This blog arises out of something that my family and myself have been talking about for the last week or so.
I aim here to deal with the differences between being involved with church and being commited to the church. Firstly I will start with being involved.
being involved of itself is not a bad thing and is I believe a necessary part of being commited to the church, but I am forced to wonder by certain events in my church and other churches around town if being involved is enough. before I present my thoughts on whether involvement is enough I will first define what I mean by being involved to avoid any misunderstanding.
I define being involved as being a part of a team in the church that regularly performs some kind of service eg. deacons, production, musos etc. these teams may use rosters to allocate church services that its members are to be responsible for and are to be on in their respective roles eg the drummer playing every second sunday or so.
Now i don't believe that being involved is enough, as dear reader you have probably guessed. I have seen involved people not step to the plate when needed most because it is simple inconvienient for them, and by this I do not mean sickness or family emergencies etc. stuff like that is often last minute and can't be avoided. what I mean is they don't show up for training because it interferes with their favorite TV show or something similiar though that example is an oversimplification. Are we as christian merely content to have volunteers that are involved and not really commited?
Commited people are those that show up no matter what (barring emergencies and sickness etc.) and are often found doing fill ins and helping out where ever they can. these people are worth their weight in gold to their respective team leaders.
From my observations those people who are involved usually step down during a period that ranges from somewhere from 6 mnths to 3 yrs. without contributing much to the team in way of its bettermeant conversly I have seen commited people in my own team (Cameras, not to be confused with video production as a whole) last 11 years and still going strong. one of my team members has been forced to step down from cameras due to a bad knee and has now stepped up to video mixing and is excelling there.
I believe that it is time that churches stood up to their volunteers and demanded commitment to those areas for a certain time period at least. This may not apply to all churches indeed I hope that it doesn't. but in my own church at least I have seen an attitude developed towards volunteers that states something along the lines of the following, "because they are volunteers we can't expect too much of them", this is correct to a degree. But part of being a volunteer is Committing to something for a period of time and commitment means showing up when your asked to.
Commitment is in fact often inconviencing to the committed. There have been times where I have had to do last minute productions of a week night when I should have been doing assignments for my senior year etc. For as long as I can remember I have been at every church service and hour before it starts so that my brother can play for that meeting. I know for a period of about three years my brother was the only drummer for the church and played every meeting. Now while I don't think that this is a very wise thing to do as it can drive a person to burn out I think people like this are deserving of a big round of applause and then some.
Now it may seem poignant that I have for a large extent only used myself and my family for examples but that is because I know what they went through better then I know what the other commited people in the church and there are a few of them have gone through.
so with that said I have to ask is mere involvement enough or should we encourage people to stick it out and be committed and faithful to their chosen area of service? certainly methinks.
Also I ask should we drop those people who cannot be faithful to their commitments from the team?
Cheers
The Monk
I aim here to deal with the differences between being involved with church and being commited to the church. Firstly I will start with being involved.
being involved of itself is not a bad thing and is I believe a necessary part of being commited to the church, but I am forced to wonder by certain events in my church and other churches around town if being involved is enough. before I present my thoughts on whether involvement is enough I will first define what I mean by being involved to avoid any misunderstanding.
I define being involved as being a part of a team in the church that regularly performs some kind of service eg. deacons, production, musos etc. these teams may use rosters to allocate church services that its members are to be responsible for and are to be on in their respective roles eg the drummer playing every second sunday or so.
Now i don't believe that being involved is enough, as dear reader you have probably guessed. I have seen involved people not step to the plate when needed most because it is simple inconvienient for them, and by this I do not mean sickness or family emergencies etc. stuff like that is often last minute and can't be avoided. what I mean is they don't show up for training because it interferes with their favorite TV show or something similiar though that example is an oversimplification. Are we as christian merely content to have volunteers that are involved and not really commited?
Commited people are those that show up no matter what (barring emergencies and sickness etc.) and are often found doing fill ins and helping out where ever they can. these people are worth their weight in gold to their respective team leaders.
From my observations those people who are involved usually step down during a period that ranges from somewhere from 6 mnths to 3 yrs. without contributing much to the team in way of its bettermeant conversly I have seen commited people in my own team (Cameras, not to be confused with video production as a whole) last 11 years and still going strong. one of my team members has been forced to step down from cameras due to a bad knee and has now stepped up to video mixing and is excelling there.
I believe that it is time that churches stood up to their volunteers and demanded commitment to those areas for a certain time period at least. This may not apply to all churches indeed I hope that it doesn't. but in my own church at least I have seen an attitude developed towards volunteers that states something along the lines of the following, "because they are volunteers we can't expect too much of them", this is correct to a degree. But part of being a volunteer is Committing to something for a period of time and commitment means showing up when your asked to.
Commitment is in fact often inconviencing to the committed. There have been times where I have had to do last minute productions of a week night when I should have been doing assignments for my senior year etc. For as long as I can remember I have been at every church service and hour before it starts so that my brother can play for that meeting. I know for a period of about three years my brother was the only drummer for the church and played every meeting. Now while I don't think that this is a very wise thing to do as it can drive a person to burn out I think people like this are deserving of a big round of applause and then some.
Now it may seem poignant that I have for a large extent only used myself and my family for examples but that is because I know what they went through better then I know what the other commited people in the church and there are a few of them have gone through.
so with that said I have to ask is mere involvement enough or should we encourage people to stick it out and be committed and faithful to their chosen area of service? certainly methinks.
Also I ask should we drop those people who cannot be faithful to their commitments from the team?
Cheers
The Monk
