Wearing Out Your Welcome—and Your Volunteers

October 30, 2019

The pastor asked if I’d be interested in sitting on a church committee. He made the mistake of telling me that he knew I volunteered for stuff, which was why he’d thought of me. That’s pastor-speak for, “We’re desperate for volunteers.”

When I was at another church, they also used to hit up the same few people for volunteer work—and the membership of that church was about 3,500!

I was discussing this with another church member while we were doing some volunteer work a couple of months ago. He was trying to talk me into volunteering for something else. I said that it was a shame that the young people with energy had kids and no time; and the people my age felt like they’d done their stint already. (In other words—no dice.)

I get it. It’s tough to work all day, then come home and go to a committee meeting, especially if you have kids. And if you have kids signed up for extracurricular activities, you’ve got even less time and mental energy. But I think that there are things that people can do. And my feeling is, if you can’t get people to volunteer for it, don’t do it.

My next volunteer stint will be to get up in front of the church and say, “Get off your butts and do something. It’s not the church’s fault you’re worn out from hauling your kids to soccer practice. Take some responsibility if you want the church to flourish. And bring the kids—it’s never too early to get them started.”

At the very least, I’ll probably never get asked to volunteer for anything again.