You know, I’ve been in ministry for a long time. Early on, when our nursery director would text me or call and let me know that four people have called in sick at 7 p.m. on Saturday night, I would freak out! I would freak out because we were going to be massively short-handed. And then the Sunday school leader for the 4-year-old/5-year-old/Kindergarten room calls me and three people have told her at the last minute that they were not going to be attending on Sunday. And inside now I have two choices. I can either freak out and lose sleep and scurry to find people, OR I can understand that we have done our part. We have sought to develop a healthy sub list and will send that out and we’ll do our part. But really, at the end of the day, we are going to let it go and let God take care of His church.
Over the years this is a lesson that I had to learn from our nursery directors, two dear woman that served faithfully for so many years. God taught them some valuable lessons that they passed on to me.
Learning from Experience
Let me tell you several experiences that we had. All of a sudden, Sunday morning, there is a massive snow storm and the exact number of people who have cancelled on us fit perfectly with the number of kids that are not going to show up because it was such a bad snow storm. I learned: hang on and chill out. It usually works out and comes together. Time and time again, we have watched God provide.
In another experience, we were short-handed and on a Sunday and three youth — the best youth workers that we have — say “We have to fulfill some school service hours and this is really the only weekend we can do it. Could we step in?”
God takes care of his church.
Muscle of Faith
Over time, I began to develop this muscle of faith and this muscle of trust. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to sleep at the wheel and not do my part. I still must develop a rigorous and healthy bench of players and have a healthy sub list. However, we learn to let got and let God. We trusted God and did our part. You have to relinquish control. Time and time again, God came through for us.
God sometimes just has an amazing way of making things happen. So, when your volunteers are falling off the grid, understand that God has things in control.
Chill out. Things usually work out.
