When I worked at a church in my early 20's, part of my job was to help new people feel "plugged in" and make new friends. We had one blunt instrument for this: Volunteer for something! Serve on a team! Serve on six teams! Be in charge of the teams! Become indispensable! And then when an individual inevitably burned out from overcommitment and STILL felt disconnected, it was easy for the staff to just move on to another person or set of people who were craving community connection, and the cycle would start all over.
(I hated the volunteer recruitment part of my job, btw. I got the feedback from my pastor/boss that I wasn't an effective schmoozer, and could I work on that? No, I could not, which was eventually grounds for dismissal.)
Eventually I burned out hard enough that we moved to a church that has basically no programs at all. There's nothing to volunteer FOR. This is great, nobody burns out. Except I honestly do not have other strategies for making friends at a new church. I think that's partly a me problem; I've been conditioned that belonging in a community is predicated upon being useful.
Often I think having less programs, or none, is its own kind of blessing.
And if we build our own (and others') self-worth and usefulness, we will end up only valuing useful people, and discarding the 'useless'. What a terrible inversion of the gospel that is. That our value is not in our works is never an easy truth to bring to bear on our own lives, but always a necessary one.
That's absolutely the pattern I've seen and experienced (and probably perpetuated at times).
I'm sure exactly what you need is more books for your reading list, but recent ones that have been helpful to me here are both of K J Ramsey's books (THIS TOO SHALL LAST about chronic illness, and THE LORD IS MY COURAGE about recovering from a toxic church community through the lens of Psalm 23) and Eric Minton's IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S EVERYTHING (about how the kind of capitalist, utilitarian mindset you're writing about seeps into churches).
I should say it was PART of the grounds for dismissal; the other part was not being willing to work unpaid hours to pick up the slack for the volunteers who burned out.
When I worked at a church in my early 20's, part of my job was to help new people feel "plugged in" and make new friends. We had one blunt instrument for this: Volunteer for something! Serve on a team! Serve on six teams! Be in charge of the teams! Become indispensable! And then when an individual inevitably burned out from overcommitment and STILL felt disconnected, it was easy for the staff to just move on to another person or set of people who were craving community connection, and the cycle would start all over.
(I hated the volunteer recruitment part of my job, btw. I got the feedback from my pastor/boss that I wasn't an effective schmoozer, and could I work on that? No, I could not, which was eventually grounds for dismissal.)
Eventually I burned out hard enough that we moved to a church that has basically no programs at all. There's nothing to volunteer FOR. This is great, nobody burns out. Except I honestly do not have other strategies for making friends at a new church. I think that's partly a me problem; I've been conditioned that belonging in a community is predicated upon being useful.
Often I think having less programs, or none, is its own kind of blessing.
And if we build our own (and others') self-worth and usefulness, we will end up only valuing useful people, and discarding the 'useless'. What a terrible inversion of the gospel that is. That our value is not in our works is never an easy truth to bring to bear on our own lives, but always a necessary one.
That's absolutely the pattern I've seen and experienced (and probably perpetuated at times).
I'm sure exactly what you need is more books for your reading list, but recent ones that have been helpful to me here are both of K J Ramsey's books (THIS TOO SHALL LAST about chronic illness, and THE LORD IS MY COURAGE about recovering from a toxic church community through the lens of Psalm 23) and Eric Minton's IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S EVERYTHING (about how the kind of capitalist, utilitarian mindset you're writing about seeps into churches).
The only thing worse than a too-long reading list is an empty one.
I should say it was PART of the grounds for dismissal; the other part was not being willing to work unpaid hours to pick up the slack for the volunteers who burned out.