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.

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.

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

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.