Matching people to passions

These days I’m spending a lot of time working on a bike tour we’re calling “The Hunger Ride: Feeding People—Feeding Souls.” It will be a week-long trek across 225 miles of northwestern Minnesota on our way to Moorhead, raising money and awareness for hunger-related causes along the way. I bring this up here as more than mere advertisement, because what I’ve realized in the planning of this project has been fairly startling, and I think it applies to how we work as Christ’s body in the church.

As things have come together, I find myself marveling at all the people involved in this project—leadership groups, week-long riders, the synod hunger table, local business people, local cycling enthusiasts, food shelf directors, musicians, movie theater owners, pastors, and many, many church representatives—and I still can’t quite believe the groundswell of support we’ve had for a project that I at first considered ambitious but probably not all that practical. Now I see how wrong I was. All because we found people passionate about what we were doing and their passion meant we had to twist no arms, make no phone calls begging for support, and time and again when we got together with a group or an individual involved in the planning we found them better prepared than we would have dreamed. People have owned the project, and it’s been amazing to watch.

I don’t think there’s anything magical about a bike tour for world hunger. What makes it special is that it taps into things that people are already passionate about. It has given them an avenue to envision something greater and the particulars to make it happen. I contrast that with the way that we normally work together as a church and it’s night and day. Normally, we have a few menial tasks that we beg and plead people to do. Can you usher? Will you read a lesson? Will you count offering? Can you bring buns on Sunday? Will you serve on the council? It’s not like these are particularly hard jobs, but without a vision that people are passionate about they will always feel just like chores. Chores aren’t a bad thing, but without ownership of the larger picture they will feel menial and discourage further participation, and that’s where many people are in our churches today.

I feel like the ministry of an individual congregation should be just as engaging as any bike tour—that the practical matters of ministry should be just as joyfully-done as the practical matters of planning a route to ride. Sometimes it happens this way but often not. People need to know what it is that they are a part of. Why do the ministries we do matter? What are the stories behind those ministries? Tell them. For the love of God: TELL THE STORIES. Then, accept that new people always means doing ministry in new ways. Adding new people to ministries means understanding their passions and what makes them tick; not fitting them into existing models in which they have no stake. You might find that person who just loves to usher. Affirm that. Don’t immediately ask them to read lessons instead. But also accept that the gifts of God’s people often do not look like the structures that have been created by people ten or twenty or one-hundred years ago. This does not mean that their God-given talents are of less worth! Don’t rush to fit them into the church’s needs; rather, find what they are passionate about and mold the church to their passions.

Think of all the things you have seen your church do in your life and I bet you’ll find people passionate about every successful venture, standing behind their work. God knows this about us, creating us uniquely to offer our desires to the church and the world. It’s really astounding what we can do when we find the intersections of things that we are passionate about. Suddenly, what was tedious becomes easy, and what was purposeless becomes purposeful. It really isn’t that hard: Do what you love and offer what you have to offer, because that is what is pleasing to God. We need to stop fitting our square pegs into round holes, and start seeing the diversity of talents and desires that God has put in all the people in our midst. If we start tapping into that, I have a feeling we’ll find passion we never would have imagined, and our mission will happen grow even as the work happens more organically than we would have thought possible.