We all shift into high gear when we’re praised for what we’re already doing well.
—Ruth Senter
You’ve seen the man.
Amid his regalia of red, white, and blue, he points a bony finger directly into your line of vision, shatters your complacency with his piercing stare, and shouts his message without saying a word: “Uncle Sam Needs You.”
Compelling figure that he is, his lavish guarantees of seeing the world, on-the-job training, and career security do not move more than a handful of people to cross his threshold and sign on the dotted line. Lack of patriotism? Uninformed about the needs? Faulty recruitment? Who knows? But somehow, despite his panorama of persuasion, Uncle Sam often fails to recruit.
The church and Uncle Sam face a common dilemma—enlisting recruits. Although there are any number of reasons why Uncle Sam has to work hard at it, one cannot help but ask why the church, of all places, suffers from an acute case of manpower anemia.
Recruitment Puzzle
Why is it that recruitment is often listed as the number-one source of frustration for the Christian education director? Why do many leaders feel that finding enough people to staff their programs is a task as difficult as scaling Mount Everest? Why are members reluctant to join the service ranks; or, once they do join, why the fatalities along the way? What about Christ’s call to service? Is it not clear? Or the sense of mission—does it not inspire sacrificial commitment to a program?
Certainly the problem can’t be traced to a shortage of recruitment tools. We have as many how-to-do-it plans as there are flies at a summer picnic. Recruitment manuals abound—written by Christian educators who theorize, systematize, and publicize fresh approaches to this age-old problem. Check the bookshelves of any local C.E. director and you will find at least a dozen books on recruitment.
Know-how is not the bottleneck.
Neither is our theological framework. The structure for the discovery and use of spiritual gifts within the church is solid. Spiritual-gift inventories uncover rich deposits—stockpiles of resources to feed recruitment programs. But despite all the gold we have discovered in the spiritual gift mine, churches are still volunteer-poor.
We have even developed several very fine recruitment procedures. We issue consistent, clear appeals that prod our membership toward the volunteer ranks. Sermons abound on stewardship. Human Resource Surveys canvass the membership twice a year. We call for signatures during a yearly time-and-talent faith-promise campaign. Recruitment committees follow up the leads. Lunch at the Holiday Inn comes compliments of the Christian education director and the church budget. We have spared neither energy nor funds on our enlistment programs.
Why then do church leaders have to work so hard at uncorking bottled-up resources?
Possibly the missing piece in the recruitment puzzle is the leaders’ lack of understanding of motivational factors, those inner drives and needs that move people to action.
How do you discover what motivates a potential recruit? How do you capitalize on a person’s motivation once you discover it? How do you create conditions that will continue to keep the fires fueled? Is it possible to create niches of service that will serve the needs of both the organization and the individual?
The New Motivations
Rick was a likely candidate to lead the teen choir. His application for church membership displayed impressive credentials: a master’s degree in composition, a music teacher in a public school system. “Directing musical groups” was one of the things he listed under “like to do most.” As a new arrival in the community, he saw the church not only as an opportunity for spiritual enlargement but also as a launching pad for fresh relationships.
Rick was not a reluctant recruit. He prayerfully considered his contribution to the church as he checked “music” on the Human Resource Survey. When the youth director took him to lunch and described the need for a teen choir, Rick agreed that his past experiences pointed him toward directing the teen choir. He said yes, planned his strategy, and went to work.
As time passed, however, a discomfiting fog settled over Rick’s commitment to his volunteer job. He couldn’t define his feelings, nor could he find a basis for them. The choir had come a long way. He was pleased with most of their performances and suspected that the church staff was impressed with his work. Yet, even though he enjoyed the kids, they were of another time and place. His own high school days seemed long ago and far away. He felt more and more isolated and lonely. Those fresh relationships that he had envisioned with peers never materialized. He felt compelled to do his job well, but it left him little time and energy for other pursuits in the church.
Rick didn’t quit his job with the teen choir—he was too conscientious for that. When he considered writing a letter to the youth director telling of his need to develop relationships with church people his own age, he felt selfish and guilty. His need for companionship seemed too trivial. No crises were unsettling his life, so he didn’t schedule a session with the pastor. Since no one ever asked, he never bothered to unload his feelings.
After a year and a half, Rick simply left the church. “Maybe at the next place I can find room to serve and still get to know people my own age,” he wrote his mother when he told her about his change in churches.
A professional church tramp? Uncommitted? Maybe. But the point is, no one asked about needs—his needs. The need for a director for the teen choir was the major consideration. Had someone thought of asking, “What rewards do you hope to receive from serving the church?” or even, “What do you fear the most about directing the teen choir?” Rick’s story might have had a different ending.
Questions about motivation must be asked. Industry has perceived the problem. Psychologists and researchers have also made some significant observations that the Christian educator would do well to consider in his thoughts and plans for recruitment.
In a discussion on “The New Job Values” (Psychology Today, May 1978), Daniel Yankelovich, research professor of psychology at New York University, links the issues of motivation to job incentives. “Millions today find job incentives so unappealing that they no longer are motivated to work hard. As a result, they withdraw emotional involvement.” Yankelovich blames this withdrawal on the fact that the “old incentive system has failed to catch up with new motivations.” The incentives of the ’50s and ’60s—money, status, rewards, fringe benefits—no longer work.
According to Yankelovich and other dissectors of trends, America is turning inward. She has shifted her value system from external rewards to an internal sense of fulfillment. Self-actualization motivates people today—not money. The philosophy of the new breed of workers is, “I am more than my role.” Yankelovich issues his mandate: “Revamp incentives to fall in line with new motivations.”
What are the new motivations? Psychology Today researchers Patricia Penwick and Edward Lawler decided to find out. From the 28,000 readers of the magazine who responded to their questionnaire about job values, most stated that external rewards—money and status—were not motivational, but psychological satisfactions were personal growth, a sense that they are worthwhile, and a feeling of accomplishment. Abraham Maslow coined the phrase self-actualization—a need to become all that one has the potential of becoming. According to Maslow, self-actualization ranks as the highest category of needs as well as the category that can be most easily left unfulfilled.
Psychological fulfillment—the new motivation?
Self-Actualization Breakdown
So what should the church be doing about it? One possibility is to stuff it into a box marked “self-centeredness” and store it on a shelf along with all the other unusable secular philosophies. For the Christian, motivation to serve comes from the Holy Spirit, not from some slick psychologist who understands people well enough to con them into doing what he wants them to do. Motivational psychology, we might think, smacks of manipulation; and when church leaders try to move people, are they not counterfeiting the Holy Spirit? Playing God is a dangerous game.
The warning is valid. If the success of a church’s volunteer program depends solely on the psychological fulfillment of its workers and the ability of its leadership to be people-movers, it will fail. If the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit is not a primary consideration in the recruitment and maintenance of volunteer staff, the church might as well be General Motors.
However, recruiting volunteers without looking at the relevant psychological principles is very much like driving a car without having the faintest idea what’s under the hood. Sooner or later there will be breakdowns we won’t know how to handle.
Although he had seminary training, was ordained, and was a theoretician par excellence, when it came to education in the church, Joe knew little about personnel breakdowns. I worked for Joe once. He was a master at his job; he ran committee meetings with the precision of a commanding officer—timed agendas, goals, objectives, evaluations, implementation. He moved us through massive doses of church-school business painlessly. Order and efficiency distinguished his team. We all knew where we’d been, where we were going, and how we were going to get there.
What we didn’t know was anything about Joe. He seemed as cold and distant as the moon. We saw him in action; we respected his know-how; but that’s as far as it went. Joe knew about us—Primary II, Table 3, eleven o’clock hour; piano player; storyteller; scriptwriter; former children’s club leader; can type sixty words a minute. What more did you need to know about your volunteers to run an efficient church-school program?
Joe conversed well with his workers as long as the discussion had to do with business. But his “Hi, how’s it going?” never quite did the trick when it came to personal matters. Joe never asked about our goals, dreams, hopes, fears, past successes or failures, families, or feelings toward our church job.
Interestingly, Joe’s programs always had “Vacancy” signs over them. Commitment to Joe’s team was short-lived. Some of us lasted twelve months; others faded sooner. What Joe never understood was that it takes more than technical efficiency to outfit a team; more than a perfect match between task and spiritual gift to keep job satisfaction at a high level; and more than clearly defined goals and objectives to keep workers motivated. Even though he was a genius at outer dynamics, Joe never understood the dynamics at work inside of people. As a result, his team kept falling apart.
Church leadership cannot ignore the psychological dynamics that move people and keep them committed. How, then, can church leadership provide a climate where workers’ needs for self-actualization are met, while their needs to donate time and work to the church are met also? Can it be done?
People Over Programs
Don is proof that it can be done. No one knows for sure what it is that keeps people volunteering year after year to work under Don’s leadership. In fact, they hardly think twice about signing on the dotted line when opportunities for reenlistment come around. Working on Don’s Christian education staff is a natural, happy way to serve. Dropouts are few and far between.
What is Don’s formula? Personality? Friendly persuasiveness? Talent? Skill? Maybe a little of each. But one fact about Don you can’t miss is that he appears to be far more interested in people than he is in programs—in who people are rather than in what they do.
I’ve observed Don firsthand from time to time; I’ve talked with people who work for him. One of the things we see Don doing extremely well is making his workers feel valuable. Staff members frequently get handwritten notes from Don on brown monogrammed stationery: “Your story on Moses for the Junior Sunday school department was topnotch—smooth delivery, insightful commentary, and excellent mastery of the material. Congratulations.” One note of appreciation like that keeps the engines fueled for a long time. At the end of each church year, Don rents a banquet room in a downtown Holiday Inn, and over candlelight and prime rib he says “thank you” to the people on his staff who make the ministry go. The spotlight falls not on the professional platform people but on the teacher who Sunday after Sunday teaches junior boys in the corner classroom right next to the furnace.
We all shift into high gear when we’re praised for what we’re already doing well. Apparently Don understands that dynamic about people, and that’s one clue as to why his workers keep returning.
There are other clues as well.
It was Sunday morning—right at the time when a Christian education director is supposed to be twenty-five places at once. Don probably had twice that many things on his mind. But three young mothers had something on their minds too—the deplorable condition of the toddler nursery where their children spent Sunday mornings. These mothers stopped Don in the hallway to talk.
Rule number one: Stop walking, turn off the eight-track running full speed in your mind, look the other person directly in the eyes, and listen. Rule number two: Determine the other person’s real needs. Rule number three: If criticism is involved, let the other person be a part of your solution. Don did all three. At the end of a very short conversation, Don had breakfast scheduled with the three mothers.
By the end of the breakfast meeting, the four had charted a course of action for the nursery dilemma: an all-expense-paid trip for the concerned mothers to two churches in towns where Don knew successful nursery programs were being run. The investigative team brought back pencil sketches for room designs, lists of equipment needs, ideas for toddler curriculum, and even possibilities for staff.
The nursery renovation plan was off and running. No one had to motivate mothers already energized by a need. An alert leader listened, ferreted out feelings, provided support and resources, and made the mothers part of the solution. Experts in the field of toddler nurseries? Don has convinced them that they are.
Stop by the toddler nursery in churches like Don’s on Sunday mornings and you will find efficient, enthusiastic workers who are giving every ounce of extra energy to the program they helped to create.
Why do workers, whether in the church or in industry, withhold emotional involvement from their jobs? Because, says Daniel Yankelovich, we no longer provide the incentives that motivate people—values and a sense of personal worth.
For those of us who claim allegiance to the Lord who specializes in people, there is no excuse for us not to specialize in people. When all our sophisticated recruitment programs are said and done, we are left with a simple example—the carpenter from Nazareth who saw past the exteriors of people and skillfully and gently moved them toward commitment.
Copyright © 1997
