Recruitment's Missing Link
Carl F. George
One spiritual gift stands crucial to activating all the others: the gift of administration.
—Carl F. George
For a long time, volunteer behavior in the church was a mystery to me. My personal breakthrough in understanding came in phases. I had pastored University Baptist Church in Gainesville, Florida, for more than ten years when, one day, I went to a community meeting sponsored by a local hospital. Afterward, the doctor who had led the discussion was having coffee, and one of the matrons engaged him in animated conversation.
At one point he paused thoughtfully and asked a searching question: "What do you suppose motivates you to give your time and energy to this work?" He had discerned her to be a volunteer, and he wanted to estimate how her abilities might be applied to his program.
Several years later, that scene flashed in my mind as I stood in our church auditorium and listened to a young woman with glowing eyes and vivacious voice describe her recent visits to sick people in the hospital. She was bringing yet another group of names of patients she had encountered by word-of-mouth referral in the community, trying to schedule me to give these people the pastoral care she knew they would appreciate.
The love on her face as she recounted the details of her visits contrasted sharply with my own internal heaviness. For me, hospital visitation was a wearying chore. Carrying a heavy burden of administration, it seemed to me that there would always be more sick and dying people than I would have strength to minister to. Even the deathbed conversations and the remarkable appreciations expressed by patients and their families did not prevent me from dreading another set of hospital assignments.
She talked on, and my mind wandered ...
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