The Perfect Opportunity to be Strategically Missional

by Mark Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

Often reliable statistics provide helpful glances into church functioning. Other times, statistics provide excellent views into church functioning, enlarging our understanding and making sense of our experience. That’s what happened when the presenters from Hartford International University dropped this knowledge bomb from their post-pandemic church research (https://www.covidreligionresearch.org/).

Before the pandemic, churches reported that 44% of their participants volunteered to serve in and through their churches. Now, post-pandemic the percentage volunteering has dropped to 20%. Translating this statistic to people terms – rather than 4.4 out of 10 volunteering, your church now has 2 persons out of 10 volunteering. In other words, your church is functioning with half its “labor” force compared with pre-pandemic levels. Of course, few churches are “average,” yet this is the case across the board among large numbers of churches of various sizes, types, and denominations.

So when it comes to people to serve in Sunday morning children’s ministry, we now have half as many volunteering. When it comes to serving on committees or ministry teams, we now are staffing them out of a pool half as deep. When it comes to serving on lay leadership teams, the pool looks more like Lake Powell in the drought-stricken Western USA. No wonder current volunteers feel like they are working harder to accomplish the same or less than before. They ARE.

And of course your church has been quick to scale back expectations, right? Certainly people came out of Covid not expecting your church to snap back to its full pre-pandemic menu of activities, right (sarcastic rhetorical questions)?

The view from here suggests there are two places this dilemma (fewer volunteers trying to sustain the same activities) most intensely presents itself – the nominating committee and the church staff. On their best days, nominating committees are scouting for persons with the fitting spiritual gifts to serve the church’s needs. On their worst days, nominating committees are trying to fill vacancies with anyone willing, trying to plug the open holes. But now, regardless of their best spiritual intentions, nominating committees are working with half as many potential disciples as pre-pandemic. Let that sink in again… half as many volunteering disciples.

Church staffs are the other people group in church life who are really feeling the pinch of this dilemma. Whether your pastor is the only staff person, or you have a church staff of 20, they are currently tasked with maintaining pre-pandemic activity levels with half the volunteers. Since these persons are good-hearted and love the church, they often absorb the distress of this dilemma by volunteering more themselves, working ever more hours without relief in sight. Clearly, this approach to church life is unsustainable. When your nominating committee mutinies and your pastor and staff suddenly resign, this particular dilemma may be a primary driver.

Now what? Many of us recognize this dilemma, living with it on a daily basis. Many too, are highly frustrated by attempts toward successful resolution. Where do we go from here?

Though a very challenging situation, this is when the super-power of God’s Church activates. We disciples of Jesus practice a faith that knows God is active in every life experience. In every life-circumstance, when we are at our best, we are looking for the flow of God’s energy, for Holy Spirit activity. In this case, here’s what our eyes of faith may see.

We are looking at an unprecedented opportunity to be strategically missional, reshaping churches into greater expressions of the body of Christ.

This post-pandemic time is the perfect time for our churches to engage a spiritual fitness training program, slimming down, strengthening up, and going all in with our central callings.

Reflect with me for a moment. Even pre-pandemic, there were so many times when we wondered if the tail was wagging the dog… the structure was driving the mission. Now we are living with outdated church expectations, the belief that church should look like it did when twice as many volunteers were on hand.

This is the perfect time to clearly articulate your mission followed by aligning your menu of activities and organizational structure with that mission. This is the perfect time to drop “mission-ish” activities that no longer embody the best of our callings. This is the perfect time to consolidate energy into those few activities and ministries that best express who we are and what we are about. We no longer have the luxury of doing all things for all people. Now is the perfect opportunity to be strategically missional.

So, let’s not miss the grand opportunity to become strategically missional served up on a silver platter and laid out before us. What an excellent time to use our head, hearts, and hands to partner with God, training ourselves as churches to be more fit vessels of grace and ambassadors with Christ. May we seize the moments, through Holy Spirit empowerment, becoming strategically missional invigorated bodies of Christ.

NOTE – This fall we are gathering churches into a Community of Practice who will engage the Reshaping Church Process through our partnership with Central Seminary funded by the Lilly Endowment. Watch this E-news for coming Preview Events.