“Subject=Consistent Language”

S1=”We equip churches with the right tools to help recruit volunteers and place them in a ministry that best utilizes their gifts and talents.” – this is a quote from your getting started page. From video blog you make the point its about “servants” not “volunteers.” To be consistent may I humbly suggest you change your wording here? You appear to have a great process as I am checking things out. I have a personal passion as a mission coach about helping people discover their purpose.”

I first want to thank this minister who took the time to carefully read and reflect upon our website.  Secondly, I want to explain the apparent inconsistent use of “volunteers” vs. “servants” on our site.  We recognize that most churches use the word “volunteers” in recruiting members to serve in various positions within the church.  I wish this were not so, but it is what it is.  My desire is to change the word from “volunteer” to “servant”, but in order to communicate to those who are seeking to use our tools, resources and process I must start with what is familiar to those wanting to learn about PLACE Ministries.

I stated in the video blog http://www.placeministries.org/videoblog/ the words volunteer, volunteers, volunteered are only used 4 times in the entire Bible while the words, serve, servant, servants are used 1010 throughout the Bible.  I passionately desire that churches would move away from using the word “volunteer” and talk about those who serve as servants like we see in the New Testament.  Jesus stated in Matthew 20:28 that “…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve…”.  Paul encourages us to follow his example as he follows the example of Christ (I Corinthians 11:1).

I would like nothing more than one day to not have the word “volunteer” listed on our website as something someone does within the Body of Christ.  But until the culture and language is changed at times I am stuck with using words like “volunteer”, “volunteers”, “volunteering” or “volunteered”.  Consider being a part along with our ministry in changing the language from “volunteer” to “servant” in your culture.

The PLACE Options

Kristin and her team reviewed the three options we have developed for incorporating PLACE resources into a church’s connection strategy and decided they wanted to incorporate what we call Option 3 – Personal Discovery + Coaching + Connecting.  Over the years our team has found churches have used these three options to connect their people to meaningful ministry.

• Option 1 is Personal Discovery where our five PLACE assessments are presented in various formats.
• Option 2 is Personal Discovery + Coaching where the five PLACE assessments plus utilizing members within the church who are trained connection coaches to help guide those through the Personal Discovery to ministry opportunities.
• Option 3 provides the concepts and tools to help transition people from Personal Discovery through coaching to actual ministry PLACEment.

One of the key elements in making Kristin’s desire for Option 3 successful is Ongoing Senior Pastor/Staff Support. Kristin and her team have worked hard to get their senior pastor and staff to not only buy into the ministry connection process, but also invest their time in working to ensure the process is successful and effective church wide.

I look forward to discussing the other PLACE implementation options in future blogs.