Photo by Luca Varoncini from stock.xchg
Most churches struggle desperately to find enough volunteers to teach Sunday school and serve at church on Sunday mornings. It seems that no matter how many announcements, short movies, testimonies, and Facebook posts you use to get people to volunteer, they just won’t come.
I believe there are three primary reasons for this, particularly among the business men and women in your congregation.
1. Internally focused ministries may not utilize their gifts and experiences
People want to do something of significance with their lives. We like to do things that matter. We want to do things that make us come fully alive.
If a church is primarily internally focused and all they offer to their members are opportunities as ushers and Sunday school teachers, where does that leave the rest of the congregation that isn’t called to those areas?
There’s a reason that most churches struggle to mobilize the majority of their congregation to serve, and it’s usually not because your church is full of lazy people.
If we want our CEOs, sales managers, and other business leaders in our congregation to get up and get involved, we need to offer opportunities that allow them to flourish in their gifts and callings.
Opportunities could include starting a business as mission venture, such as thrift store or ACT prep agency. It could be empowering these men and women to manage a back-to-school supply drive for your local elementary school or coordinate a monthly All Pro Dad gathering.
Regardless of what it is, we need to provide opportunities that utilize our congregations plethora of gifts, experiences, and resources. This won’t only bring Christ to our communities, but it will also help our members grow to be more like Christ.
2. They want to serve in a way that meets the world’s most pressing needs
When a person spends the majority of their week immersed in a world full of broken, lost, and hurting people, serving as a greeter to people as they enter your church building may seem of little significance compared to helping the jobless, hungry, and hurting people they see on a daily basis.
In that light, we not only need to offer service opportunities that encompass a multitude of gifts and experiences, but we also need to serve in ways that matter to a broken and hurting world. Whether it’s partnering with your local homeless shelter or working with other churches to bring clean water to a village in Africa, we are called to be agents of change to our world in need.
Jesus called us to both show and tell. What good is it to tell people about the love of God if we don’t also demonstrate it? Does it matter if we encourage our congregation to read through the Bible in a year if we don’t also teach them how to live it out?
I can almost guarantee that your congregation’s working men and women see this. The question is, do you?
3. They don’t feel qualified to do ministry
I’ve talked to far too many business men and women that think they aren’t qualified to do ministry. I’ve discovered that what they really mean is because they aren’t “seminary trained”, they think they can’t do ministry.
By offering ministry opportunities other than teaching Sunday school or leading small group Bible studies, we teach our business leaders that feel unqualified that ministry is doable. Some outreach opportunities that you could offer include starting some sort of business as mission (as I previously mentioned), hosting a Thanksgiving meal for a particular group of underthanked workers in your community, or regularly bringing meals to the elderly in your town.
Additionally, as these men and women serve alongside Christians and non-Christians alike, they will grow in their understanding of what it means to “do ministry.” They will be spurred on to learn how to pray, learn how to seek answers from Scripture, and learn how to both show and tell of their faith.
So what now?
I believe that if we want to get our business leaders (and other members in our congregations) to stop going to church and start being the church, we need to make a shift. We can’t solely focus on our internal ministries. We need to be external as well.
What do you think? Is this something that rings true with your church or ministry? How have you helped your business men and women find ways to utilize their gifts and serve in a way that make them fully alive?
