Servants verses Local Church Volunteers

When it comes to mission, churches tend to think primarily in terms of volunteers, i.e. “we need volunteers to fix dinner at the Rescue Mission this month.” While Parachurch organizations are always looking for volunteers as well, they often attract people who are compelled, i.e. the servants. Out of the ten people who volunteer to fix dinner at the Rescue Mission one or two go to the mission on a regular basis because they feel that God has called them to minister to the homeless. I have a friend I met with recently who feels called and he and his wife go because they want to be there, God has called them to this ministry, and they are compelled.

When a church commits to “a night at the Rescue Mission,” it is required to recruit volunteers. So the church’s night at the Rescue Mission is a “church thing” and is built on volunteers. But when some of the church’s people pursue their commitment to Rescue Mission with passion and get involved on nights other than their church’s night to fix dinner, we think of them as doing the Rescue Mission’s ministry.

Unfortunately, churches take ownership of projects that need volunteers, but they rarely take ownership of the ongoing community ministries of its servants. As a result the church is stuck with the weary job of recruiting volunteers and it misses out on celebrating the passion that only servants can create. Once people actually want to pursue a community ministry, their church doesn’t know how to “claim” them or to celebrate their ministry with them. The challenge is to change our thinking about those who pursue ministry at the Rescue Mission as servants. We have to figure out how to claim and celebrate their ministries first, as ministries of our church, and, secondarily, as a ministry of the Rescue Mission.

To reclaim a church’s “Parachurch” servants by recognizing them as the Church’s servants, churches will have to create a “new dimension of church recognized ministry.”