Josh Packard

In the rational-bureaucracies which dominate the field of religion, labor is organized according to a complex scheme with specific tasks and duties assigned to a position in a hierarchy (known as a job description) regardless of individual desire at a particular moment. In the congregations I visited, however, labor tended to be organized according to personal inclination.

Activities and events were not organized or put on by the church staff for the congregants, but rather the congregants organized events and gatherings for themselves. A labor force of the willing consists of three distinct components. First, activities are initiated by the congregants. Second, the activity is maintained without interference from the official church staff. Finally, in order to avoid institutionalization, the activity is allowed to end or dissolve when there is no longer sufficient interest from the organizer. In other words, relying on a labor force of the willing means that programs are not continued because “that’s the way things have always been done.”

The first key component for organizing a willing labor force is that events and activities must initiated by the congregation rather than by the existing church staff. This bottom up, as opposed to top-down, approach has vast ramifications for how resources are developed and allocated and I discuss those in more detail in the next section. Letting the congregation bear the responsibility for initiating and organizing events is in sharp contrast to the church traditions many of my respondents come out of where the church staff create programs for the benefit of the congregation. Often these programs are developed with input from the congregation, but rarely is the congregation responsible for ensuring that an activity actually happens. Indeed, that is often precisely what the church staff exist to do. The congregations in this study operate in a much different way. Mark, a deacon at a self identified Emerging Church, described how it works in his congregation.

At our church the leaders aren’t going to go “Well, we’re going to put on the programs and bear all the responsibilities,” but they’ll go “Yes you really want to do that? You see that need? Then by all means man we’ll support you.”

This commitment to allowing activities to be initiated by the congregation runs throughout the organization. An interesting thing about Mark’s comment is that he makes it sound as though the leadership at Crossroads could put on a program and bear all the responsibilities when in fact, this is just structurally not possible. There is not a leadership staff position in charge of any particular activity. If a leader decided to start something then he/she would be acting structurally, though not, of course, functionally, as a regular congregant and these activities would be in addition to whatever his/her other, official, duties already entailed. My observations during the course of this research indicated that successful implementation of a willing labor force means to keep control of congregational activities in the hands of the individual congregants so that they cannot become incorporated into official church structure.

Existing organizational research would have us believe that this would come at the expense of resources as organizational actors are by and large reluctant to devote organizational resources to activities that fall beyond their control. One can reasonably expect that this effect would only be more exacerbated when the activity not only exists beyond the control of official organizational actors, but exists in such a space purposefully and indefinitely. However, I observed two strategies, a resource focused staff and the utilization of unplanned events, which ensured that organizational resources were continually available to support activities beyond the control of official organizational actors.

Resource Focused Staff

First, these congregations employ resource focused staff. Official staff positions are kept to a minimum and their job descriptions rarely place them in charge of a specific congregational activity or segment of the congregation. These congregations do not hire people to be youth ministers, family ministers, or Sunday school coordinators. Instead, the staff are focused on resource development. This involves creating and developing resources that people in the congregation can use, rather than programs that they can attend.

A good example of this is Harry, the building manager at Crossroads. I got an tour of Crossroads’s building from Harry who explained to me that the building currently hosts two open mic nights each week (one poetry, one music), an art gallery, a professional music and film editing studio, a coffee shop, a book store, second-hand clothing store, community office space as well as space for artists and classes all in addition to serving as office and gathering space for the congregation. Harry’s job as he explains it is “to make sure that people have what they need when they get here.” He does not do any planning of events. He does not target a specific audience. His job description does not require any screening to ensure that there is agreement in ideology. He simply works to make sure that the space is being used, fees (if any) are collected, and that the resources continue to evolve to meet the needs of the community. As Harry puts it, “I’m basically just here to make sure the space gets used as much as possible.”

Scheduling is done a first come, first served basis, but Harry knows the general rotation of groups (e.g., open mic night for poetry is the first Tuesday of every month.) However, Harry told me that they make a conscious effort to be an available space for spontaneous or relatively spur of the moment events: “Of course, some resources are in more demand than others in terms of space and equipment, but we also recognize the importance of just having space available for walk-ins even if we know we could schedule it out and use it more.” In one of my trips to the coffee shop to conduct an interview, I witnessed this exact thing happening. A man walked into the coffee shop and asked the barista what time the DJ was supposed to start. The barista indicated that she had no idea what he was talking about and that she was the only one working that night. However, the congregant I was interviewing told them both that the DJ was supposed to start at around 8:00. When I asked if there was a schedule of events, my interviewee, Jeremy, said,

“Well, yeah, but we just set this up earlier today…That’s one of the things I love about this place. Come up here and just listen to some poetry if you want or speak some or read your stuff. There’s all kinds of random stuff. A bunch of people the other night were upstairs watching a Star Trek marathon, just hanging out together, and that’s one of the good things that can happen here. It ended up with all the seats taken as word spread and people kept dropping by, and yet I’m know, from my experiences in other churches that if we, the ‘leadership’ had organized the event, it wouldn’t have been nearly so well attended.”

Changing the nature of church staff from people who’s primary duty is to consume resources to people who are charged with creating resources for others helps to encourage a labor of the willing and ensure that programs are not sustained simply because someone’s job, position, or prestige relies on the delivery of the program. When church staff are charged with providing programs and services for congregants there is much incentive for such programs to become institutionalized as quickly as possible in order to justify the staff person’s existence and/or status. Decoupling staff and programming effectively removes this incentive and instead places a high value on those people who can make resources as open, flexible and available as possible.

All of this must happen within constraints, however. As the example with Bob shows above, there is still some scheduling that must get done and some budgeting that must occur. The goal is not to provide a completely blank slate to begin each and every day, to abolish all planning, but rather to structure in disruptions to routine. No organization can be void of routine, but organizations can employ specific strategies aimed at making sure that the underlying reasons for engaging in an activity are always present. Rearticulating the role of church staff to focus on providing resources rather than providing programs is a key component of institutional resistance.

[pt. 2 will discuss the second key component of the Labor of the Willing]