Hello, and welcome to Mobilize Your Men to Meet the Needs Spectrum in Your Church. This is the first of three videos on this topic. This video is entitled “The Needs Spectrum in Your Church” and what we’re going to do is we’re going to take the needs of widows, widowers and single parents and we’re going to place them in the broader spectrum of pressing needs that each local church experiences.

Paul in Titus 3:14 says, “Let our people learn to engage in good deeds, to meet pressing needs. That they may not be unfruitful.” And what we want to do is we want to talk about what are pressing needs in the local church.

The Difference Between Pressing Needs and Non-Pressing Needs

The first thing we need to do when we address the topic of pressing needs is we need to distinguish between pressing needs and non-pressing needs. Because if we don’t what we’re going to do is waste our volunteer resources fulfilling needs that are not genuinely pressing. And so the question is how we do that. What are non-pressing needs as opposed to pressing needs?

All churches get phone calls requesting help. And in many cases, these requests are simply people who want to save money on labor. Somebody has a broken pipe and they call a plumber and he gives an estimate and it’s going to cost $600 to repair. But then they go, “Oh, Fred at church. He’s a plumber. I can call the church and they’ll send him over and he’ll fix it for free.”

And after three or four of those phone calls, Fred calls the church and says, “Don’t call me anymore. This is how I make my livelihood.”

Often when I do this as a seminar at men’s conferences I ask the question, “How many of you men have helped someone move?” And almost every time the entire audience raises their hand. For some reason people think that the church is a front for a moving company.

The fastest way to burn out your men is to respond every single time to someone who calls and asks for help with a move. What they’ve done is they’ve gotten that estimate from a moving company and it’s going to cost three or four thousand dollars to load up the truck to move their furniture and all their belongings. And they think, “Well, I’ll just call the church and they’ll send over some guys and they’ll help me move.”

But the problem with that is, it’s a lot of work, it’s very hard work. And many times the people are moving away. You never see them again. When I was going through seminary, I worked for a moving company. But as a pastor for twenty years, I think I moved more people than I did working for that moving company.

So the first thing to remember when you get a request for help with a move is the church is not a front for a moving company. People are just trying to save money. That is not a pressing need. And if you don’t distinguish between a genuine pressing need and a non-pressing need, you’re going to burn your men out really fast.

What I recommend is that the church refer out these non-pressing needs. For example, when it comes to requests for help with moving, there’s a website called MovingHelp.com. I think every church office should have a placard on the wall with “MovingHelp.com” on it.

This is a fantastic website. It’s sponsored by UHaul. And what you do is rent a truck and then go on the website, MovingHelp.com, and get estimates for two men working for x number of hours, five hours, three hours, or whatever. And it’s extremely efficient. I’ve used this website several times myself. It’s very easy and it’s wonderful. You have two men show up. They have their own dollies and padding. They pack everything up and then you give them a code with they’re all done. They go online and they get paid with that code.

So MovingHelp.com will help you refer out some of these non-pressing need requests.

Now, the thing is, the Word of God tells us, and we know from personal experience, that there are genuine pressing needs in the local church. And so what we want to do now is talk about those. What are pressing needs?

Well, what I’ve done is categorize these pressing needs into three separate categories. Now there’s nothing in the Word of God that says, “There are three types of pressing needs.” This is simply an intuitive analysis that I’ve done on my part. You can do your own analysis of the types of pressing needs. But I’ve found that this helps many churches over the years think about and process this whole issue of what pressing needs are.

Emergency Special Project Requests

So the first type of pressing need that I observe in churches is what I call emergency special project requests. This is where there is immediate danger to life or property.

For example, we had a woman who was a member of our church. She called the church office and said, “This coming Monday morning I’m going to be evicted from my apartment. And if I don’t have all of my possessions out by 8 am, I’m going to lose everything I own. And I can’t afford to hire somebody to help me move. Can you help me?’

Now that is a situation that is an emergency special project request. That is, she’s going to lose everything she owns. And in that situation the Word of God tells us that the church is responsible as a corporate body to respond to that pressing need.

So our church sent a group of guys over. We got her move. We got her resituated in a better situation and everything was taken care of.

My team at one point was assigned to a woman whose husband at the time was serving in Iraq. We live in Denver and we had a hard freeze and a quick thaw and her basement pipe burst. So she called me up and said, “Herb, my pipe is burst! I need some help.” So I grabbed my wife and we went over there and we got her all situated. I found out where the water turn-off valve was, got that turned off and got it all fixed up.

So those are what we would call emergency special project requests. And in general, churches do a pretty good job of meeting these types of pressing needs. And the reason why is because they’re one-time projects. They’re in and out and it’s over. You’re through.

Long-Term Needs

Now the next two types of pressing needs are much more difficult for churches. The reason why is because they last a long time and they can be very extreme. So let’s talk about these next two types of pressing needs.

The second type of pressing need is what we call long term needs. This is where a person’s normal social relationship has been severed. For example, a widow or a widower, or a single mother, or a fatherless child. It could also be somebody who has a long-term disability.

And in general, what churches do is they respond to these long term needs as if they were project needs. For example, the widow may have a broken window. So we send somebody over to fix her window. Or the single mom may have clogged gutters. So we send someone over to clean out her gutters.

And so we respond to these needs as if they were special project needs. But what we’re going to find out is that these people have far greater needs than just projects to be done for them.

Catastrophic Long-Term Needs

Now the third type of pressing need is even more extreme. It’s what I call catastrophic long-term needs. This is where someone has a life-altering event, a catastrophe that happens to them that results in total dependence.

For example, there’s a church in Corvallis, Oregon – Northwest Church in Corvallis, Oregon – who had a youth pastor by the name of Jack Glubrecht. He took his youth group waterskiing. When it was is turn to get up and waterski, he fell and he broke his neck. And he became a permanent quadriplegic.

Now if your church had a youth pastor fall and break his neck and become a quadriplegic, how would your church address that need? A catastrophic event resulting in total dependence.

There’s a church called Valley Community Baptist Church in Avon, Connecticut, and several years ago they had a woman walk through the front door of their church with ten children. She said, “My husband is in prison and I have just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Can you help me?”

And then, sure enough, just a short time later, she died and left her children as orphans with the church.

If your church had a woman walk through the front door with ten kids and the she dies, and your left with ten children, how would you respond to that particular pressing need? Catastrophic, long-term need resulting in total dependence.

I believe Paul in 1 Timothy 5 is talking about that type of situation as well. He’s talking about widows who are “widows indeed.” In ancient times they didn’t have Social Security, they didn’t have a social safety net. And so, when a woman’s husband died, she only had three options: she could beg, she could engage in prostitution, or she could die of starvation. Those were pretty much what she was limited to.

And so the Apostle Paul is teaching the church how to address these particular types of long term needs: a widow who has been in the church for many years, who has no relatives, who has no support system, and who has served the church faithfully. They are put on a support list. That was how the church was to address that particular catastrophic, long-term need.

A Strategy for Addressing Pressing Needs

Okay, so these then are the three types of pressing needs that I see in local churches across America and around the world. So the question the is, how do we address these needs.

Well what I suggest and what I’ve seen work very well is for the church to first focus on that second category, the long-term needs – the widows, the widowers, and the single parents. And then as the church learns how to address those particular needs, then it becomes equipped and prepared to address on the one hand, the emergency requests, and then on the other hand, the catastrophic long-term needs.

Let’s talk about these long-term needs for a minute.

Alright, so you’re a widow or you’re a single mom. What do you really need to have from the church? Is it just projects done? Is that really what you need?

The answer to that question is found in another question: What have widows lost? What have single mothers lost? Well, what they have lost is relationship. What they have lost s love. What a widow or a single mom needs to have from the church is more than just projects done for them. What a widow or single mom needs to have from the church is relationship. They need to have relational ministry, not just project ministry. They need to be love by the church.

So these, then, are the needs of a widow or a single mom. And as the church learns, then, to address these needs, then it becomes equipped and prepared to address the emergency special project requests and the catastrophic long-term needs.

In our next video in our second session, we’re going to talk about how to address the needs of widows and widowers and single parents with love. And specifically, how to address their needs with the love of Christ. We’re going to talk about three unique qualities of Christ’s love that specifically apply to the needs of these dear people.

Thank you. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.

This transcript first appeared in New Commandment.org.

Published: November 28, 2023

Updated: August 10, 2026