What is your organization actually designed to produce?
At my first solo pastorate, we averaged somewhere around 40–50 people on a Sunday.
We also had a church council that required something like 13–15 different people to function.
Do the math—seriously, I’m not great at math.
But I do know this; a remarkably high percentage of the congregation’s active adults were needed simply to maintain the organizational structure of the church.
I remember one young woman in particular. She was a twenty-something, relatively new mom, and an elementary school teacher. In many ways, she was exactly the kind of person older, established churches constantly say they want to reach: young, interested, and looking for ways to become more involved.
Children’s ministry seemed like a natural fit. She had experience with children. She enjoyed them. She had something meaningful to contribute.
Except that position was already “filled,” and the person overseeing the ministry wasn’t particularly interested in additional help.
What we did need was a treasurer, so she volunteered.
When the institution gets in the way
Now, churches need treasurers. Someone has to pay the bills, prepare reports, and keep the organization financially accountable.
But this particular person wasn’t especially gifted or interested in that work. She was simply willing.
Eventually, she burned out. And eventually, she stepped back from regular church attendance altogether.
I don’t tell that story to blame anyone involved. I was the pastor, after all. I was part of the system too.
But looking back, I see something I didn’t fully recognize then:
We said we wanted to reach and engage younger people. But our organizational structure was designed to recruit people to maintain the organization.
Every year, we would strain to figure out who could fill all the required seats on the church council and its various committees. There was certainly some consideration of gifts and interests, but the starting question was usually:
Who can we get to fill this position?
Instead of: Here is a person who wants to make a difference. How might her gifts, interests, and calling best be used?
Those are two very different questions.
Not every volunteer is looking for a task
I think this extends well beyond that particular church.
Many churches and nonprofits have a surprisingly simplistic volunteer pipeline. Someone wants to become more involved, so we offer them a predictable menu: greet at the door, help in the tech booth, clean up after fellowship time, join a committee.
Those are important jobs. Someone needs to do them.
But not every volunteer is looking for a task. Some people are looking for meaningful responsibility and an opportunity to use their gifts.
Years ago, a mentor told me something that has stuck with me:
“As pastor, you shouldn’t be pulling weeds.”
He wasn’t saying I was too important to pull weeds. If weeds needed pulling and I was standing there, I could certainly help.
His point was about stewardship. There were things I had been trained and called to do that other people could not do—and my limited time was better spent doing those things.
I think the same principle applies to volunteers.
A highly gifted leader shouldn’t consider themselves above stacking chairs, greeting at the door, or cleaning up after fellowship. Humility and a servant’s heart matter.
But good stewardship also means asking whether we are using someone’s gifts and capacity well.
If someone can teach, lead, organize, create, or build something new, why would we make the primary expression of their service something unrelated to those gifts?
Isn’t voluntarily offering those gifts to the church already an expression of a servant’s heart?
The goal isn’t to find people for the jobs we have. It’s to discern how the people we have can best contribute to the mission.
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Organizations produce what they are designed to produce
This week in Substack Seminary, we’ve been thinking about how the major pieces of church life fit together: welcome, belonging, formation, and practice.
How do people find your ministry?
How do they join it?
How do they learn the Christian faith through it?
How do they grow closer to God alongside it?
But I think there’s another question underneath all of those:
Does the organization you’ve built actually support the outcomes you say you want?
A nonprofit says it values innovation but requires so many layers of approval that trying something new becomes nearly impossible.
A church says it wants to reach its neighborhood but spends most of its volunteer capacity staffing internal committees.
A congregation says it desperately wants younger adults—and then asks the few who arrive to fill vacancies in a governance structure designed decades ago.
Organizations produce what they are structured to produce—not necessarily what their mission statements say they want.
'We can start something new, but we need to stay connected'
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Structure should serve mission
Imagine a church that says its pathway is:
Welcome → Belonging → Formation → Practice
But the lived experience is actually:
Welcome → Membership → Committee → Institutional maintenance
That church may appear to have a discipleship or volunteer problem.
But it might actually have a structural problem.
None of this means governance, administration, budgets, committees, or mundane volunteer tasks are inherently bad. They aren’t.
But they are means, not ends.
The structure exists to serve the mission. The mission does not exist to sustain the structure.
When maintaining those structures begins consuming the people, energy, and resources needed to actually pursue the mission, something has become inverted.
So perhaps this week’s question is: If we say we want one outcome, but our structures continually produce another, which one is our organization actually designed for?
That question may tell you far more about your ministry than your mission statement ever will.
Why this matters for Substack Seminary
This is the kind of work we’re doing in Substack Seminary: not simply clarifying what we hope our ministries will accomplish, but examining whether the organizations we’re building actually make those outcomes possible.
If your structure keeps getting in the way of your mission, maybe the answer isn’t trying harder within the structure. Maybe it’s time to redesign it.
That’s the work we’re doing here.
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I cannot love this enough!
Not the issue of institutions being focused on institutional maintenance more than bringing people closer to God.
But how well you articulate the issue. Thank you!