Church A needed men to work with the boys in their missions education program. The church decided to share the need through an announcement during the worship service and to highlight the need in the church mailout.
Church B was starting new Sunday School classes and needed teachers. The nominating committee decided to pigeonhole selected individuals and ask them to lead the classes.
Church C needed people to work Sunday morning to help direct parking, to greet people as they arrived and to help guests get to the right places. Asking current workers to enlist one of their friends was the answer on which the church settled.
Will any of these approaches work? Will one work better than the other? Is there a “magic bullet” approach which churches should keep in mind when trying to enlist workers or increase involvement in church activities?
The answer is a clear “yes and no.”
After studying the responses of more than 7,000 participants from hundreds of churches, Scott Thumma and Warren Bird concluded in their book “The Other 80 Percent” that “options such as bulletin announcements, invitations from people they knew and invitations from people they did not know were unrelated to increased involvement.”
Yet these same authors reported their study indicated that 57 percent of those who increased church participation in the past two years did so because they accepted an office or other new responsibility in the church.
Thumma and Bird also reported stories of people who read about a service opportunity in the church bulletin and volunteered.
How these apparently contradicting conclusions fit together is a story of work by the church and spiritual growth by church members.
The study found a clear four-step process for enlisting people in service through the church. It begins with calling. Those who increased participation understood the church was providing them an opportunity by calling them to serve in some capacity. When they were asked, appointed or elected to a position, they were being asked to use their gifts and talents in the cause of the Lord. The volunteers equated this with a calling from God.
Motivation was a second important factor. What prompted these to respond to the call? For some it was due to the needs of their children. For others it was because they felt more positively toward the church. For still others it was because the church had helped them identify gifts and talents that could be used in the Lord’s service. Whatever the motivation, there had to be something to spur the called to action.
Ability to respond to the calling was a third important factor. Included here were such things as improved health and other changes that resulted in time being available for service. Without adequate time, the service opportunity could turn sour as people fail to fulfill the expectation they placed on themselves or that the church placed on them.
Additionally, helping new volunteers be successful in their new responsibility was important. Training and mentoring played important roles. Providing guidance and resources contributed to positive experiences. Providing support as volunteers tried new things also contributed. Without these the volunteers were simply set up to fail, a result that impacts church involvement as well as spiritual motivation.
Each of these steps relates to work by the church. Each is important, even necessary to increase church involvement, the study found. But at its core, increased involvement is “equated with a spiritual catalyst.”
The authors write of a man who said he read in the church bulletin about a service opportunity for several weeks: “I couldn’t ignore it any longer so I went and volunteered. … It was the Holy Spirit just drawing me.”
It goes without saying that the best volunteers are those for whom God’s Holy Spirit confirms the calling extended by the church. Without the spiritual motivation, all the enlistment programs of the church will fail.
Those who increased their participation in service through the church consistently included a spiritual factor in their stories. So much was this the case that Thumma and Bird concluded, “Spiritual fulfillment directly correlates with greater involvement in the congregation. … Greater involvement helps their sense of spiritual growth. Likewise a sense of spiritual growth increases participation.”
Unfortunately there is no clear definition of what people mean when they use terms like “spiritual growth” or “spiritual motivation.” People participate in church for different reasons. People expect different things out of their church experiences. That is why there is no magic bullet for increasing church participation even though there is a clear outline of steps to be used in enlisting volunteers.
Some people want to help members deepen their personal relationship with God. Others want to concentrate on sharing the gospel with the unchurched. Some want to concentrate on worship. Others want to care for the hungry and hurting in the community. Some want to focus on global missions. Others want to promote fellowship opportunities among members. The possibilities go on and on.
Concentrating on one emphasis will satisfy some in the church but not all. It will provide spiritual motivation for some but not others.
The authors suggest a key to increasing participation in the church may be to help people do more of whatever has been providing their spiritual fulfillment in the church up to that time. Helping people serve God through the church is not a case of forcing people into a predetermined mold. It is a task of helping them become the persons God made them to be — dedicated to serving Him.
The church has a role to play in helping increase members’ participation in the church. If the church’s role is relied on solely, it can quickly degenerate into manipulation based on pressure and guilt. But only waiting for spiritual motivation to bring volunteers forward can result in a lack of volunteers or volunteers serving in the wrong places. The church helps people recognize and develop their gifts and talents. And just as the call to salvation is often heard through the church, so is the call to service.
When the church is busy doing all it can to increase participation through the church and the commitment to spiritual motivation is emphasized, then the church should experience an increase in volunteers and lay involvement should grow.
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