What Lights the Fire
Roger Thompson
A sense of duty isn't enough for long-haul motivation; a sense of purpose is.
—Roger Thompson
It was going to be great! A youth trip with a purpose. Out of our group of twenty-five high schoolers, twenty-two had signed up for seven days of nothing but service and discipleship. We were serious: eight hours of work each day, plus Scripture memory and Bible study.
We had talked up, psyched up, and signed up every available body. That's what comes from good teaching, strategizing, and planning, I told myself. And the kids were even paying their own way!
The final week arrived. As I made call after call, the excuses mounted. Heavy pencil lines ran through all the leaders' names … and most of the followers. I was reduced to begging. Instead of an impressive caravan of youth missionaries, we piled into one station wagon: four silent "fringe" teenagers, two sponsors, and myself. I was into Round One of an expensive lesson in leadership and motivation. I was angry and befuddled.
Motivation's Mystery
Motivation is a suspect enterprise, a pseudo-science. It is loved or hated. Creating and maintaining motivation among God's people is variously viewed as carnal mass manipulation, flim-flam fund-raising, or somewhere between B. F. Skinner and the black arts.
But motivation is an unavoidable part of any people ministry. Avoidance, fear, or ignorance of the motivational dynamics in a congregation is disastrous both occupationally and spiritually.
I've known churches on both extremes in their views of motivation, and either polarity eventually freezes spiritual health.
One extreme is the bigger-and-better Siss-Boom-Bah hype. "We can do it if we each do our part!" Its stock-in-trade is contagious enthusiasm, colorful charts or graphs or thermometers, ...
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