Volunteering

A little rant here:

My biggest problem is that I work in a church where everyone flocks to "volunteer," but then when it comes to actually signing up for a particular day and time, they waddle away backwards like frightened ducks. It almost feels like they just want to say, "Yeah, I volunteer at my church" but not really do it. Plus, it's a consumer church--they expect others to hand them things because they pay for it (in tithes).

Call me jaded , but I've just come to the point where I'm logging all the times when I don't have volunteers, and come spring, I'm disseminating that information and saying plainly that we're not running [insert program here] until people step up. I don't mean it out of animosity but out of pragmatism. The same core people cannot keep running something. It leads to burnout. It pains me to keep calling on my CFM team members all the time. They need a break.

The associate pastor (with the encouragement of the head pastor) actually cancelled the All Church Retreat because no one stepped up to be on the committee. People are outraged, but she quietly stated that they were welcome to be on next year's committee. I wholeheartedly support her; sometimes you have to wake people up. This is a church, not BK "have it your way" drive thru. We all work together as the body of Christ to glorify and worship Him. The arm can't be the only one working while the leg and head wait to play. Hmmm, maybe we need to read The Little Red Hen in the services.

Another thing we've prayed about at staff meetings is priortizing. Parents have their kids overscheduled in 55 different activities and can't find time to fit church in. One parent told me that she doesn't have a problem letting her kid stay up until 8 for baseball practice "because it's baseball, you know" but she can't see letting her kid stay up at church until 7:45: "He needs to have some night that he goes to bed at a decent hour."

Or they want Chuck E Church, so that it is so overstimulating that it trumps the other activities. Where has the simplicity gone?