I’ve been a victim of this whole idea of saying “yes” to everything. And when we get into this habit we end up burning ourselves out, trying to serve in every possible ministry, volunteering for every event, but it’s just not sustainable. We end up drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The horrible part about it is that for people who are new to the faith this can lead them to drift away, to leave the Church.

How Not to Find Volunteers

In my few short years in the Church I have experienced this first hand. When people see that you are making yourself available, you automatically get added to the list of people they will turn to when they need something. That means they will ask you for help with everything. It’s unfortunate that we abuse this willingness to serve. By “we” I mean those of us who are involved in a leadership role in the parish community. We take advantage of people. It’s happened to me. And I’ve done it to others. It has become customary, but we’ve got to break out of this pattern.

The problem I’ve seen is that many times people who have gone through a recent conversion experience on retreat or converts that are new to parish life are ignorant to all of this and they are just on fire for Jesus and want to get involved in whatever way they can. As leaders we should be able to take these people aside and coach them through this phase, explaining to them that they should take it slow and focus their time, talents, and efforts on one or two things to get started, help them find a good fit for them instead of exploiting them for our benefit.

We have to learn to not always go to the same people. We’ve got to throw away our lists of “yes” people and begin inviting others to get involved. But it all begins with conversion, an encounter with Christ through which people are called to discipleship. In most cases, until this has happened they are not very willing to serve. They have to know Jesus personally and respond to His invitation to follow Him. So we’ve got to put some serious effort into facilitating these encounters, leading people to conversion, and focusing on discipleship.

I know it’s not always easy. In his book The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic Matthew Kelly explains that only 7% of the people in a parish do 100% of the work. So we have to focus on bringing more people on board, turning them from spectators into participants, from consumers into co-workers for the kingdom.

To Serve or Not to Serve

I’ve talked about simplicity before and how important it is for us to cut back, to simplify, and to focus our efforts. If I’m involved in five different ministries, it is impossible for me to give my all in each of them. I know this because I’ve done it before. Until I cut back from five to one or two, was I actually able to serve wholeheartedly, giving my all to that particular effort. It requires that we learn to say “no” to some things in order that we can say a true “yes” to others.

Another important aspect of saying “no” is that there are often other people who are more talented in certain areas than we are, who could do the job much more effectively than we could. Why not let them do it so that we can focus on our strengths and talents? Whether that requires an application process, the teaching of some sort of discernment process or a workshop on finding strengths or charisms, we’ve got to do something and be proactive about this. Each of us has a specific vocation, but few answer the call because they have not been trained to listen for it or how to respond.

Even on a community level we’ve got to learn to discern, to find what we’re good at, what is effective, and cut the rest out. For example, many parishes in southern California have annual fiestas to raise funds. These require tons of time, money, and effort for a fairly nominal gain. Is this the best use of our time, money, and effort? Are we burning out our people with little results? Is there another way? Are we doing this just because everyone else is and we’re too lazy to come up with creative ways to raise funds? We’ve got to be smart and strategic about these kinds of things. Should we say “no” to this so we can say “yes” to something else?

I’d really like to get your thoughts on this. What has been your experience? What solutions have you seen that help prevent this on a personal level or parish level—discerment process, strengths finder, charism workshop?