Person-centered Motivation: The Missing Link to Church Recruitment
Ruth Senter
July 1, 1980
You've seen the man. Amid his regalia of red, white, and blue, he points a bony finger directly into your line of vision, shatters your complacency with his piercing stare, and shouts his message without saying a word: "Uncle Sam Needs You." Compelling figure that he is, his lavish guarantees of seeing the world, on-the-job training, and career security do not move more than a handful of people to cross his threshold and sign on the dotted line. Lack of patriotism? Uninformed about the needs? Faulty recruitment? Who knows? But somehow, despite his panorama of persuasion, Uncle Sam often fails to recruit.
The church and Uncle Sam face a common dilemma-enlisting recruits. Although there are any number of reasons why Uncle Sam has to work hard at it, one cannot help but ask why the church, of all places, suffers from an acute case of manpower anemia. Why is it that recruitment is often listed as the number one source of frustration for the Christian education director? Why do many leaders feel that finding enough people to staff their programs is a task as difficult as scaling Mount Everest? Why are members reluctant to join the service ranks; or, once they do join, why the fatalities along the way? What about Christ's call to service? Is it not clear? Or the sense of mission-does it not inspire sacrificial commitment to a program?
Certainly the problem of manning the lines in the local church can't be traced to a shortage of recruitment tools. We have as many "how-to-do-it" plans as flies at a summer picnic. Recruitment manuals abound-written by Christian educators who theorize, systematize, and publicize fresh approaches to this age-old problem. Check the bookshelves of any local C. E. director and you will find at least a ...
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