Technology Volunteers Volume 3

Technology Volunteers Volume 3

Last time I talked about the types of tech volunteers that have really frustrated us over the past several years, and I have to admit that I was rather harsh, but none the less truthful. However, I certainly do NOT want to give the impression that we have had nothing but frustration, as nothing could be farther from the truth. We currently have (and have had in the past) many great volunteers who are extremely giving and serve very humbly. In part one of the series I listed four qualities we look for in volunteers, let’s take a look at how those play out practically in our tech volunteers.

Mark 12:28-31 (ESV)
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

1. Loves Jesus
   Again, this seems obvious for anyone who has a desire to volunteer with the Church, but as Pastor Mark is fond of saying let’s not miss the big E on the eye chart. Its the first part of what Jesus said was the greatest commandment. We see this in our volunteers by seeing the fruit of their life outside the boundaries of serving in the tech ministry. We listen to their testimony and we look for life transformation. We are not legalists who want to see a bunch of rules followed, but testimony and behavior are the indicators of the heart, and your heart needs to be with Jesus before it’s with the computer.

   I have personally seen this in the lives of our volunteers, heard many stories of how God saved them, changed the way they thought, changed their behavior to be more like him. A volunteer must be willing to share this as a good relationship with Jesus is our first priority for someone, we don’t simply write code, we worship Jesus.

2. Loves the Church (global and local)
   This is part of the second commandment Jesus talks about, loving people. Loving the church is loving other Christians ( and loving non Christians, as part of the mission of the Church). Practically the idea here is being on mission with our particular Church (Mars Hill Church) to love people in a way that glorifies God. Our volunteers need to either be members or pursuing membership, to ensure that we are all on the same mission. They need to be involved with a community group, to ensure that they are participating in the community, being discipled, and loving our brother and sisters in Christ in a real physical community. We consider this to be very important to a successful volunteer. On a couple of occasions, we’ve had people who didn’t think these were important, they just wanted to work. It is NEVER NEVER NEVER just work, that’s a mistake in thinking.
3. Humbleness
   I have found in my corporate career that technology people are very prideful people, having very strong opinions on technologies and methodologies. I’ve seen many “Holy Wars” over stuff that in the end really don’t matter that much (PC vs Mac vs Linux, Programming Language #1 vs Programming Language #2, my framework can beat up your framework, etc). A volunteer on mission for Jesus needs to push that stuff to the bottom of their priority list. They need to recognize that there is an existing mission strategy with leadership in place, and they need to start by just helping where help is needed. We value creativity and expertise , certainly. We are always developing leaders who can move into roles of responsibility, but those opportunities are for faithful humble servants who follow Jesus who set our example for humbleness.

   I’ve seen humbleness exemplified with our great current set of volunteers. This is a group of extremely smart and technologically gifted individuals, who simply asked where they could help out with they first got here. Over the course of time, as they have served faithfully, they have made suggestions and had ideas that have changed the course of our technology strategy and influenced our thinking for the better. We need good faithful people to help us be better at what we do, but having influence is all in the approach.

4. Called to serve in this area
   This can be the trickiest quality to identify as many people have the desire but not necessarily the time to devote to something that can require a decent amount of time. This is something that requires prayer and very serious consideration. A good volunteer needs to be prepared to serve in the technology area faithfully for a longer period of time (think a couple hours a week for 6 months at least, preferably longer). Now, we aren’t going to give a volunteer so much work that it overwhelms them, we understand that people have very demanding day jobs and family commitments, and that is perfectly fine, we understand. A good volunteer though needs to understand that we (staff and other volunteers) will be making an investment in them that is time consuming for us, and they need to be considerate of that. We just ask that if we are going to make an investment in you, please be faithful to honor that investment. Don’t get me wrong, people do serve for a while and then transition to other ministries, this isn’t a life long commitment, but the key words are: “for a while”.

   Looking at our current set of volunteers, again, these guys took this to heart. They have a history of faithfully serving over a longer period of time, faithfully doing the tasks they agreed to take on, understanding that we are investing in them and trusting that they will do what they agreed they wanted to do. The have earned that trust with their actions.

In summary, let me say that volunteers have worked out nicely for us. I have seen our volunteers have a huge impact on our technology and direction, because they love Jesus, they love the Church, and they humbly serve in a difficult area that they are called to serve in. The entire tech department, and indeed the entire church, owe them a great deal of thanks, and we thank God for them.

Next volume, I will finish up by outlining some of our needs and how people can get plugged in.