Lara Rusch ~ 16
Baptists
Newcomers to community organizing quickly learn that they will not be
unattached “volunteers” in the organization. Community organizers consider any active
participants as “leaders,” those who work to engage others in their congregation and
community. Certainly organizers watch for lay leaders who have demonstrated some
social organizing capacity or are well networked within their community (Rogers 1990,
107-109). Yet they also try to draw untapped talent into the core teams, welcome anyone
who has interest, and use trainings and assemblies to attract new talent. Moving through
the learning process of organizing, training, meeting, and strategizing makes participants
into leaders as much as any previous achievement (Osterman 2002).
Many of the Protestant pastors I interviewed described their own methods of
engaging newcomers and novices into their liturgy and practices, apart from community
organizing methods. A particularly busy and orderly church, Mt. Zion uses seminars to
train people who are elected as leaders of the church’s many ministries (choirs, deacons,
nurses, ushers, Sunday School teachers, etc.). Rev. Joseph Barlow explained that a key
message he tries to get across in these trainings is that leadership, “is not about you, it’s
all about God. And you can’t make a leader out of individuals when they’re thinking of
themselves. Jesus said, He that will come after me, let him deny himself.” Just as Jesus
made leaders out of his followers, Barlow believes, “He has demanded that I go and
make disciples, and those are nothing other than but leaders. […] So that’s my
responsibility, to make leaders. Everyone should. A father should always train his son to
Convention