Yesterday was our launch of our new church.  It was fantastic.  God came through like we knew he would.  I will post more on that later in the week…But, we would have never made it were it not for our volunteers.

There has been a historic trend in the American Church that we have had to contend with and it is this: “We hired you to do that.”  The Church has been trying to find ways to cope with that trend ever since.  It seems that the trend of coping with it in the 90’s and the early 2000’s has been to hire more staff to do more work.  It seems to me that as a Church, we have done the world and our people a disservice.  We have overlooked the power of the volunteer.  Instead of teaching and equipping people to a new understanding of following Christ through serving others, we have brought in hired guns to do the work of the Church.

At this time last week I was literally wondering if we would be ready to open our Downtown Campus Sunday morning.  And truth be told, if it had been up to the paid staff to do all the work we wouldn’t have.  It was the power of the volunteer, the power of the servant of Christ in our church that made it happen.  Have I been working more hours the last several weeks?  Absolutely.  The cool thing is that I haven’t been doing it alone.  The whole time I had volunteers serving alongside of me.  We had people who took their precious vacation time to be available to work on the building.  Their have been people who didn’t have that option who have inconvienced themselves to pray for strength for those who could.  It is the power of the volunteer that helped us have the opportunity to make Jesus Christ famous in our city.

How have volunteers made the difference in your ministry?