I remember a children’s ministry leader who once planned an event. They had a budget. They had a plan, and it was a big one. What they didn’t have was help.
I checked in several times and offered to help find people. I tend to stay hands off with leaders. I don’t like being micromanaged, and I try not to do it to anyone else. So I offered, they said they had it covered, and I stepped back.
The event happened, and it was a success. But the last stretch was a fire drill. The leader was stressed and frustrated, and they felt unsupported, even though help had been offered more than once.
I wish I could say that was the only time. Over thirty years of ministry, I’ve watched some version of it happen again and again. Almost everyone who takes on a ministry assignment wants to do well. Then they get into it and find it’s more than they bargained for. We overpromise and underdeliver, usually without anyone being careless.
Why people wave off the help
Looking back, I think pride was part of it. So was a lack of forethought. Nobody sat down early and worked out what the vision would require in hours and people. I also suspect there was a desire to please the pastor, or at least to look self-sufficient in front of him. Accepting help can feel like admitting you misjudged the job.
There’s another version worth mentioning. Sometimes a person simply doesn’t want help with their assignment. They want someone else to do it ALL for them. That calls for a different conversation, one about the role they agreed to and what they’re accountable for.
Either way, help offered in the middle of the work seldom received jubilantly. By then the person is invested in looking capable, and an offer can feel like a vote of no confidence. So they push harder and hope it comes together.
Build the help into the handoff
What I’ve learned is to talk about help at the beginning, before anyone has something to prove. When someone brings you a plan, ask a few plain questions before you say yes:
What are we trying to accomplish, and what does a good outcome look like when it’s over?
What will it actually take? Walk through the tasks and count the people.
Who is helping, by name, and have they agreed?
When will we check in, and what should be in place by then?
The third question does more of the work than you may realize. If the answer is “I’ll recruit later,” put a check-in on the calendar ahead of the recruiting deadline.
If you use AI, this is a reasonable place for it to help. Describe the event and ask for a list of every task involved and roughly how many people each one needs. It doesn’t know your church, so check the list against your own experience. It’s still a quick way to see how big the thing is before anyone actually commits.
None of this means taking over. I still give a general direction and let people work inside those guardrails. When someone starts drifting, either getting too broad or lost in the weeds, I steer them back toward the goal we agreed on. When the check-in was set from the start, that conversation feels normal, rather than forced.
Excellence without perfection
I don’t ask anyone for perfection. Perfection is often the enemy of success. I do ask for excellence though, and I’ve come to see excellence as a posture of the heart. It looks like honest preparation and a willingness to ask for help before the fire drill. Put simply in the words of Jesus from Luke 14:28, it’s “counting the cost.”
But what do you do when the pattern keeps repeating anyway? With the leader I mentioned, we debriefed afterward and talked through these same issues. It happened again, and again, and again several more times, until we finally changed their role.
They’re a wonderful person. They were in the wrong seat on the bus, to borrow Jim Collins’s picture. Part of a pastor’s job is helping people find the seat that fits their gifts and calling. Desire is a good start. It takes drive and dedication to get something done, and without those a plan stays a dream. But moving someone to a better seat can be a kindness to them and to the people the ministry serves.
This week, think of one assignment coming up in the next month or two. Sit down with the person carrying it and ask who is helping them, by name. If the answer is nobody yet, set a date for that to change and put a check-in on the calendar before it.
If it would help to write the role down, the free Pastor’s Workbench community has Create a Ministry or Volunteer Role Description in 05 Church Operations & Systems, with a Role Description Template. Join the free community and start there.