Hiring professionals for ministry or developing from within?

The church where I am a member just finished a conference which featured some national-level headliners – I didn’t get to attend all the sessions but every session I did attend was really terrific and helpful. I’m very grateful to be at a church that has a large membership (3500+) can afford to bring in speakers like these.

At what is normally our Sunday School time a group of worship musicians played acoustic instruments, a pleasant change from our usual organ, robed choir and sometime orchestra. I enjoy both types of worship – this post doesn’t concern style.

After the conference I had an email exchange with one of our pastors about the worship musicians – I asked if they were members of our church or hired for the conference. He replied they came from the other end of our state and remarked how excellent he thought they were.

I replied, “Yes, they are a great group, I enjoyed worshiping with them very much.

I asked if I could pose a follow up question: Smaller, newer churches view leadership development of congregational members as a vital part of their mission. Larger, more developed churches are more apt to simply hire professionals to engage in ministry rather than to develop from within.

What are the long-term effects of hiring professionals instead of engaging in leadership development? Does the practice contribute to greater engagement by church members? Or does it contribute to encouraging church members to be spectators? Excellence is an important value for a church to have – there are too many churches who display mediocrity. And yet, is the practice of hiring professionals in order to comport with the value of excellence in conflict with other values the church perhaps should cherish as highly?

It wasn’t my intention to buttonhole one of our pastors or to be confrontational. I love, respect and trust our pastoral leadership. And yet sometimes I think that all of us get so used to swimming in this aquarium that we lose the ability to contemplate the water . There isn’t an easy sound bite answer to this question. I think it is one of which we should be cognizant, and one that forces us to grapple with it.

There is certainly a place for highly qualified, trained ministers. We have all seen theological and practical disasters that result from church leaders out of their depth, and in the church of pop-Christianity there is more than enough mediocrity to go around. There is no coherent polemic against a value of excellence in church leadership, and yet exclusivity of excellence can have negative effects for leadership and congregation alike.

Pondering this question certainly isn’t original with me.
Bob Hyatt explores some of the issues in this posting, “Escape from Consumer Church.”

One of the pastors of Huntsville’s Sojourn church comments on Bob’s article “It was working in a mega church that opened my eyes to the fact that in many ways, the church in America had pursued a model that created consumers of church primarily and community only incidentally. I’m your pastor, not your cruise director.” His comment can be seen in its entirety at this Sojourn Blog post.

Finally, Todd Rhoades talks about the downside of overdoing excellence on his Monday Morning Insight blog here.

I can’t really end this post with a satisfactory conclusion. It’s just a matter we’re going to have to wrestle with.