Member involvement vs. church staffing

So this topic is of interest to me because of my experience being part of a church staff, some stragetic planing my friends at North Como Presbyterian are doing and some comments this past week at CAN. North Como ( where I was a member and active with the youth/ce program for a couple of years) has for years been looking at this issue. When I was there they had a group called shared ministries, and even had a director of share ministries. They focused on helping people realize their gifts and use them. Currently they have a Ministry Discernment task force they describe as being charged to prayerfuly discern and recommend a ministry staff configuration that empowers and encourages each member's faith engagement.

I was excited to see they have set some bold goals in connection to this focus. The one that really applies here is that they will increase the number of faith engaged regulars who are participating in NCPC groups or activities from the current level of approximently 60% to 90% by 2011. I think this activity measurement is something that most churches do not look at, it does not show up in the annual report or stats reported to the denomination.

When people talk about size of churches the usual question is how many members? my lutheran friends ( maybe beause once you are baptised they count you as a memeber) ask how many worship on average each week. how many churches have ______ # worship each week but a very small percent of that involved in a church group or activity outside of worship.

Maybe the question should be raised, why do we join churches? just for worship or for other programs as well? How much do we want churches to provide a lot of programs but expect the paid staff to do all the work?

At CAN the comment was made about how they don't spend a lot of the church budget on staff ( the way it was said was if people in that church don't want much of the money they give to the church going to staff salaries) and so they need their interns and members need to do thier parts for programs to happen. I have a few issues with interns, I think it takes at least a year to establish relationships needed in ministry and for most interns once the relationships are developed thier internship is done. Also I question even though they are paid how much people expect them to do because they are getting money from the church . Seems like cheap labor and I would be concerned about how much the church makes sure they are not overworked for little or no money. Also paid staff tends to keep people from getting involved in leadership as they rationalize that is the paid staff's jobs.

Visiting churches I am always curious about the amount of programs compared to the amount of paid staff. While I think churches need to value lay staff more ( pay and support) I am wondering if for some churches it is better to have less paid staff to enourage more ownership and involvement of church members.