You’ve snapped it onto a clipboard and passed it around at your church board meeting, or your youth committee meeting, or your congregational gathering, at least three times … and it’s still empty. (Or, the few folks who signed up did so out of what could be called Grudgingly Resentful Responsibility Reflex, also known as GRRR.) 
Why are church volunteer sign-up sheets increasingly coming back blank? There are several possibilities.
1. People are tired, overcommitted, and feel that it’s past due for ‘the next generation’ to take their place. (The problem is, no one is standing in line behind you, ready to take that volunteer job when you put it down.)
2. What’s being asked for feels like a waste of time, or at least a mindless use of time, in a culture where time is increasingly as valuable as money. Specifically, why does the Finance Committee need to meet on the second Tuesday of each month at 7:00 pm? And why does it need to meet even when the business could be transacted with a short email? Why is it always at night … and why every month, instead of shaping the meeting schedule to the committee’s actual work schedule? Why is all this on automatic pilot, rather than subject to questioning and revision?
3. There is little motivation to volunteer just to keep the church running, in an age when people have shifted from supporting associations to seeking authenticity through individual experience. “Because we have to.” “Because we need to take care of it.” “Because this is expected.” The old arguments no longer work.
All these reasons, however, point to a larger, deeper reason – and to our motivation for writing this blog. The church is at its best when it is closest to its Gospel (and not necessarily programmatic) roots. From deep, attentive soul-tending (starting with the church board, perhaps!) can grow every other part of ministry that will feed a congregation and work for God’s peace and justice on earth.
If church feels like the rest of our lives, people of all ages will opt out. By contrast, vital churches of every size and location are discovering anew the gift and joy of doing less, doing things more simply, and going deeper to attend to the soul-needs of their congregation. Church needs to be about faith, about building community that breaks the isolation of this culture, about our call to be ambassadors of hope, love, justice, and joy. How can the recruitment of ushers, nursery workers, offering tellers, property clean-up day workers, etc., be connected to faith formation and community development? That is a generative question for church boards to tackle and explain before the next call for volunteers.
We call this little blog “Digging a Deeper Well” in homage to a (perhaps overstated but still metaphorically charming) practice developed by ranchers in Australia. Realizing that mending their fence lines in a vast expanse of ranch territory took too long, cost too much, and was never fully finished, ranchers instead dug the deepest, most nourishing well of cool water right in the middle of their property. Cattle, drawn to the well, didn’t want to stray, and hence, the need for endless fence-mending was rendered obsolete.
If you are heading into a new program year already exhausted from mending your congregational program fences, it’s probably time for a different approach, tied to the most soul-nourishing activities you can imagine. And it’s also probably time to imagine afresh the “everyone” you are recruiting, as Spoken Word poet Ariana Brown does so beautifully in the following poem.
For everyone who tried on the slipper before Cinderella
By Ariana Brown
For those making tea in the soft light of Saturday morning
in the peaceful kitchen
in the cool house
For those with shrunken hearts still trying to love
For those with large hearts trying to forget
For those with terrors they cannot name
upset stomachs and too tight pants
For those who get cut off in traffic
For those who spend all day making an elaborate meal
that turns out mediocre
For those who could not leave
even when they knew they had to
For those who never win the lottery
or become famous
For those getting groceries on Friday nights
There is something you know
about living
that you guard with your life
your one fragile, wonderful life
wonder, as in, awe,
as in, I had no idea I would be here now.
For those who make plans and those who don’t
For those driving across the country to a highway that knows them
For the routes we take in the dark, trusting
For the roads for the woods for the dead humming in prayer
For an old record and a strong sun
For teeth bared to the wind
a pulse in the chest
a body making love to itself
There is every reason to hate it here
There is a list of things making it bearable:
your friend’s shoulder Texas barbecue a new book
a loud song a strong song a highway that knows you
sweet tea an orange cat a helping hand
an unforgettable dinner
a laugh that escapes you and deflates you
like a pink balloon left soft with room
for goodness to take hold
For those who have looked in the mirror and begged
For those with weak knees and an attitude
For those called “sensitive” or “too much”
For those not called enough
For the times you needed and went without
For the photo of you as a child
quietly icing cupcakes your hair a crackling thunderstorm
Love is coming.
It’s on its way.
Look—
Reflecting on your experience with church sign-up sheets of late … which sign-up sheets, if any, have elicited a warm response, rather than a GRRR?
What lines in Brown’s poem leap out at you? Can you say why?
Which of the “those” that Brown names is someone in your congregation? (Which of them greets you in the mirror?)
What connects the people in Brown’s poem? (And what does Cinderella have to do with it?)
What connects the people in your community of faith? Where do the ties need to be strengthened or built anew? Where could fences be taken down?
Knowing your people as well as you do, what are the most soul-nourishing activities you can put forward right now? How do you put those forward in a format other than a sign-up sheet?
No Comments