Just out of seminary, my concept of ministry wasn’t, I suspect, all that unusual. Real ministry, I believed, happens in the pulpit, in the prayer meeting, on the doorstep of the unconverted. Real ministry is overflowing sanctuaries, published books, and “a presence” in the city. Real ministry requires imaginative and bold leadership. Real ministry is dynamic, energetic, and vital.
And then there is committee work-not exactly ministry, but sort of. After all, someone has to assign Communion servers, delegate the pulling of weeds, budget for crayons and glue, and decide who will bring hot dogs to the all-church picnic.
As for me and my ministry, however, I will serve in greater courts. I will make a name for myself . . . er, I mean, for our church . . . I mean, for the Lord. Yes, for the Lord.
Escaping committees
One of my first ministry goals, then, was to escape committee meetings, not an easy task upon first arriving at a church. Lay people, who spend a lot of time in committees, have an odd notion that what they do is important to the church. They call a pastor, in fact, to help them do their important work better. So I couldn’t let them know how I really felt.
But I could eagerly tell them I affirmed the ministry of the laity (meaning I wanted to get on to more significant things), I trusted them to do their work (meaning anybody could do that work), and I needed to be concerned about the big picture (meaning their job was to worry about petty details). For some reason they remained unconvinced and kept insisting that I be at their meetings.
So I tried a new tack. I pointed out that I couldn’t spend so many evenings away from my family. Surely ministry shouldn’t mean widowing one’s wife and abandoning one’s children. Expressed with subtle self-pity, it worked. They agreed to schedule all committee meetings on Monday or Tuesday nights to free the rest of my weeknights for my family-a partial victory.
And it prepared the way for my ultimate victory. Since two evenings a week away from my hearth was the new standard, I pressed home a new argument: I needed to call on people, and most of them worked in the daytime. Which was more important, calling or committees? At that, they waved the white flag, albeit unenthusiastically. I attended few committee meetings after that.
Ten years out of seminary, I’m the one waving the white flag.
I’ve discovered real ministry happens in committees as well as outside them. No, I’m not brain dead. I still acknowledge that committees can be dull and overly concerned with the minuscule. But I’ve come to see how vital they are for our entire ministry-and not only for those necessary details.
Here’s how I believe my involvement in committee work helps the ministry of our church.
Maintaining ministry momentum
When I don’t attend committees, decision making, which usually proceeds at the pace of the proverbial turtle, slows to the pace of a pet rock.
That’s because committees hesitate to plan programs, raise money, or take action until they check with the pastor. The quickest way to see if April 13 can be scheduled as a work day is to ask the person who knows the church calendar best: the pastor. Furthermore, most congregations hesitate to proceed with new ideas if their pastor has some moral or administrative objection, which I might if April 13 were Good Friday. We can weigh the desirability of such attitudes, but for most churches, especially small to medium ones, the pastor is integral to most decisions.
Consequently, when I don’t attend committees, every decision is slowed by a month. When every new idea must plod through this tortuous process, we shut off committee spontaneity and enthusiasm. Building momentum is impossible.
Affirming the laity
Again, we may question the theology of this attitude, but it prevails: When a pastor attends a church function, it raises the status of the function, the morale of the leaders, and often the attendance.
Our choir had been struggling to get eight to ten members out to Thursday rehearsals. When one of the two tenors was confined to bed for two months, I offered my voice box to our discouraged choir director. I intended only to beef up the tenor section. But as I regularly attended rehearsals, I noticed choir members did so more regularly themselves. Now, it’s unusual not to have a full choir at rehearsal.
I’ve also seen that phenomenon at work in committees. Even if a committee doesn’t need my input, many nights I attend simply to make a statement with my presence: This committee’s work is important.
Often, however, I go one step further. Periodically a committee ought to hear how I appreciate their regular sacrifice of nights at home, and how I admired their recent teacher workshop or whatever. Praise from the pulpit is important, but sometimes a brief expression of appreciation in a more intimate setting means more to the members.
Energizing the laity
Another simple but often unacknowledged fact of church life is this: The majority of committee chairpersons are not as creative or energetic as we might wish. Frankly, how could they be?
Most of our members work in the office or garage or in the home chasing three preschoolers. Some do all three! In addition, many take care of aging parents, or raise money for UNICEF, or sit on the local Young Life committee. Some retired members are so busy they wonder when they used to find time for work. On top of all that, some even find space in their schedules to give to church.
These faithful have never been seminary trained. They don’t get a paid study leave to attend church growth conferences. They seldom have time to read books on Christian ministry. It’s utopian, then, to expect the majority of the chairpersons to generate creative ideas and to muster the drive to push their ideas through the committee.
That’s not to deny the imaginative and bold leadership many chairpersons exhibit. But let’s face it: such leaders aren’t the norm. Most of the faithful need, and frankly want, inspiration and leadership from the pastor.
Attending committee meetings to offer my ideas and encourage bigger ideas can turn a church’s twenty-fifth anniversary after-church reception into a two-day celebration, and a youth car wash to raise $250 into a softball marathon that raises $2,500 for world hunger.
I can hardly take full credit for such examples-as my members will be quick to remind me. But as a general rule, bigger and better things are planned when I attend committee meetings.
Enhancing pastoral care
Committee meetings are not merely places where business gets dispatched; they’re also centers of Christian warmth. This is especially true of a small church.
I attended a workshop on managing the monthly meeting of Session (our board of elders). Suggestions included agreeing on agenda items, docketing items, sticking to the docket, and limiting extraneous discussion. In a flash I realized a Session meeting need not take more than two hours! My type-A personality was flushed with excitement as I left the workshop, silently vowing to implement the procedures at my next Session meeting.
In retrospect, I’m surprised my Session put up with such procedures for as long as they did. By the middle of the second meeting, they’d had enough. “Why do we have to be so scheduled, so businesslike?” complained one elder. “It makes the meeting feel so stiff that we can’t relax. I feel like I’m forbidden to talk about anything but business. What happened to the church family?”
In short, along with business they wanted a little fellowship. I had assumed they wanted the agenda kept to two hours. It turns out they don’t care if the meetings run past midnight-if they can do something more than business, such as share their lives with one another. Not that they don’t still complain about Session meetings’ length, but I now understand the nature of the complaint.
That’s a long way of saying that committees become for me a time to mingle with my parishioners, to talk about the weather, the kids, the construction of the new Hyatt Regency. There’s nothing earth shattering about that, but as most of us have discovered, such conversation is vital to building trust.
When I don’t attend, I miss out, and my relationship with my parishioners suffers.
Strengthening the larger ministry
Let me add a final reason I’m back to committees. Working with a committee helps not only that committee but other committees as well. Attending the worship committee, I can remind the members about the Bible seminar the Christian education committee will offer Saturday. Sure, they’ve heard about it in the newsletter and the weekly bulletin. But my mentioning it in an intimate setting is no small adjunct to other publicity.
Furthermore, one committee becomes a place to receive feedback on some other committee’s project or experiment. I ask the mission action committee what they thought of the Holy Week services, and the worship committee what they got out of the recent all-church picnic. The responses of people not wrapped up in making an event happen offer a valuable perspective.
So, as you can see, I’m a reconverted committeeman. Not every committee meeting needs my presence. But many do. And so I go.
It’s certainly not the only important work of the church. After all, churches do not live by committees alone. But then again, I’ve never seen one that could live without them, because that’s where some real ministry takes place.
– Mark J. Galli
Grace Presbyterian Church
Sacramento, California
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
