don’t Overload the Workers (this post)
• Part 2: Active Oversight

Last week Richard (my pastor for the past 8 years who is also leading our church plant effort) asked me this question: What do we need to do to have more effective ministries at the church? He shared with me that in the past 15 years when he has had the opportunity to conduct “exit interviews” of folks who have left the church for one reason or another, the predominant theme he gets is that the Sunday morning service is good, but that the ministries that go on through the week leave something to be desired.

So that got my wheels turning. Why is there this disparity? What can we do to change things to make it better? This is crucial both for our existing ministry at Noelridge and our upcoming ministry at Imago Christi. Are there processes we should put in place that would help? Are there things in place right now that are unnecessary hindrances to the effort of ministry?

I had a few answers for him there in our conversation, but I want to take the chance to explore them more fully here on the blog. So over the next few days I am going to explore some areas where I think we can improve things in our ministry – and I’m hoping it’s applicable and useful for my non-Noelridge readers as well as the locals.

As a note to my Noelridge readers: please don’t read any of this and feel that it’s a criticism of you, of your efforts in ministry at Noelridge, or of your dedication to the Lord. The responsibility for this stuff falls on the leadership. We are the ones that need to take a hard look and then, if need be, change things. It’s entirely possible that some of the ideas I explore here won’t even be good options for Noelridge. What I am hoping these accomplish is to get us to think on some things and have a productive discussion. So please, leave comments and discuss.

Also in this series:

• Introduction (this post)
• Part 1: Don’t Overload the Workers
• Part 2: coming soon
• Part 3: coming soon