Helping the people in your church match their God-given passion to their place in lay ministry seems to be a no-brainer key to discipleship.  It’s the clergy’s job to equip the laity for ministry, to help each person live into their baptismal identity.  It’s an epic adventure, a treasure hunt through God’s people, discovering how each person’s unique abilities can bear fruit through specific ministry opportunities.  You suddenly start singing the Pokemon theme song just thinking about it: “I wanna be the very best!  Like no one ever waaaaas.  To catch them is my real test! To train them is my cause! …..You teach me and I’ll teach you! Pokemonnnnnnn! Catch’em all!”

Except, usually, the nomination of new people into leadership is the biggest drain.  No one has time for it.  It feels like you’re trying to hoodwink people into doing a job no one else will do.  You move the same people around to different positions year after year just to have warm bodies filling the roles on the books.

There are practical ways to move from this dread of “recruitment” to the adventure of discipleship.  Make a list of all the leadership needs your church (or ministry area) has for the next season of ministry.  Determine what is involved in each of these roles, and clearly define the sort of commitment required to do it well.  Then make a list of people in the church that have demonstrated a commitment to discipleship…and make your list three times as long as the amount of people you need, because a lot will say “no.”  Schedule out time each week to talk personally (not by email or text! but a phone call or face to face visit!) to 3-5 people on your list.  I always start these conversations with questions about what’s going on in their lives right now, or in the year to come, what is giving them life, what is draining them…I will suggest a specific role that I think a person would do well in, and I let them know exactly how  much is expected of them.  I ask them to pray with their family about it (if they have a spouse/kids) and get back to me within a week or two (I give a solid deadline that I will contact if I haven’t heard from them), and rarely do I allow someone to tell me “yes” or “no” within 24 hours of our conversation.

If your church requires a whole team of people to do this work of helping people plug into ministry leadership, then spend some time training them in good practices for the process.  Don’t be a Magikarp!  Get out there and catch ’em all!