by Mark Barnes
CHAPTER FIVE - VOLUNTEERS
If you have sufficient funds, pay people for all your church duties right from the start. Society has changed "… immensely … in recent decades …" (Frank, 7-8; Russell, 76-77) and I have noticed a societal shift where many people are reluctant to volunteer.169 People don’t seem to respect volunteers as they used to, and will pick on volunteers, even when they know the volunteer is not getting paid directly or indirectly. My first volunteer duty was as the treasurer of the Burnie Police Station Social Club in about 1991 (Tasmania). All I had to do was keep the coin operated drink machine filled with drinks; stock the fridge with milk, regularly count the money and pay the bills. There wasn’t much to it. BUT, no matter what flavors of soda I put in the machine I regularly had police officers whining and complaining that they wanted a different kind of flavor in the machine. And some of them made a big deal out of it. I couldn’t believe it, but I was starting to learn.
When I was a sergeant prosecutor around the year 2008, the police station cleaner came to me and explained that his wife was a volunteer secretary of a social club. He asked my advice on what his wife should do because some members were making veiled hints that his wife was doing something wrong with social club money. I knew the cleaner very well, and I was almost one hundred percent sure he would not seek my advice if there was even a hint of truth in the allegations. I told him to tell his wife to quit that social club immediately because I had noticed a trend over that previous decade of people throwing mud at volunteers for any old reason.
Be careful if you need to use people for VOLUNTEER duties in your church. This issue has the highest likelihood of backfiring or causing problems. If you use volunteers, there will be at least one who will expect a reward or influence in church decisions, and if they don’t get what they want, they will make your life hell. Let’s say you use a volunteer for administrative duties. If that person turns out to be unsuitable after a couple of months, and you are in a position to pay someone for the position, the volunteer will most likely want the position, and if you give the paid position to someone else, look out: you will have your own ‘fourth of July’ right in your face. If possible, do not use volunteers, apart from my example of using two or three volunteers to count the collection during the church service.
The only people you should use are paid, proven Christians. It takes at least a year to know if a Christian is either a pretender or half-Christian, or a reliable, mature, Spirit-filled Christian. It is natural to want to use willing volunteers when you start your church so that you can expand as quickly as possible. Even if you don’t want to use volunteers, others around you may get caught up in the excitement and you are all air-headed and say ‘Yes’. Oh, oh: you better hope that person continues to do the job to your liking, because they probably won’t walk away quietly even if you ask them very nicely. Don’t allow yourself to become air-headed or over-excited. If you are a bit of an air-head like me, always try to sleep on decisions (Campbell-Reed and Scharen; Haire).
For example, if a highly competent and mature Christian friend of yours pleads with you to be a volunteer, tell them that you want to sleep on it. Remember, Jesus told us to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matt 10:16). “… A serpent is wise, with keen eyesight and is quick to learn. A dove is innocent, meek and gentle. Jesus saw a necessity in this balancing act because, as He put it, He was sending them out ‘like sheep among wolves’ …”170 So what is “wisdom”? A Microsoft Word synonym check on ‘wisdom’ includes; understanding; knowledge; insight; perception; intelligence … One Christian Web Site says: “… knowledge is what is gathered over time through study of Scripture. It can be said that wisdom, in turn, acts properly upon that knowledge. Wisdom is the fitting application of that knowledge. Knowledge understands the light has turned red; wisdom applies the brakes …”171
Therefore God wants you to be like a police detective. Detectives start off as raw recruits walking the beat who occasionally fall for some of the lies and tricks people come up with. But they learn from practice, practice, practice, and training (Heb 5:14 AMP). It takes several years to become a really good detective. It is the same with Christianity. As I have said earlier, servant leadership is the type of leadership I am aiming for and Echols says that "… Servant-leaders are functionally superior because they are closer to the ground: they hear things, see things, know things, and their intuitive insight is exceptional. Because of this they are dependable and trusted …" (Echols, Transformational / Servant Leadership …, 104; Horsthuis, 95). It takes years to develop exceptional Christian intuitive insight (Bell, Learning, Changing, and Doing …, 105).
A good way of ensuring you make wise decisions is to wait at least twenty-four hours for non-urgent decisions. You will keep yourself and others under better control that way. When I was a police prosecutor I would sometimes get quite blunt in my e-mails to police officers who pushed me to the limit. But, unless I had to send the e-mail urgently, I would not send it until I had slept on it (Campbell-Reed and Scharen). I am so pleased I did, because after sleeping on many of them, I know that I would have started World War ‘Z’ if I had sent them immediately. With a good sleep under my belt I was often surprised about how sarcastic my draft email was. Then, I would restructure the email to be professional: but to the point (Ascough, 33-34). Please be very careful about how you send emails, text messages etc. Do not send them when you are emotional.
If you can’t afford a big payroll at the beginning, only expand your church when you can afford to pay people. Even if someone volunteers to start a ministry for you, such as a youth group, and they don’t want to be paid, I still wouldn’t do it. Wait until you can afford to pay someone. Please don’t seek out volunteers except counting the money collection. One of the churches I attended would seek volunteers for various ministries. I remember attending a Bible study group through this church. It was held at the home of a senior member of the church. I am not quite sure, but he had either been volunteered by the church, or had volunteered himself to be in charge of a ministry. Several times throughout the months of that Bible study, he would tell us how he didn’t want to do that other ministry anymore and that he would be stepping down from the ministry at some point. And yet no one had even asked him about it.
There is nothing wrong with him feeling this way, but how dare a senior member of a church whine and moan to other people about any church matter, especially at a Bible study group officially connected to that church. The minute that senior member wanted out of his ministry he should have gone to the pastor or a leader and advised them that he wanted to quit. The pastor should then take that person out of that ministry immediately. If that means the ministry has to be closed, then so be it. This type of behavior is an insult to Christ. Look at Christ’s letters to the seven churches in Asia (Revelation Chapters 2 and 3). He praised them for fantastic strong points, but still had some criticism for them.172 Remember, the Apostle Paul spent THREE YEARS building up the church at Ephesus, (Acts 20:31) and TAS believes Ephesus had been operating for many years by the time Christ wrote his letter. Christ expects an ever-increasing rate of perfection in his churches.173
TAS says “… the Lord had given much to the church and to the churches. They had received a lot through His apostles, through His servants. They had a great wealth of spiritual inheritance. And when the Lord has done anything like that, at any time in history, it is as though at given points He comes back and says, ‘Now, what about it? What about it? I have given, I have revealed, I have made known. I have entreated, I have implored, I have besought. I have exhorted, I have warned … now the time has come when some reckoning has to be made and an answer given’ …” (TAS, The Burning Fire of the Spirit, esp. 9 and 24; 1 Thess 3:2-5 AMP; 2 Tim 4:2; Titus 2:15; 1 Thess 4:1-2, 6 & 5:11-14; 2 Thess 3:14-15 AMP).
Therefore, to be totally respectful towards the massive sacrifice Jesus made on the Cross, you better take your church structure seriously (TAS, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 49-50) and do not
give the Devil even one slight crack he can prise open as wide as the Grand Canyon.174 The Devil checked out Jesus, but could not find any moral cracks in His character; therefore Jesus was able to say "… The prince of this world cometh and he hath nothing in me (Jn 14:30) …"175 If you try to close up a ‘spiritual’ crack, you will find how stressful it is (Miller-McLemore).