Move from a volunteer mindset to a ministry mindset
Photo from Photos.comI once was talking with a pastor whom I didn’t know very well, and to make conversation I asked him how many people volunteered in his parish.
“We don’t have any volunteers,” he responded.
My immediate thought was that, if he couldn’t get folks to volunteer, he was perhaps the most incompetent pastor that I had ever met. But he continued, “We have folks involved in ministry.”
The difference, he explained, was that when parishioners think of themselves as volunteers, they take the attitude that their attendance at an event, or the quality of their work, doesn’t matter, since “we’re only volunteers.”
On the other hand, if we can convince parishioners that they are involved in a ministry, that what they do is vital to the parish, they will assume a totally different attitude. In fact, through our baptism we have entered into the priesthood of the laity. We’re not volunteers in our parish life. We have a ministry.
Viewing parishioner contributions of time and talent as a ministry, not a volunteer activity, in turn puts a burden on parish leadership. If we expect parishioners to take their ministry seriously, our parish staff has to take it seriously. That means that we have to train parishioners who are active in a ministry, support them, and hold them accountable. Folks who consider themselves to be volunteers don’t necessarily expect to be trained, they probably have low expectations for the level of support they receive, and they certainly don’t expect to be held accountable.
The clearest way to emphasize stewardship of time and talent to parishioners is to move them from the volunteer mindset to the ministry mindset. This, of course, requires a level of competence among the parish staff, who need to be capable of providing training for, and support of, parishioners, and willing to hold parishioners accountable. TP
*This article is excerpted from Today’s Parish magazine (September 2004).
Charles Zech is a professor of economics at Villanova University and the editor of The Parish Management Handbook (Twenty-Third Publications).
