Stop Plugging Positions | What the Team Cannot See E2

Stop plugging positions. I want to say that to you early, before we even get to the text, because I spent years doing it. The decline button is telling you something the schedule cannot.

You know the pattern. You build the Planning Center matrix for the month. You send the requests. And there is one name that keeps coming back red. A decline, then another decline, then a blockout that covers four Sundays. And somewhere in you, a clock starts.

I need to make a confession in this episode, because this wound is one I have been on the wrong side of. I had a season in ministry where I did not care about my volunteers as people. I cared about whether there were five of them. The pressure of that mandate rolled downhill, off of me and onto them. So when somebody declined, I did not wonder about them. I wondered about the slot.

There is a tension in Galatians 6 that most of us read right past. Verse 2 says bear one another's burdens. Verse 5 says each man will bear his own burden. Same English word, two different Greek words. The first is bare, a crushing weight, the load that breaks a back. The second is phortion, a soldier's pack, the load a person is meant to carry themselves.

A roster cannot tell the difference. Planning Center cannot tell you whether that decline is a phortion, a season of ordinary busyness, or a bare, a marriage coming apart, a diagnosis, a faith that is quietly bleeding out. Only a relationship can tell you that.

The practice that replaced my old one: when the declines stack up now, I do not text the position. I text the person. Hey, what's up. Noticed you've been blocked out, just checking in on you. No ask attached.

The empty slot on your roster might be the most honest worship question your team asks you this month. Not, who can I get. But, what is this person carrying.

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