On 7/29/2014 10:11 AM, Bowie Bailey wrote:
On 7/29/2014 12:33 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
I learned after a year that if your goal is to have people who don't
understand or appreciate what you do for them, and shit all over what
you do for them, volunteer for a church.
Depends on the church. I do volunteer work for my church on a regular
basis. Technical stuff, but not usually directly computer related as
they pay an IT company to take care of the computers and network. They
are always very appreciative of their volunteers.
There's a reason most churches constantly solicit for volunteers. A
church is the only place that a professional tradesperson can volunteer
his services and during the job be told that he's doing it wrong, by
people who have never held a wrench, paintbrush, pipe threader, network
cable, you name it.
You get that sort of thing everywhere -- whether you are a volunteer or
a paid employee/contractor. In my experience, the main reason churches
are constantly looking for volunteers is that most people don't see the
value in donating their time or assume that in a large church other
people will do it.
http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/whose.job.html
I actually saw one time a couple come in and paint a large room in the
church, used very good paint, excellent coverage, masked off everything,
etc. and when they left the room looked like a pro had done it - no
paint runs or drips where they weren't supposed to be etc. Then 2 weeks
later the church paid to have a professional come in and paint the room
- again - same color - same paint. When I asked why, I was told "we had
the painters scheduled for that room, they should have asked us before
painting in there" This is the kind of politics you run into with
church volunteering.
I see two problems here. 1) Disorganization -- if they were planning to
hire professionals to paint, why were the volunteers there to begin
with?
The volunteers were teaching a class in that room and wanted the room to
look nice. They had offered to paint the room and been told something
along the lines of "the room doesn't need it don't worry about it" The
class was an english as second language type of class and the teaching
was of course also donated by the couple.
I saw the room in the "before" stage and while it didn't require it, it
was dingy and hadn't been painted in years. One corner the ceiling had
fallen and been patched due to a roof leak (that had been fixed later)
2) If the professional was willing to be paid to re-paint a room
that clearly didn't need it, they need to get rid of him and find
someone who won't rip them off.
I think you missed the point of the story. The issue was a control
issue. This was paid church staff that ordered in a paid professional
painter to deliberately repaint a room that had just been painted. The
staff was attempting to send a message to the volunteer couple that
you volunteers don't do anything unless we tell you to do it. For all I
know their normal pro painter took one look and told them it didn't need
it, and they said "fine" and just picked up the phone and called
another.
I agree with the staff comment made by the other poster. The issue in
churches is that a church is supposed to be under the control of the
congregation (in some denominations) or the minister (in other
denominations) But it's not supposed to EVER be under the control of
the paid staff - many of whom aren't even members of the church nor even
share the same faith.
But, once you bring the paid staff in, if they get a chance they will
take over, like any bureaucracy, and act in a manner to preserve their
criticality to the organization.
This is why I really don't trust churches for doing most "good works"
type of things. Way too many of them violate the 503(c) requirements of
financial transparency and so forth. Many do not publish their exec
staff meeting notes at all, and others only make them available on
request - a clear violation of transparency laws.
I'm not a Mormon but I will say this - that is one thing they got right
when they setup the Mormon church - they don't allow paid staff -at all-
in their churches.
Ted
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