Motivating Lay People to Use Their Gifts in Ministry – Transcript

Jim Latimer

Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers, best practices and quick help from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. I am your host Reverend Jim Latimer, and this morning, I have the pleasure of having with us Reverend Jeff McDonald. Jeff is not only a skilled interim minister, but also a longtime freelance journalist, and now church consultant as well. So he’s got a lot of the bases covered. And he’s got a fabulous book which is how I met him. His book called Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy. And that’s how I reached out to him and said, Jeff, I’d love to have some of your ideas on my Bits of Wisdom in this Coaching for Interims project, and he was kind enough to join us today.

So, the first topic, Jeff, that I’d love to hear you speak more about that you had mentioned to me is motivating lay people to use their gifts in ministry. What a relevant topic! I’d love to hear you share a few ideas about that.

Jeff MacDonald

Great, Jim, thanks for the opportunity. I’d be happy to share some ideas on this. One thing that I have found in my research on congregations that thrive with part-time clergy, is that those that empower their lay people to step up and do ministries that had traditionally been left to the pastor in a full-time arrangement are the ones that really do well. They’re the ones that increase vitality measured in several ways, whether it’s stability of the church’s finances, growth in engagement, impact in mission growth, in attendance, at worship, any number of benchmarks.

And so, when I looked at churches that have done well, I was very interested to see that those that have found lay people using their gifts more prolifically are, in fact, doing better. And it makes some sense because they’re not letting things just fall to the wayside when they go to a part-time staffing model. And so, they’re being picked up by the lay people in a way that people are excited about and passionate to do. And so, some of the question is, how do lay people get used to that, or get motivated for that and willingly step into that? Because our congregations are full of people, whether they’re small churches, mid-sized or large, they are full of people who have gifts. You know, the gifts of the Spirit are shared across the body of Christ, as described in 1 Corinthians 12. The Spirit is not concentrated in one person. And yet our lay people have not always been encouraged to step up and give a sermon, to deliver Holy Communion to shut-ins at home. And any number of other ministries that used to be left to the full-time pastor.

So, in terms of how people get over their hesitation on that, that’s something I’d like to share a couple thoughts on. One is that the pastor can name the gifts that he or she sees manifest among the people. And so that might be a case where you might have someone who just has the power of presence and the power of prayer be with those who are dealing with a chronic illness or an unsolvable crisis at the moment. Or it might be someone who has the ability to get up and speak and give an organized presentation. That might be a school teacher who never thought of using those abilities and gifts in a church setting before, but when you combine it with some biblical insight, you can have the combination that can lead to a number of applications in the church including teaching or preaching.

Jim Latimer

Jeff, can I just pause you here? I’m hearing two things here. There’s a lot that’s really rich. You make the point that when there’s no longer a full-time clergy, to have continued rich ministry, laity need to be practicing their gifts more. And some of the barriers to that happening, you said, was first, they may not see some of their own gifts. And so, the pastor, or perhaps a lay leader, actually names them (the gifts) when they’re having a conversation or something like that. And to say, You know, Bill, you’re talented at this, or Susan, with that, whatever it is, right? There’s that piece. And then there’s also the piece – and I see this a lot in the churches that I serve – we have people in the professional world where they use their gifts a lot, but then when they come into their church environment, somehow it gets dumbed down, and they don’t use that particular skill or talent. It doesn’t occur to them to use it. Perhaps because there hasn’t been permission before, or whatever. But it’s like, Use what you know how to do here! Why aren’t we? And that’s a kind of a cultural barrier, maybe or something? I don’t know. I don’t want to take your ideas from you. That’s just something I had seen. 

Jeff MacDonald

Yeah, absolutely, Jim. I see the same. And what I’d say on that is that sometimes we see if a professional wants to use his or her gifts, sometimes it’s a matter of pulling the church into the professional model or into the business model saying, you know, Maybe we need to run this church more like a business. Now, let me show you how we do it over here. And that’s not always the best thing, because it doesn’t always transfer perfectly. The church is not a for-profit business. So, it might not be a perfect transfer.

So, the role of the interim in some of this, or the pastor, is to help them see how their gifts can be translated into a theological context. And so, naming the gifts and showing that there really could be some transferability, as you’ve identified. That’s an important part of it. A second part is helping them see how their gifts could be used, and maybe in a new way that allows them to spread their wings a little more than they’re allowed to do, or are able to do, in their secular jobs. They might discover that there are gifts of listening or gifts of teaching or encouragement or organizational skills – the being able to organize an activity or an event or a communications initiative. Boy, those types of skills are so so valuable!

And so just helping people see that they really are valued here. Because another reason why it’s a good role for the pastor is because there’s a long history of deferring to the clergy to say, This is the church. This is kind of your domain as the clergy person and we don’t want to step on any toes. We don’t want to usurp any authority that is properly left to the pastor. And those coming from a full-time model can be very deferential to say, That’s a big wide area that the pastor knows a little bit more than everybody else on a lot of things – a little more Bible, a little more history, a little more church administration, a little more counseling, a little more teaching and working with youth groups, and so on and so forth. And that’s not a helpful assumption, especially in a context where the pastor is part-time, which is areas that I focused on.

But this can transfer to other settings too that have full-time clergy, to just recognize that the pastor needs to make room, needs to extend permission, so to speak. The pastor might not always realize that he or she needs to give people permission to come forward and use their gifts. But that can be a very significant mover of the needle, when they do that for those who are tacitly assuming that such a countenancing needs to happen.

Jim Latimer

That’s a really good point, Jeff. And as we wrap up this first segment, that last point you made about the pastor needing to make room – needing to give permission – and that we pastors – you and I both – sometimes we don’t understand, or we’re not aware that that’s something we need to do. We’re taking up space that’s hindering someone else, perhaps subconsciously, but we don’t know that we’re doing that. We’re not aware of that dynamic.

Jeff MacDonald

Yeah, that’s a great point. Yes. Giving them room to do it. And then giving them platforms to share what happened. You might give someone an opportunity in the newsletter, or in the testimony during worship, to say, Mary took on this ministry that used to always be done by a clergy person. Let’s have Mary step up and tell in her own words, what difference it made in her life to use those gifts, and what difference she observed in those with whom she ministered. Tell us Mary, in your own words, what you observed how things changed from A to B. And the pastor is creating room again in that setting. 

Jim Latimer

That’s a perfect place to end this segment. I love that because it is such a brilliant move. Not only is the pastor giving Mary, if you will, permission to do that, but then she’s speaking about it in her own words, saying how it has given life to her, how she’s grown or whatever. And people can see themselves in another lay person much more readily than they can see themselves doing what the pastor does, right? So that’s a brilliant idea of having lay people stand up, in a newsletter, or maybe a pulpit announcement or a testimony time in worship and say, This is what I started to do, and blah, blah, blah. That’s great! Thank you so much, Jeff. This has been a great first segment. Thank you.

Jeff MacDonald  You’re welcome. Thanks, Jim

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