Should a Church Hire Ringers?
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Mon, December 05, 2005
- Viewed 64
- (9) comments so far
Should churches hire music leaders who aren?t Christians? (Or who aren?t of their faith?)
Should churches put non-christians in their choirs?
Is it OK for you to put non-christians on your church softball team?
Is it OK for churches to hire support staff (custodians, secretaries etc?) who are non-christians?
Is it OK for churches to hire contract professionals who are non-christians? (accountants, sound engineers, attorneys, markenting consultants etc?)
Is it OK for churches to hire or recruit non-christian musicians to play in a worship service or special christmas program?
My real question is: ?At what point is the person?s faith more important than how well they do the job??
OR
?In what jobs, is the skill level more important than faith??
Wow... that's a great topic. What do you think? Where have you drawn the line on this one?
Todd
Recently, we ran a post about a new Christian movie about missions entitled, "End of the Spear" and how the producer cast a homosexual in the main role of the movie. Well… "The Thinkling’s" blog took this one step further and asked some questions that are very interesting as they pertain to the church. When, if ever, should the church use non-christians in the work of the church? They write…
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Evangelist Jeff on Mon, December 05, 2005
No. A church should look to God in prayer, use precaution, use sound wisdom, in all these matters above. It can be very detrimental to the church. Remember what happened to the Children of Israel when they did not look to God for wisdom and guidance, and a nation sneaked in on them and told them they were from a long way off, but they were actually next door neighbors.
Dean on Mon, December 05, 2005
Let’s get real basic and define “Christian” before we get to the issue of whether a “church” should “hire” a non-Christian. I think the “church” has so mixed “family” and “business” that these kinds of questions consume obscene amounts of time, focus, time, energy and money.
Peter Hamm on Mon, December 05, 2005
Maybe we in the church should consider only hiring people we absolutely positively know to be believers who share all our peculiar beliefs and tendencies, with whom we’ll never disagree about anything… (Sarcasm intended… sorry…) Or… on the other hand…
Seriously, it’s a touch subject. I’d use someone who wanted to play guitar in my worship band on Saturday night and Sunday morning, cause if they wanted to actually spend that time volunteering in the church, there has to be something behind that… i.e. God working on their heart, but I’d never actually HIRE someone to work for the church full-time in a pastoral role who wouldn’t agree to a basic confession of “orthodox Christian faith”, like, say, the Nicene creed or some such, or if my particular church or denomination has such a statement, that one.
I’ve found, though, that sometimes those whose faith is unformed or even messed up can find/be found by Christ as they “work” side-by-side with us in Church work. So, I’d have a non-believer play in a worship band beside me if they wanted to, as long as it’s not someone who’s known as the city druglord or something… (Preserve the unity/integrity of the church and all)
Wendi on Mon, December 05, 2005
This was quite a hot topic in our church about a year ago. Started with an idea about finding “entry level” roles (volunteer) for people if we are unsure about their spiritual understandings and commitments – newcomers really. Some felt that allowing a “non-Christian” to volunteer is too risky, might have life-style issues and the impression would be that we are ignoring it, allowing a negative influence. People will assume that volunteers are Christians and one might be asked a spiritual question they can’t answer. Several of us countered that Christians are just as likely as seekers to have “issues” – but while one only sits on the pew we have earned no real right to discuss such things (nor are we likely to even know all the issues people have). We felt the right kind of partnerships would prevent any chance of unanswerable questions (when was the last time someone asked a greeter about the trinity anyway?)
Main question here is why. Why would a church want to ask or offer serving opportunities (paid or unpaid) to someone who might still be seeking? If the motive is just to produce the best product, then I’d have to say no – the activities of church should never be about the best possible product. If it to provide another entry door to our faith community – then I say great, but be prudent. Just serving along side a seasoned Christian doesn’t insure that faith conversations will happen. This is a paradigm shift we’d need to coach our people about. Most people in our church ASSUME that everyone there is already saved. Thus, it never occurs to them to talk about Jesus with the mom who’s helping hand out cookies. Offering regular ministry to a spiritual seeker has many benefits. Besides creating natural and non-threatening opportunities build relationships, it gets people coming back – cause they are needed and will be missed if they don’t show up.
Now . . . this treads awfully close to the “who is church for” question and I don’t want to cause a hijack. Back to the topic at hand, in our case after satisfying the why question, we moved to a how question. What we did was create a criteria by which we evaluated all volunteer roles. Same criteria could be applied to paid roles. If there was any amount of spiritual influence or if partnerships with seasoned Christians was possible for the role, then we insisted on knowing (as best we can) that the volunteer understands and affirms our statement of faith. Turned out that there were lots of entry roles where spiritual seekers could jump in.
Brian La Croix on Mon, December 05, 2005
We have wrestled with this as well.
One line we have drawn is that if the person is in blatant sin, then that person may not have any sort of leadership function whatsoever including singing with the worship leaders.
However, I think that person can do “behind the scene” stuff. For instance, we’re trying to contact a young lady who is on probation and needing to fulfill community service commitments. They allow volunteering at the church as fulfilling that. So if she’s willing to clean the church, then we’re willing to let her. She is not living a godly lifestyle, but there is the chance for great conversations.
I’ve also learned that one of the keys to all this is to lay down very clear guidelines for behavior, speech, etc., especially if “hiring” non-believers. No smoking, drinking, cussing, must wear appropriate dress, etc. And have it in writing, with them possibly signing an agreement to abide by it. This protects you from hassles down the road.
That’s not legalistic, it’s protecting those who might be influenced by the other person negatively.
I don’t expect holy behavior from non-believers, but it’s not too much to ask for them to respect your church’s standards of common decency and respect for others.
Just my thoughts…
Brian
RevJay on Mon, December 05, 2005
When I was being mentored by my pastor he told me that the church should never hire anyone that he felt the Lord didn’t directly place in his position at the right time. As the Associate Pastor, I thought this was a good point of reference.
The church had a pastor, assistant, secretary, and custodian. They were the paid staff. The Music leading and choir were volunteered, the piano, organ, special music, accountant, computer guru, were all volunteers. If we needed a hole dug in the yard, we called a work day and one of the men brought his back hoe and we went to town. When we needed the roof fixed, same thing.
We weren’t a large church, about 350 attendees. Things got done by request and a true desire for the Lord and His structures and grounds. In fact, the same guy who cut the grass 25 years ago is still doing it today, and more.
Praise God for the faithfulness of His people. I think that the leadership doesn’t go far enough to get people involved with the ministry they support each Sunday. RevJay
mike on Mon, December 05, 2005
I don’t know about you all, but I am not going to dig to deep into reading the rest of your comments, but I do agree where this topic is heading and I think it needs to be discuss amongst our staffs and even to the church leaders. Thanks for saying that no one else was willing to say.
ld on Mon, December 05, 2005
From personnal experience, I do not think it is a good idea. I am married to a musician who is an unbeliever and he was approached and asked to play as part of a worship team. Mostly the worship team was unbelievers and instead of listening to the pastor during services they would get together and reinforce each others unbelief. If anything it confused him more and now has made things more difficult. One member of the team is living with a woman who is twenty years younger and there has been no disipline so it makes it look like anything goes. Other male members have taken out women on the team and bought them drinks and asked them very personnel questions. My husband, assuming other praise team members are Christians to some degree has decided they are worse in some respect than those he knows in the secular world. I think in theory it sounds good but the practical working out of this just plain doesn’t work. How can you lead a congregation into worship if the praise team doesn’t even know who they are worshipping? I am all for bringing unbelievers and seekers into the church and helping them find their way but one must be cautious and careful to the exposure they recieve from other seeker/unbelievers.
phil on Mon, December 12, 2005
A very loose rule of thumb I use is if a person is representing our church then that person will be of like faith and of good moral character. If a person is hired by the church, such as a contractor, then quality of work not faith is the guiding factor. God gives exceptions but they won’t be in leadership positions
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