grace for humanity

Beware of loosing your grace for humanity when working with volunteers.

In today's entertainment there are very few live events and even fewer done without lots of practice. On TV you have sports, news, awards shows, and SNL. Everything else is shot and edited, making it able to cover mistakes (yet how many continuity mistakes are seen even in those productions?). Most touring events, whether plays or concerts, have many weeks of rehearsals. Most awards shows have weeks of rehearsals that people don't realize happen as well.

Because we are so surrounded by these perfected programs, it has become an assumption that church techs should be able to pull off something perfect without any rehearsals with a new something each week. There seems to be a lack of understanding that even the true live events have a massive staff of professionals to cover their specialty niche of the production. Yet, in the church world, they can't afford professionals and demand that volunteers pull off the same quality.

Superbowl 2011 halftime was criticized in the media for having so many mistakes. I read an article in a trade mag written by someone on that tech crew. You see because of the freak weather, there were not any rehearsals. So the crew of highly trained professionals (these are some of the same guys that pull off other major events like the Grammys and such) made mistakes that you would normally not see on a major national event. This shows that even professionals, not given the opportunity to rehearse, are human as well.

Now think about the insanity of what many churches are asking of their volunteers and blaming their single staff person for not pulling off... a perfect service every week?

Organizations that utilize volunteers need to find and keep a grace for humanity in clear view.