“Lord, is having a staff a blessing? Or is it just a giant albatross hanging around my neck? What should I do? Should I fire them all?”
In the early 70s, I sat alone one night in a diner in East Orange, New Jersey, and prayed those silent but seeking questions. The staff of our combined church/community center had grown from three to twelve in just over two years, and I was now responsible for a whole new area of ministry- motivating and managing a staff.
While it seemed that God needed all of these people for our ministry, they were a drain on me-a drain on my time, on my emotions, and on my life. I didn’t feel qualified to be responsible for so many lives. Besides, my personal ministry seemed to be suffering in direct proportion to the amount of time I was spending in “caretaking” the staff members.
Gary, for example, was a good coordinator, a compassionate assistant pastor, and a wise counselor beyond his years. However, among other momentum-stopping irritations, he usually picked the time right after the Sunday morning services to involve me in complex questions about the policies and procedures of the church. It was the very moment when I needed to be giving my attention to members of the congregation I hadn’t seen during the week. It seemed to me, in light of Gary’s obvious abilities, that he should help me to reach out to individual members of the church, rather than “bug me” about philosophical and organizational matters at an inappropriate time.
God answered my prayer. I found myself being introduced to pastors of larger churches who faced similar problems and were interested in helping me. Management books jumped out at me as I stood in front of bookstores. Though I viewed certain motivational and management techniques with a disdainful eye, I began an earnest search for principles that were consistent with the Scripture.
Incidentally, the sensation of being overwhelmed is one of Satan’s favorite ploys to obscure the fact that we are effectively ministering. In my opinion, the old adage “Common sense isn’t so common” doesn’t apply to the vast majority of Christian leaders. But many of us approach the increasing complexities of ministry with feelings of inadequacy. We’ve succumbed to a cultural and educational philosophy which teaches that only the highly trained specialist can deal with complicated problems.
For example, my own sense of being overwhelmed prevented me from grasping something vital-that our intense desire to bring Jesus Christ to the people at the bottom rung of society’s ladder was a highly focused ministry concept around which God had gathered a very capable staff. Their commitment to this concept motivated them to be deeply involved, even though it often required that they make extreme personal and financial sacrifices. I later learned that one of the most powerful motivational factors in any multiple-staff ministry is unified commitment to the same concept of ministry.
Another thing I was doing right (more right than I realized) was meeting with a senior staff member every day. We spent many good times over a cup of coffee discussing ministry ideas that, in turn, expressed my concepts and commitments to her. As our ministry expanded, she always “stood in my corner,” even when other people misunderstood or criticized. Because I had taken the time to clearly spell out my ideas and allow a friend to test the strength of them, we built a relationship of confidence, trust, and cooperation. Even when it became necessary for me to help reorganize her department, I received her full cooperation and support because my ideas had been shared, accepted, and tested with her.
Common sense goes a long way toward solving any ministry problem, no matter how large it may seem. Of course, the first rule of common sense is to know when you’re in over your head. As Proverbs
11:14 says, “In a multitude of counselors there is safety.”
While it was reassuring to discover I was doing many right things, it was even more valuable to deliberately probe into the dynamics of motivation.
Seminary professors often tell budding preachers that the strength of a sermon idea can be tested by reducing it to a single sentence. That goes for writers as well. Thus, when trying to define motivation, I would say, “Motivation is the art of taking a strong, vital idea and communicating it in such a way that another person will make it his own and implement it.”
Obviously, that’s the positive and more formal way of saying it. The flipside is, “You can’t build a head of steam for a poorly presented, weak idea.”
Both statements point to the heart of motivation- the strength and vitality of an idea. Ideas are the bedrock of motivational dynamics.
A well-known pastor has built a national ministry upon “powerful ideas.” To this day, he refuses to consider any ministry concept unless it “is a great thing for – God” and “will help hurting people.” While his ministry practice clearly demonstrates that he believes there is more to motivation than strong ideas, he has zeroed in on what I believe is the cornerstone of motivation.
How strong are your ministry concepts? Do you assume that because an idea worked last year you can crank it up again this year? Were your ideas that strong last year? Really? Few institutions are more guilty of pushing tired concepts from one year to the next than the church, while wondering why people never get turned on and involved. A question like “Oh, my goodness, next Sunday is Mother’s Day; what are we going to do?” is usually followed by, “Will someone look up the last Mother’s Day bulletin and see what we did?”
But I’m digressing. Let me get back to what I’ve personally learned about motivation and how it has affected my own ministry.
I believe ministry ideas should be able to pass four tests. While the following tests might seem quite simple on the surface, I-have found it’s very difficult to spell out a ministry concept that will pass all four. However, my own experience, plus the experience of many Christian leaders, verifies that any worthy ministry concept must pass these tests to become the springboard for sustained motivation.
Test Number One
Ministry concepts must clearly define needs and the specific groups of people who have those needs. Sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it? Almost simplistic. But how many Christian leaders and/or staff members strive to do everything and serve everybody-somehow? (So they never serve anybody well!) The Institute of Church Growth in Pasadena, California, has clearly documented the value of this test. Its research shows that the most positive forms of church growth usually come from clearly defined concepts of ministry directed toward grouping within the church as well as the community.
When we opened our ministry to the youth of East Orange, New Jersey, it was almost immediately successful. Christine Baldwin, our first director, had a clear “ministry idea” for the teen center. Christine reminded us that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, not Christians. More specifically, our teen center was to minister to a group of young people who did not want to run the streets with dope pushers, yet were uncomfortable in a traditional church setting. What happened? In addition to attracting and developing a strong staff, our center (three hundred members) produced new converts almost every week. Many of these new Christians eventually moved to positions of leadership in the very churches in which they had not felt comfortable.
Test Number Two
Focused ministry concepts succeed; ideas which are diffused fad. If staff members’ efforts are “all over the map,” their impact will be diluted. Concentrated impact succeeds as well as motivates, for when success occurs, so does self-affirmation. Whatever the measurement, staff members (paid and volunteer) tend to be successful in direct proportion to the focus of their efforts.
This idea has been extrapolated to impact an entire congregation. A friend took me to visit a church in northern New Jersey. As we drove further and further into smaller and smaller country lanes, I wondered if there were any buildings up ahead at all, much less a church. Suddenly we emerged upon a 1000-car parking lot surrounding a small, wood-frame building, which might have been able to seat 200 persons; across the lane was a larger concrete-block building, which might have held 500; and behind it stood a much larger structure which could have held 800 or 900. Adjoining these buildings was a new red-brick-and-white-trim “chapel” that seated 1300 on the ground floor and 800 in the balcony (full for three Sunday worship services). All of this growth had taken place in five years.
When I asked the pastor to share the story of such accelerated church growth, I was prepared for the normal dialogue about goats, master plans, building committees, stewardship campaigns, blueprints, and construction details. Instead, he told me he had spent only one hour in the planning, financing, and construction process. That one hour was spent with the building committee to show them where he would like to place his overhead projector. His ministry concept focused on Bible teaching. Every week he spent over twenty-five hours preparing lessons on overhead transparencies that could be used to teach the Scriptures. Most of his congregation were new converts who carried notebooks as well as Bibles to church.
While I am not suggesting that this ministry idea will produce similar growth for other churches, the principle of focus cannot be denied. Focus builds concentration; concentration builds strength; strength produces successful results; successful results produce new ideas. Ideas must be focused! And all of this comes under the heading of motivation.
Test Number Three
Ministry concepts must lead to “action conclusions.” An idea that doesn’t lead to implementation or decision, regardless of how well defined and focused it is, will result in ministry breakdown and an unmotivated, unproductive, fizzled-out staff. These symptoms can be found in staff members who skip staff meetings (or come late to the meetings), obviously appear bored, and become noncooperative with new ministry ideas.
The ultimate example of this came to my attention while conducting a workshop in staff supervision at the National Association of Christians in Social Work. One harried mission executive wrote a plea for help which said, “My problem is more basic than the things you are talking about; I can’t get my staff members to meet together for one hour a week about anything!”
Ministry concepts which lead to action conclusions stand out in sharp relief from all other possibilities. What is an action conclusion? How does it develop from a ministry idea?
In the summer of 1979, the San Diego Evangelical Association was faced with a problem. Its director, the Reverend Ivan Sisk, felt led to resign his position and resume his former ministry as an evangelist. The board of the association invited me to help them rethink their major ministry concepts. Through careful re-examination, the board determined that God was leading them, as individual members, to be more personally involved in the ministries and activities of the organization. What was the action conclusion? A director was hired whose principal skill was in the area of management coordination rather than in public speaking, evangelism, and public relations. Those ministries were now to be functions of the board members. Because they moved through the process of definition, focus, and action conclusion, the board implemented a search for a new director and eventually found a capable pastor who had a background of management in the aerospace industry.
This same process works just as effectively with ministries such as worship, Christian education, discipleship, pastoral care, and interpersonal relations. In fact, one of the most exciting things about exploring definition and focus is that it spontaneously spawns action conclusions. And it’s at this point of creative spontaneity that staff members begin to buy into the ministry idea and internalize it as though it were their own. Tune up your ministry ideas in terms of this third test, and watch staff motivation climb!
Test Number Four
Ministry concepts must describe the future and how to get there. All of us, whether leaders or followers, want to know how the “now” and the “then” are tied together. Participatory planning makes this possible. Nehemiah demonstrated this when he and his staff reconstructed the wall of Jerusalem. He began with a carefully developed plan and specific sessions of participatory planning (Nehemiah 2:18). Here’s-where-we-are-going generates maximum power for any ministry idea. Ask the following questions:
A. What is this ministry right now?
B. What should this ministry be in the future?
C. What will have to change for this ministry to become what it should be?
If your ministry idea describes only the present- “We are a 600-member Methodist church on the corner of Fourth and Main,” you probably have a static condition. If your ministry idea suggests, “Our church should expand by ten percent each year to match the population growth of our community,” a ministry idea has been planted that may live or may die.
But if your ministry idea declares, “During the next three years our church will grow by 180 members from people who live within a five-mile radius of our sanctuary,” or “We will establish a layled ministry to the 600 residents of the Parkview retirement community,” you’ve laid a foundation for motivation and momentum on which you can build an exciting outreach program.
These same three questions can be asked of Mother’s Day. How are we ministering to our mothers? How should we in the future? What must change to make this happen? How can a special
Mother’s Day service contribute to that change?
I have found that successful church staffs that have never heard of these four tests still tend to think in these ways. While they might not be conscious of structural dynamics, they are building on strong ideas that have become their own, and are being clearly communicated to others. Conversely, churches and organizations that don’t think in these ways-in spite of quotas, targets, systems, reporting forms, boxes to fill in, numbers to post-are not growing. Nor are they known for motivated people.
Fortunately, I learned the ideas behind motivation; and as I did, my staff in East Orange, New Jersey, became a tremendous blessing to me. They didn’t need me to follow them around and remotivate them every week. My albatross was gone, but motivated ministry remained.
Copyright © 1980 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
