Since I am taking the gallery management class and I have entered an art show in a faith based community I thought I should offer to volunteer for some aspect of the show. I know that the event is very labor intensive. When I went to drop off my art piece I asked the woman who checked me in who I could talk to about volunteering to help hang the show. We have done installation in class. I just attended a three hour lecture by my professor Greg Metz who is known for his work in installation. The lady “in charge” was pointed out to me. I went and introduced myself, told her I was a student at UTD and was interested in helping hang the show and could receive class credits for helping. Over the course of the conversation I was basically told “I don’t want to bother with you.” I have thought about this a lot since I had the conversation, trying to come up with another explanation, but that was it was, “I don’t want to be bothered.”
I was approached by the woman who helped me checked me in as I was leaving; she asked if I talked to the lady “in charge.” I told her I had and that she couldn’t use me. The check in lady was a little surprised. She asked me if I told her I was with the university and studying installation. I said yes. I told her it was OK. I explained that I live in Plano and there are a lot of places closer that will let me help for school, but I was interested in helping here because it was a faith based show. I would find other ways to get my credits
I had several reactions to this encounter. There was outrage, but not so much personal outrage. To tell you the truth for me to try to get uptown to help would be a huge sacrifice of time for me. What I saw that made me cringe was a ministry killing attitude. It made me question why the church was doing the show. This is important to me because a friend of mine and fellow artist Brenda Gribbon are in the process of starting an arts organization for Christian visual artists. I am thinking through questions like why. What would be the purpose of an organization like that? One of my disappointments with the church that has been hosting the art show for the last three years is that they have said one of the purposes of the show was to connect Christian visual artist in the area. There haven’t been any other events except the show and a meeting where they take input for the show. To their credit they have had some speakers over the years in conjunction with the show, but no movement to create a community of artists. The impetus for Brenda and myself is a desire for community thus opportunity for ministry as artists. The conversation I had this afternoon as I dropped of my art fell short of good ministry for me for several reasons.
As a person who has worked with volunteers and as one who wants to build a community of artist I wonder why I was not asked to do something else if the hanging team was trained and in place. I wondered why the lady “in charge” didn’t take a little more interest in what I was doing, just to be polite. I wondered why I wasn’t asked to give her my name and contact information for next year. I was amazed by how many ministry building opportunities she had missed. My pastor has spoken to me about doing something like they are doing on a smaller scale. If the church is interested in promoting Christian visual artists then an opportunity was missed to begin conversations to grow this idea. But one person’s response won’t stop me; I will try to talk to other people at the opening event. I am on mission. However so far I am not interested in doing things the way they are doing it.
There was a time when I was in a women’s ministry that was flourishing. We put in place some guidelines to help grow ministry. We gleaned the concepts behind them from some of the best leadership in the area. We wanted to expand our women’s ministry to include as many women in the church as we could in a vital way. We wanted to affect the community outside the church too. One of the foremost concepts was the word INCLUDE. So simple but something we women by nature tend to not do by default. We tend to be cliquish. We get comfortable and we like being with our friends and we forget to include and invite. Then we wonder why only 50 women show up for an event when 500 attend church. We wonder why no one volunteers to help. We get burnt out, self righteous, discouraged when our ministry dwindles.
Organizations that want to thrive need to be intentional in their inclusion. They need to think about what’s next and make sure they have people in place to replace members who move on for whatever reason. How many ministries fade away when the people who started them leave?
We did a few simple things. When we built teams we included all demographics of the women in our church; young and old, single and married, with children and empty nesters. When we had an event and organized volunteers we made a rule that we needed to recruit three to four new member or inactive members for each event. We rotated leadership in the various positions. We learned to give ministry away and tried to get as many people involved as possible. We trained our volunteers because we felt some were hesitant to step forward and serve and lead. We nurtured relationships because that is how God works, person to person. We looked for new ways to do something so we could use the gifts and talents of the people in the church. We were thankful for the women who served and lead out. We tried to communicate that. We tried to give ownership to our volunteer by giving them the assignment and letting go. We provided guidelines to keep us all on task and to avoid confusion. We networked with other churches to help us see the bigger picture and learn from their experiences. We believed that the body of Christ is a body and that we can all work together in purpose. It was a beautiful thing. Anyone can do it,
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