Have you heard of the "20/80 rule"—the idea that 20% of people in a typical church do 80% of the work? Obviously the exact ratio will vary from church to church, but it sounds about right to me as I think about the churches I've attended. In most churches there seems to be a core group of really dedicated volunteers without whom it's hard to imagine the church even functioning. And there's the other 80%, who for whatever reason aren't very involved beyond attending Sunday worship services.
(I think there's also a middle category, in which I might place myself, of people who go through periods of active church involvement punctuated by sometimes-lengthy periods of relative non-involvement. But the 20/80 ratio sounds about right to me.)
Skye Jethani is talking about this ratio in a post about church, mission, and the financial recession over at the Out of Ur blog. He describes the effects that economic downturns have on people's leisure time—and how that negatively impacts the time they spend on church and mission-related activities. But instead of chewing out that 80% for being lazy, lukewarm Christians, he suggests that our whole approach to "church work" needs adjusting:...most people [have] about 32 hours each week of “leisure time.” Most churches are trying to motivate people to turn off the TV for three or four of these leisure hours to spend on mission. The most valuable and celebrated members are those who give eight, ten, or even twenty hours of leisure time to the church.Jethani's solution is to look anew at the different aspects of church community—worship, leadership, volunteering, discipleship, etc.—and incorporate them more closely into people's everyday lives, avoiding the sharp distinction that often builds up in our minds between "church time" and "work/family/personal time." I won't try to summarize it beyond that, but read through his post and share your thoughts. I like where he's headed, although I think his suggestions definitely fall into the "easier said than done" category.But by predicating the mission on leisure time of members, most churches are making two mistakes. First, if leisure time ever shrinks the church will find its mission severely affected. We may be facing that situation as the recession deepens. [...]
The second, and more critical, mistake is the way basing our mission on leisure-time devalues members without expendable hours. I’m thinking of mothers with the 24/7 job of caring for young children, single-parent households, laborers working multiple jobs to stay afloat, or those in the “sandwich generation” using their leisure hours to care for aging parents.
But well worth considering. What about you? Does your church embody the 20/80 rule, and if so, are you in the "20s" or the "80s"? Can we escape from that rule, or is it an ironclad law of human community that a small number of people are always going to be doing the vast majority of the work? What's your church doing to address this... and is it working?
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Comments (7)
"By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." - John 13:35
I think this actually ties in neatly with an earlier TC post about tithing - if people feel ownership and responsibility for their church community as an extension of their own family, rather than just a service provided by a pastor, then some of this will come naturally. The rest can be encouraged through loving encouragement and exhortation.
Thanks
I watch hardly any television, and have very little "leisure" time. I do try to limit the hours I work for pay, and would like to limit them more, but I have, informally more than formally, a number of things I do with the remaining time already, responsibilities people count on me for, mostly on a volunteer basis, but occasionally paid. So no church is going to get time out of me by asking me to turn off the TV.
There have been times when I took on a small ministry within a church, or made a point of showing up for events that were not on Sundays. It generally depends on inspiration of a given activity, and how much fellowship I find anywhere other than the church.
The separation of our time into discrete units is a general problem in our culture, not limited to the church. Family time is separated from "my job" is the biggest division, since work is outside the home and separate from the family, in distinct corporate organizations that are NOT family or spiritually oriented. I don't have an answer for that, since we can't just "go back to the land" without 90% of us starving to death or dying of contagious illness, etc. Our technology is what makes such a large population, so concentrated, possible.
Greetings. I found your post as the top Google result that applied the 20/80 rule to church ministry. I think much of the problem in American Christianity is that "ministry" is defined by the few, and only certain people can fit that mold. People simply aren't taught to think or do things for themselves, so when the default - which is church ministry as envisioned by the leaders - is the only show in town, people realize how they can't fit in, so they don't.
I think we're all being PC (Politically Correct - a real problem in the UK) and not willing to call a spade a spade. For a number of people the problem definitely lies in time constraints. I would suggest however that pure undiluted laziness plays a major part, coupled with an unwillingness to do certain jobs (like washing the cups after tea & coffee). I've also noticed that the less topical and more real-life the preaching is the more inclined people are to serve. Especially if there are messages about serving.
This goes alongside preaching about tithing, another HOT topic.
My comments are not about whether it's right to preach about serving and tithing (that's for each individual to decide - my personal stand is that it should be), it's about the effect that such preaching has on the congregation if it is preached.