Body Building

By Larry Thomas

September 2009

A few years ago, the pastor of the local church where I was a member recruited me to chair the Long Range Planning Committee. After only a few weeks, however, the reality of greater responsibility and many hours with no apparent success set in, and so I resigned.

I was what you might call “a volunteer with a ‘tude.” I felt that because I was giving my time of my own free will, I had the right to decide how and when I would serve, and to quit when I no longer felt like showing up.

Unfortunately, churches have their share of volunteers with a ‘tude: the praise team member who often notifies the praise team leader on Saturday night that she won’t be at service next morning; the Sunday school teacher who opens his lesson for the first time in the classroom; the ministry team leader who uses over-commitment as an excuse for inactivity in the ministry; the VBS coordinator who resigns two weeks before VBS begins because she feels under-appreciated.

Volunteers with a ‘tude’ are spare-time, part-time, unreliable pains in the program; and they cause many headaches and heartaches for pastors and ministry leaders.

Before casting too many stones, I must stress that I am convinced that the primary causes of this problem is that we in leadership have bought into and communicate, through our example, teaching, and preaching, a faulty theology of ministry–a theology that views compensated or “professional” ministry as vocation and uncompensated ministry as volunteerism.

Nowhere does the Bible teach that any ministry is a volunteer activity. Rather, all ministry is a divine vocation. In 1 Corinthians versse12, Paul points out that God has, through his Holy Spirit, sovereignly placed each and every member in the body of Christ as he wills, and has supernaturally gifted them to do acts of service in ministry to build and mature the body. Every member of the body, whether paid or not, is gifted and called to discipleship growth through ministry.

Therefore, every ministry that is being done consistent with the gifts and call of God is neither an option nor a personal choice. Rather, it is a God-given opportunity and responsibility to minister as the heart and hands of Jesus both to build up the body of disciples and share God’s love with the lost through service.

The words Paul used to describe his own ministry call–which, incidentally, was largely uncompensated–apply equally to every member of the body of Christ: “If I were doing this of my own free will, then I would deserve payment. But God has chosen me and given me this sacred trust, and I have no choice” (1 Corinthians 9:17, NLT).

A biblical theology of ministry understands that every ministry call is a matter of God’s choosing and not our own. Failure to do what God has placed one in the body to do is not the exercise of a volunteer’s prerogative but a violation of a sacred trust.

The point is that God’s people–whether “professional” clergy or unpaid ministers–are called not to be “volunteers” but body builders!

We can no more refuse to do in and for the body what God has called and gifted us to do than the eye can refuse to see, the heart to beat, or the ear to hear. Failure to fulfill that call is not merely disappointing; it is as critical a dysfunction in the body of Christ as blindness is to the eye or paralysis to an arm or leg. The church will still function, but not at the level of effectiveness or efficiency it could if all its members were healthy and fulfilling the functions for which God created and placed them in the body.

The issue for those of us in equipping ministry, therefore, is not how we can recruit more ministry volunteers, but how we can grow disciples and encourage a “body building culture”–a culture that equips every member to fulfill his or her God-ordained body-building ministry.

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