Discussions on topics difficult to navigate when pastoring a congregation 

When I was a lay leader, I was the president of our congregation’s chapter of WELCA (Women of the Evangelical Church in America). One of my tasks was to oversee the organization of the historic Scandinavian Bake Sale which was held every 2 years.
I know what you are thinking when I write ‘bake sale’; A card table or two with some homemade items and then a few store bought ones. This was no such thing. It was all handmade from scratch, all Scandinavian recipes, and netted anywhere from $18,000.00 to 26,000.00 each time. People came from all over Minnesota and Wisconsin to get their goodies from the church.
The work for this required months of baking and all-day baking and packaging marathons.

However, as many congregations face these days, the vast majority of the volunteers were elderly women who were ready to pass the baton; or so they said. They lamented to me about the lack of young women who would come and help. So I fixed it.

I went woman to woman and asked the working moms, the stay at home moms, and the single professionals to give at least one day each. Sadly, they all had the same responses: “I tried that once before but they never actually let me do anything.” I also heard, “They say they want that but they really don’t.”

Fast forward to the first baking day- all gathered at the church and ready to roll. As I watched the elder women I noticed a trend: they were very skilled at what they did and the young women were not. So the elder women became frustrated and took over, essentially relegating the younger women to grabbing ingredients or just watching. Later I heard how the younger women were just sitting around though. When I intervened I was told, “Quality matters! We can’t sell it looking like that!”

No wonder the younger women didn’t want to participate. Still, the elder women continued to lament. We needed a come to Jesus moment so I told the elders that the younger women will never get good enough unless they let them fail into success. I suggested we have some items on a table marked “seconds” or “imperfect goods” at a reduced price. I also stated that I would not ask any more young women to join them unless they agreed to truly teach them how to make these and LET them do so. They agreed and in the end, many women learned a lot that season.

Not all volunteers in the church (or anywhere for that fact) are ready to let go of their control and perfected skills. I call this dragon nesting/declaring a kingdom/ turf wars light heartedly, but there is nothing light hearted about their feelings that they will be dismissed or forgotten if they step aside or share. They have often been the faithful one who showed up when no one else would. Many held a whole ministry together through the thin years and never got thanked.

I know it is hard to let it go, to let them do it differently (*gasp), or not to the quality we are used to. But they will learn, and the new and different ways may even be better and save time or be more effective and frugal. I am not even going to lie and say what happened with the bake sale was all peaches going forward. There were plenty of hurt feelings and turf wars. But we worked through it because the reality we all needed to face is that everyone gets to participate and it is ok for it not to be perfect every time.

The church is shrinking at stunning rates and we like to blame everyone and everything else, but we must face the mirror and acknowledge that we tend to forget that if we want new folks to join us, we must allow them to participate fully as well. The new folks are the continued life of a ministry and if we don’t turn ministries over every few years to new folks, the ministry will die. Even if we are not griping about ‘no help’, the work of the church belongs to the whole congregation. When we do not allow new members with similar gifts to also practice and use them, we deny the work of the Holy Spirit among us an in not only their life, but ours.