Passionate Steward - 10th Anniversary Edition

Recovering Christian Stewardship from Secular Fundraising 137
analogous to the position description one would expect when
considering a job. The only difference is the inclusion of the vision
statement, which places the volunteer’s proposed role within the total
context of ministry and the parish community. Parishes which
dispense with such a volunteer ministry description often find that
parishioners are either unwilling to commit because of their
unaddressed concerns about the demands to be made of them; or
parishioners who do volunteer may later have regrets when their duties
and responsibilities exceed their understanding of what was expected.
Moreover, people who volunteer without understanding what
will be expected of them commonly find their ministry laborious, and
as a result, may avoid doing what they agreed to do, thereby creating
disappointment on the part of both the volunteer, and campaign
leaders. There is no excuse for allowing poor management to alienate
a parishioner from the Church he or she loves. Good stewardship
entails caring for the resources entrusted to us—and this includes the
gift of people’s time and talents. Taking the time to engage in
expectation management is a powerful way of demonstrating our care
for people who give so generously of themselves.
The way campaign volunteers are recruited can have a longterm
impact on the parish’s ability to engage parishioners for future
volunteer ministries, whether to teach Sunday School, help with a
literacy program, or visit the sick. The campaign presents an
opportunity to demonstrate that the parish is committed to mutual
stewardship, in which the parish cares for volunteers, and
volunteers care for the parish. It can also be an opportunity to
recover these values if parishioners have had poor volunteer
experience in the past.
There are a number of basic rules for volunteer management.
Chief among these is the overarching obligation to ensure that the
Church is a good steward of its own stewards. It is said that in 258 C.E.
when St Laurence the Martyr was made to hand over the riches of the
Church to the state authority, he went out and gathered the poor, the