How many calls did you get yesterday, through phone or text or email? If you’re a Christian, you get one particular call every day — a call to serve. But you’re probably already serving at church, as volunteer or staff.Read more…
A Good Steward of Other’s Gifts
You know you should be a good steward of the gifts God has given you: your time and talents and treasure. Are you a good steward of other people’s gifts? Should you be? If you’re a pastor or church staffRead more…
Video Clip Resources
A picture really is worth a thousand words. We are visual learners, naturally, and more so as the internet and the hundreds of cable TV channels multiply what we can view on a screen. Good communicators are always on theRead more…
Acts of the Non-Apostles
For action-packed drama, read Acts. The early church titled this New Testament book Acts of the Apostles because Luke highlights the ministries of Peter and Paul. But a great many believers other than apostles populate this history of the earlyRead more…
How to Eat an Elephant
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So goes an old joke, making the point that even the biggest of tasks can be accomplished with first one step, then another and another . . . ChangingRead more…
Goals Get Us Going
It’s budget time at our church; our fiscal year begins July 1. As church staff, I’ve done many annual budgets for Equipping, but this year was unique for me. Our budgets were to be based on our ministry goals forRead more…
Profile: Shepherd of the Hills, San Antonio, Texas
Alice Klement, Director of Equipping Ministry at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in San Antonio, is graciously sharing two presentations her equipping team gave to congregational leaders. She took material from some of the presentations on this site, addedRead more…
Remember Middle Management
Your pastor supports equipping volunteers to serve. You have a designated person and team that helps people serve. You’ve got a great start. But for real change, don’t forget the middle — the “middle management.” In From the Top Down, authorRead more…
Simple Volunteering
Life is complicated. Life is stressful. Your employer wants you to squeeze more work into the same hours, the kids need help with their homework, your elderly relative needs your assistance, and there are important papers somewhere in that pileRead more…
In the Store: Putting Spiritual Gifts to Work
Putting Spiritual Gifts to Work: Equipping Saints for Service is a short book (80 pages) by Karen Kogler. It’s available in The Equipper store in two versions: Electronic version: as a download; $8.00 Print version: mailed to you, with aRead more…
My Question: Giving Time Instead of Money
Questions to Talk About A reader sent me a link to a slate.com article, “Thou Shalt Be Debt Free,” in which a columnist who advises on ethical living answered a woman’s question on whether she should reduce or eliminate herRead more…
Sacred and Secular Volunteering
In the United States, 26% of the population volunteers.* More people (36%**) volunteer through faith-based organizations (churches, synagogues and mosques) than any other type of organization. The remaining 64% of volunteers work for a variety of community organizations: schools andRead more…
Screwtape Writes on Church Volunteers?
In his popular book The Screwtape Letters, author C.S. Lewis imagined an experienced devil named Screwtape writing letters to advise his young nephew Wormwood on how to move people toward hell and away from their enemy, God. One day IRead more…
What can I do? I’m just a volunteer.
“Our church really needs help. We just keep trying harder to recruit volunteers and it isn’t getting better. I think equipping people to serve is a great idea and would really help. But our leaders don’t ‘get it.’ And whatRead more…
How to Discourage your Church’s Volunteers
(From the Lutheran Witness, March 1998. Reprinted with permission. Print version. Imagine your church with no volunteers for one week. The organist may play the organ, but there are no choir members or other instrumentalists. Everyone eventually finds a worshipRead more…