“It is hard!”
Those words take on some of the anguished dimensions of our Lord’s “It is finished!” when spoken by a volunteer-seeking pastor. Recruitment is hard—hard enough to make us feel like giving up the ghost sometimes.
The reasons why it is hard have to do with three tensions.
Tension No.1: Is This Church or Kiwanis?
From a human standpoint, the church is a volunteer organization. The rules and dynamics that apply to Girl Scouts and Kiwanis apply here, plus a few others. We have recruiters and recruitees—those who sell the purposes and needs of the organization, and those who listen to the sales pitch. We outline specific tasks and give strokes to those who volunteer their precious time to work. Words and letters of appreciation are essential, or volunteers begin to feel used and unappreciated. After all, they chose to give of their time to help out the church.
But what about God’s standpoint? The church is his kingdom. Volunteer organizations are democracies in which the governed give their consent to the governors, and the consent can be withdrawn whenever the masses wish. Not so in a kingdom. There the governor gives his consent to the governed. A king doesn’t recruit; he decrees.
And strokes? Letters of commendation? These are not totally out of place, but neither are they of great importance. With a king and his subjects, it is more like what Jesus said in a parable: “When you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’ ” (Luke 17:10, RSV). Slaves and subjects do not give to their Lord. They simply take their hands off what was his in the first place.
In my first contact with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, I was told that an underlying assumption of that ministry was that every Christian has a right to expect obedience to God from every other Christian. Hence, when staff people went on campus to introduce themselves to incoming Christian freshmen, they were unapologetic in their approach. “So you’re a Christian? Wonderful! Now here’s what you can do on this campus to grow in your faith and tell the Good News to others.” The person was addressed not as a potential volunteer but as another person who had sworn allegiance to the King. If anyone was to be apologetic, it would be the recalcitrant student!
One of our great problems is that while the church today functions like a democracy (even in the Episcopal and Roman Catholic traditions), it is really a theocracy. Sam Shoemaker illustrated something of this fact with the story of a near-sighted professor who was an expert in entomology. His office walls were covered with pinned and framed insects. One day his students decided to play a practical joke. They took the body of one bug, the legs of another, and the head of yet another and glued them all together.
The specimen was brought to the professor for identification. “What kind of bug is this?” they asked.
The professor eyed the bug closely and replied, “Gentlemen, this is a humbug!”
Shoemaker drew the analogy to a person whose heart belongs to King Jesus, but whose head is run by the world and hands are run by the devil. The church as a volunteer organization is yet another kind of humbug. This pernicious mixture of democracy/voluntaryism with the kingdom of God has diluted our Lord’s call to commitment. And, if I may mix my metaphors, it has produced hybrid Christians. On the one hand they call themselves slaves of Jesus Christ, and on the other they regard themselves as volunteers who serve the church if they so choose.
Tension No. 2: Am I a Prophet or a Persuader?
This first confusion leads to a second: the role of the pastor. When Alexis de Tocqueville came to America, he was taken aback to discover that everywhere “you meet with a politician where you expected to find a priest.” In a culture where churchgoers see themselves as selecting the leadership, it is only natural that the leaders fall into the mode of persuasion. Consent must be requested, elicited, persuaded from the people. That, in large part, is the role of the politician and the advertising executive.
The vending, huckstering, and peddling we see on the religion page of every Saturday newspaper are the logical consequences of this syllogism. Voluntaryism in the kingdom cannot help but produce persuaders and politicians where there should be prophets and proclaimers. I and just about every other pastor I know resent the recruitment end of our task. It always seems to carry the notion that we must convince people who ought to need no convincing to do a job that is clearly part of what it means to be what they claim to be.
What to do about all of this? Preach. Teach. Pray that the church will be what it ought to be. Mean what you say. Last year we could not get anyone to volunteer to teach Sunday school. Nearly 25 percent of our attenders on Sunday are under the age of twelve. At the baptism and dedication of infants, we Presbyterians always stand and promise together to do everything in our power to nurture the faith of the children God has given us. Those three facts: the percentage of our congregation who needed teaching in the Sunday school, the promises every member makes several times a year to nurture the faith of our children, and the lack of people to volunteer to do just that, made me mad. I told my congregation that unless there were sufficient volunteers by the next Sunday, I would not be in the pulpit that day but rather in the Sunday school teaching my children about Jesus. I meant what I said. They knew it, and we had the teachers we needed before the week was over.
I don’t recommend that you do that, too. And I’m not sure I should have. After I said it, I shuddered inside to think, what if they don’t care to have me in the pulpit? But if you mean what you say, your people will get the message.
Tension No. 3: Shall We Work or Soothe?
Unlike the first two, I do not want to resolve this tension. It is the pull between the church’s task and the church’s nurture. The church has a job to do in the world and within its own walls. The people who are appointed to carry out this mission are themselves also the mission. The very people who are called to care and minister and intercede are in need of care and ministry and intercession. Unlike an army, where the feelings and personal needs of the soldiers are relatively unimportant, the church is a place where these things are crucial. But, as we all know, it is extremely difficult to lead a charge while binding up the wounds of the people who are charging.
That tension is just part of the turf. The Good Shepherd both leads the sheep and lays down his life for the sheep. To try to resolve the tension in favor of task is to invite burnout in the congregation. We must be continually nurturing those who have stepped forth to answer the call of Christ. Likewise, to resolve the tension in favor of nurture is to become a stagnant, narcissistic club instead of a church. We care for the souls of our people not only for their own sakes but also for the sake of the world they are called to go out and serve.
As much as is possible, I believe the twin assignments of nurture and mission should be done side by side. Our elders spend a lot of time together in fellowship. Sometimes when we meet, we feel the pressure to skip an extended time of conversation and prayer, and get on with the “business” before us. It is then that we must be reminded that prayer and personal conversations are also the “business” of the church.
Whenever I think of my struggles over the issue of volunteers in the church, I remember a line from a Kenny Rogers song. He sings about the music man and what a good singer and powerful man he is. “But you surround yourself with people who demand so little of you,” he adds sadly. Once we name the name of Jesus, we cease to be volunteers in the kingdom. We become humble slaves. It is my desire that the church be a place where we surround ourselves with people who will demand much of us and themselves, as together we serve the One who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
