I believe paid staff can sometimes be a detriment to true and lasting leadership, and I’m paid staff! Why would I say that? Our church is in a position to fill a role and we are considering either staffing (paying an educated leader) or finding a volunteer. Training is involved in both endeavors, but one has a crucial difference of being relationally motivated while the other is monetarily driven, at least in the beginning. Many of our churches believe that they need more people to do ministry. I feel the tension myself as I move from one ministry to the next, juggling the different hats that a small church pastor does in a given week. We believe we can have that “Yes Sir” mentality in someone who is on the line, because they are working for a pay check and have little freedom to do otherwise. Volunteers, however, force us to lead not just hired hands but people who need our help and whom we need help from. I assure you that a volunteer’s help is more than just accomplishing a ministry role. They help in areas of leadership in which you are weak and aren’t aware.

Sometimes, a truly great follower will submit and follow a poor leader and slowly but surely develop that leader in a servant-like way. The follower in these rare scenarios serves in a way that truly leads and transforms the leader. I have been fortunate to find such Christ-like men of God who epitomize servant leadership, and am so grateful for them in my life! A few months ago, I was at a table full of Christian leaders – people in our church who have led me at various points in ministry in Southern California. People who God has used to influence me, correct me, lead me. What an amazing organization where the pastor leads God’s people at the same time God’s people are leading the pastor. That’s following Jesus isn’t it? Working together in the kingdom to make our King known, expanding his territory and inviting people to share in the leadership and inheritance he has called us to. This is the church.

When we hire staff it can be a tremendous blessing, but in some instances, hiring staff can cripple ministry for the whole of the church, even if that hire is gifted for the role. As paid staff, my chief role is to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph. 4). When we hire a worship leader, a children’s director, a youth pastor, it can communicate that ministry in those capacities is for the professionals, out of reach for the typical church member. Inadvertently, it can be understood that gospel work is out of their league. If my job as pastor is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, I better not communicate that ministry is for trained professionals. 

Hiring staff can also lead to apathy in our church members. They can adopt a “ministry is for ministers” mentality and become pew warmers instead of active participants, even partners, in ministry. There is an urgency when our churches have great ministry need and if that urgency is met with a hired hand, the new employee is the solution not the individuals in the church. In choosing to hire over raising up volunteers, church members become deprived of the joy in exercising their spiritual gifts. When we take away the option for members to exercise their God-given spiritual gifts, it harms unity. 

Orange County Church has been through the Natural Church Health Development (NCD) two times now. The first time we went through the discovery process, we learned that our lowest minimum factor was gifts-based ministry. Our people didn’t understand how God had gifted them to serve in the church. We put a lot of concerted effort into raising the bar of gifts-based ministry and here’s what I learned: I am gifted in many different capacities, but I am weakest in mercy, service and giving. Funny for a pastor to be weak in these most essential areas, isn’t it? Those gifts don’t come naturally to me and, as a result, my ministry was suffering. I found someone in our church who has almost the exact opposite of my gifting make up. We complete each other, so to speak. Where I am strong, this individual is weak and vice versa. 

Learning about each other, appreciating each other’s make up and figuring out the blind spots that we both have has helped to unleash a section of ministry that was completely neglected before. The unity and appreciation in just that realization has paid for itself time and time again and it has led to appreciation in divine differences.

This is why developing leaders within our congregations is so important! We get to pour into the next generation, raise them up, train them, know them in relationship and be known by them. What better way to test their character, their resolve, their trust in the Lord than to have influenced and led them as they have been raised to lead you?