Hectic to Rested - How to Share the Work With Others Like Jesus Did

One of the biggest traps pastoral couples fall into is

trying to keep their fingers in every pot in their church, so that things are done “right.”

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This is tempting!  Some multi-staff churches do this by insisting that a pastor be in charge of every ministry, committee, event, etc. Ken, my husband, and I  both struggled with micro-managing volunteers. in our early years.  We wanted everything about a church to show off God and his kingdom in the best ways possible.  Not a bad goal, except when pastors and spouses take on the lion’s share of achieving it.

The fruit of micro-managing is worry. 

You’re stressed about how your church will look if a volunteer screws something up.

You’re stressed about turning off lost people or visitors.

Worst of all, pride often stalks micromanagers.

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Micromanagers become fearful of how their church reflects on them.

This is especially true if you are the only pastor or the lead pastor. All bucks stop at your desk and it’s hard when they are bad bucks because of a poorly trained volunteer or one with a sinful attitude.

Jesus never micro-managed.

He created space for his disciples to learn, make mistakes and grow. He corrected them when they missed the mark.

We MUST do the same. Discipling our church members is more important than our church programs and worship services being great.

So, let me share a process we learned from several teachers, about how to share leadership and responsibility with your people.

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So they can grow in Christ. 

So they can experience the joy of serving freely without you looking over their shoulder.

So you can stop doing so much and rest more.

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 This method takes time. That’s why many don’t use it.  They live with a false tape playing in their head that keeps saying, “Oh, it’s just easier to do it myself.” In the short run that is entirely true. Jesus would have been way more efficient without the disciples. But efficiency wasn’t the  goal. Love and relationship were his priorities. If you treat volunteers like Jesus treated his, you will grow passionate, committed servant leaders. Leaders who are confident and creative. Here’s the steps.

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​I do it and you watch.  Keep your eye out for people who can replace you in things you are currently doing and ask them to join you. As pastoral teams, our goal is to equip the body of Christ, not do everything for them. I’ll use my husband’s former church security team as an example. Once Ken found someone with the right gifts and skill sets for the team, he invited that individual to follow him around for several Sundays.

We do it together.  In this step the potential security team trainee got his own walkie talkie and began to actively participate in the duties of the team. He still remained with Ken  or another experienced team member for several more weeks. He also needed to start attending regular training sessions with the rest of the team.

You do it and I watch. At this point, Ken would allow the new security team member to travel on their own and have some lower-level responsibilities. Everyone else on the team listened to them and watched them. Ken watched them from a distance or in the security suite on the video monitors.

You do it on your own.  If the trainee handled themselves well in all the above steps, they were allowed greater, more sensitive duties, for example in a nursery area,  or as a floor manger. They were not actively monitored by anyone anymore.

This can be a slow process and many pastors and leaders jump ship out of frustration when volunteers screw up. It’s so easy to revert to micromanaging. Remember when James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven on people who didn’t treat Jesus right? Volunteers will mess up sometimes. You deal with it. You don’t micromanage them.

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Please don’t stress about volunteers.  Take your concerns to God in prayer. Why? Because you’re obeying Christ by discipling and training people up in his ways. Even when they mess up, he will care for you and help you untangle messes. We need to stop worrying about our reputation and our church’s reputation and instead do the work of training up volunteers that we can trust to represent Christ.

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Some people are happy to be unthinking, dutiful sheep but is that really what you want? Don’t you want people to grow up in their God-given gifts? Sure, Jesus’s disciples were a hot mess a lot of the time when he was here on earth but look what happened after Jesus returned to heaven.  Those guys turned the world upside down.  If something happened to remove you from over the top of your volunteers and ministries would everything collapse, or would things grow?

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If your absence from a ministry means certain doom, you are not discipling your volunteers, you are micro-managing. Stop it. This is not what you are called to do.

Did you ever consider the idea that by insisting on having your hand in too many places you aren’t able to do the things God designed for you to do really well?

 Jesus knew what his calling was and understood his mission with his disciples. Together they changed the world. How about you and your volunteers?