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Alex Strauch provides some practical guidance for becoming a church that truly cares for people (from the Summer 2007 edition of Emmaus Bible College’s Journey magazine):

1. Organize a Benevolence Fund. Caring for the poor and needy cannot be done in a willy-nilly fashion… it’s amazing when we put our money together what we can do!
2. Establish a Father Program. Many children in our churches today come without a father… over the years my four daughters would bring children, mainly girls, from school to the table to eat with us. For many of these girls it was the first time they were at a table with the father present.
3. Provide language training for new immigrants. A number of our women had professional training and detrees in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), and they said we should do this. We were wondering, “Where are these people going to come from? We haven’t seen any immigrants in the neighborhood.” Nevertheless, we put up a sign reading “English as a Second Language.” Within one day we filled the whole program.
4. Provide hospitality to poor and needy members. People love it when they come to your table for a meal. And the Lord Jesus instructs His people to invite certain kinds of people for a meal: “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” (Luke 14:13).
5. Provide the poor with cars, furniture, and household goods. How often we’re getting rid of a car, selling a car. Don’t sell it - give it to someone!
6. Raise awareness of poverty both local and global. Even if your assembly is middle class or upper middle class, there are bound to be people who are suffering financially. But you must have your eyes open to see it.
7. Acknowledge the reality of the AIDS epidemic. One of the greatest tragedies in world history is right here before us…
8. Leaders must set a vision before the congregation. We need to set a vision before our people that pulls us out of our self-centeredness. Our people need to be stirred to a compassionate care for our congregation, and a compassionate awareness of a world situation that is almost unspeakable.

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