Personal ministries: divide and conquer

The local church's personal ministries department typically has more work than workers. Why not divide up the responsibilities?

Chad McComas pastors the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Corvallis, Oregon.

If you are like me, you have experienced frustration while trying to get outreach activities going in your church. Perhaps you have attempted to excite your personal ministries director with bribes, conviction, guilt, anything you thought might work. But in the end all you've gotten is frustration.

You may make it through the Ingathering campaign in December, but find it hard to get anyone involved in any other outreach program. What about the health programs, the literature distribution, Bible studies, the interest file . . . Hey, wait a minute. That may be the problem. Maybe you expect too much from one person!

The job description of the personal ministries leader is almost as long as a pastor's is, and the layperson doesn't get paid to do the jobs. It may be that work doesn't get done because it is just too much for one person.

So what is the answer?

I'd like to suggest that we need to com pare the local church's personal minis tries department to the Sabbath school department. One is for the spiritual nurture of our members and also (ideally) for outreach. The other is to involve our members in community outreach to bring people into contact with Jesus Christ and to bring them into our church.

Now, add up all the Sabbath school workers and put the number in the left box below. Add up all the lay activities workers and put that number in the right box below.

If yours is a normal Seventh-day Adventist church, you will find that the number in the left box is many times the number in the right box. In other words, our churches typically are heavy in staff for our own nurture, but short in staff for outreach outside the church.

Several years ago our church decided to delegate the responsibilities of the personal ministries leader to more workers under an outreach umbrella, just as the responsibilities of the Sabbath school superintendent are delegated to leaders and teachers in the various departments. We felt we needed to make the jobs in outreach practical and workable.

Here is what we did. A conventional staff looks something like this:

Personal Ministries Leader

Personal Ministries Assistant

Personal Ministries Secretary

In place of this limited conventional staff, we developed an outreach team that looks like this:

Outreach Coordinator

Biblical Ministries Leader

Biblical Ministries Assistant

Literature Ministries Leader

Literature Ministries Assistant

Health Ministries Leader

Health Ministries Assistant

Data-Interest Ministries Leader

Data-Interest Ministries Assistant

Volunteer Chore Ministries Leader

Volunteer Chore Ministries Assistant

Campus Ministries Leader

Campus Ministries Assistant

Since we developed this and put it into operation, the outreach activities in our church have greatly increased. There is more going on than I as a pastor can keep up with! That's the way it should be right? Instead of trying to get the personal ministries leader going, I need to keep asking what is going on.

Job descriptions

Each of the people on our personal ministries staff knows exactly what his or her responsibilities are because each has a written job description. A short job description of each ministry is given below.

The outreach coordinator: This person needs to have some leadership and organizational abilities. He or she represents all outreach activities on the church board. He or she chairs the outreach committee (which is made up of the heads of all ministries), which meets quarterly for planning, review, evaluation, and ac countability. The outreach coordinator doesn't do all of the outreach work, but encourages and motivates the leaders to do their individual jobs. The coordinator helps the board schedule the outreach programs in the church calendar.

Biblical ministries leader: This person is in charge of all Bible study contacts. He or she follows up all requests, assigns them, and makes sure that interests are visited. In our church, this person is also in charge of our phone ministry, called 75-BIBLE. This is a phone machine that has a new prerecorded message on it every day. There is opportunity for those listening to request Bible study guides. The biblical ministries leader also assists in any evangelistic meetings and follow- up.

Literature ministries leader: Literature ministries covers anything that has to do with the distribution of literature, including the Ingathering campaign. He or she also leads out in the magazine campaigns (Liberty, Listen, Signs). If the church distributes literature in racks around town or from door to door, this leader is in charge. Our literature minis tries leader does the work usually done by a personal ministries secretary, plus coordinating literature distributors.

Health ministries leader: All health outreach classes or health classes for church members are coordinated by our health ministries leader. These classes include: Breathe Free, cooking, weight control, stress control, first aid, physical fitness, bread baking, health runs, etc. The scheduling for our conference health van is also done by our health ministries leader.

Data-interest ministries leader: This department is in control of keeping a cur^ rent interest file for the church. We have the names of interests in a computer data base with a listing of what programs they have attended or are interested in. When we want to do a mailing to a certain group, we have the computer make labels. The data-interest ministries leader also plans a mass mailing to everyone on the list at least twice a year. The mailing has a special offer from the church. We recently sent a letter to all our interests offering them a book. Those who responded were turned over to our biblical ministries department for follow-up.

Volunteer chore ministries leader: Our church does not have a regular Dorcas Society. Other local agencies do a good job of meeting the needs the Dorcas Society typically deals with, so our church decided to develop a ministry that would not be redundant; we started a chore ministry. This ministry makes our members available to help elderly, disabled, and low-income people with chores that they can't do themselves or afford to hire help for. We have members doing light cleaning work, car repair, yard work, taking people shopping or to appointments, and making weekly contacts with those who need a visit or some kind of care.

Campus ministries leader: Our church is in a university town with a student population of 14,000. Many Adventist students come here to study. Some stay close to the church, but others come and get lost from the church. Our campus ministries department endeavors to help strengthen our own students, but also develops outreach programs to touch the campus and help other students find the Lord.

All of the leaders in the above ministries make up the outreach committee. This committee meets quarterly to discuss plans and make a calendar of events to avoid having to compete with each other for volunteers. Master planning must be done to make sure everything operates smoothly. I've also noticed that once a program is put on the calendar, it has a much better chance of being accomplished than programs that are voted but not scheduled.

Each department has its own budget to work with, and authority to lay plans and spend budgeted money on projects that fall within its responsibility.

We have found that when you elect a leader, you also need to give that leader the authority to carry out the department's plans. The leader must be able to do what his department wants to do without coming to the church board for approval on every program or expenditure. The board should be ready to encourage, give guidance, and help when requests for assistance or more funds come.


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Chad McComas pastors the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Corvallis, Oregon.

July 1988

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