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The Whys and Hows of Money Leadership A curriculum for pastors/leaders just getting started by Mark Vincent, Lead Partner, Design for Ministry |
Economic connections to time
In Acts 6, when the apostles were faced with the problems of how to distribute charity to widows of all cultures, they decided not to do it themselves, but to trust the work to spiritually-mature people. This delegation grew from a deep sense of purpose and a better awareness of time than many time-conscious Westerners know today. Ironic, isn't it? They knew their key tasks to be the ministry of the word and prayer (Acts 6:4). If they had taken on additional tasks, given the growing church community and the 24-hour days known by all humans, they opted not to dilute their primary tasks by adding others.
Does your congregation do this? When you add a program or an expense do you consider the time cost? Do you decide what to do against what to drop — all in accordance with your congregation's mission? Do you reach out to involve people you have developed as leaders, placing new ministry tasks under their direction? This is very difficult for volunteer organizations to do. Board members and committee members volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts, not to make difficult choices. But, add a program without either expanding the base of volunteer hours or cutting out something that is no longer effective, and the result is dilution.
Fact: A congregation can actually quantify the number of hours it has available for volunteerism, and can plan to use them in accordance with its mission. A simple way of formulating it is as follows:
50-60 percent of the congregation will contribute less than five hours beyond their presence at worship services. Some do not have five hours. Some volunteer their hours elsewhere. Some simply do not want to.
20-30 percent can volunteer no time and may not even be consistently present at worship.
That being done, you can connect your volunteer hours to the congregation's activities. How much of this time is spent in meetings talking about the congregation's ministries? How does this compare to the time actually spent doing the ministry? Some will be surprised to find their meeting time discussing ministry actually exceeds the time given to doing ministry! This is because one three-hour committee meeting of four persons can burn large chunks of a congregation's available volunteer hours. As you estimate for your congregation, don't forget time spent commuting to the meeting is part of the volunteer time!
20 percent or so of the congregation will have about five hours per week they can volunteer beyond their presence at worship services. Some can do more, usually because they are not fully employed.
These are general estimates. Your congregation could differ slightly. Still, these general figures allow you to form a reasonable estimate of how much volunteerism is available.