A skills inventory is a list of men who are willing to donate their labor and the skills they are proficient at to help people in the church. For example, the church may keep a list of carpenters and electricians in the congregation who can respond to carpentry and electrical needs. In general, I don’t encourage skills inventories. Here’s why:
- Skills inventories emphasize project ministry instead of relational ministry. The needy in our congregations need more than just projects done for them. They need to be loved with the love of Christ, and this always implies relationship. Doing a project here and there for these people does meet limited needs, but it falls far short of the love of Christ.
- Skills inventories burn out your men. Because skills inventory ministry develops few long term relationships between the care giver and the care receiver, and because the same men tend to be called over and over again, eventually the men on your skills inventory drop out. I don’t know of any skills inventory ministries that have lasted more than a couple of years.
- Skills inventories encourage believers to try to save money on labor. I had a board member one time who owned an auto repair shop. He told me he dreaded it when believers came into his shop because they always expected a discount. I believe Christians, of all people, should pay a good wage for good work. Skills inventory ministries encourage believers in the church to do just the opposite. Why call someone to work on your home when you can get a bargain from someone in your church?
- Skills inventories imply you have to be skilled to serve. In a skills inventory ministry, you’re only valuable if you have a skill. And the more valuable your skill, the more valuable you are. This is not true. We have to love to serve. “Through love, serve one another.” The more you love, the more valuable you are in your service.
On the other hand, a skills inventory can be useful in the following situations:
- The church knows the difference between a genuine emergency need (immediate danger to life and/or property) and a non emergency need (someone simply trying to save money on labor) and consistently applies this distinction when using its skills inventory. Having a skills inventory list at hand when an emergency occurs can be invaluable. But the church needs to learn to make the distinction between emergencies and non emergencies, otherwise it will experience the problems I listed above.
- It uses the men on the skills inventory sparingly. Tell the men on your skills inventory list that you’ll only contact them once every – say -six months, or a year. Doing so will help the church avoid burning out its men.
- It’s willing to pay someone on the skills inventory when they do large projects for someone in the church who can’t afford it (i.e., replacing a sewer line, flood restoration, etc.). Paying for extended labor will help reinforce the idea that the skills inventory does not exist to help people save money.
- The church is meeting the needs of its widowed and single parents in other ways as well. If the church understands that a skills inventory ministry is only one aspect of ministry to their widowed and single parents (and others), then it can expand its ministry to meet their other needs.
Understanding the pitfalls and advantages of a skills inventory ministry will help you when considering whether or not you should do one.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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