Greenfield, Ind.

Matt Wickham, pastor of ministries

Matt Wickham, pastor of ministries at Brandywine Community Church in Greenfield, Ind., believes in the importance of giving large amounts of authority and responsibility to the members who are serving at Brandywine. Wickham believes this forms high-capacity volunteers who feel valued and trusted. In fact, every staff member that has been hired at Brandywine was, at one time, a volunteer within the church.

Having grown to 1,200 in attendance since 1990, Brandywine Community recently moved into a brand new building in September. With that move came the need to form a whole slew of new ministries! Tasks the church had never needed prior to the new building suddenly became urgent ministries, including parking and traffic, guest services, café workers. Wickham says this particular, somewhat frenzied time became a perfect window of opportunity as the members’ motivation to get involved was very high during a time that was extremely exciting to the church family.

The current estimated number of ministries at Brandywine is about 80, and the list includes everything from nursery toy cleaner to the stage design team, as one can see from the church’s Web site: www.brandywinechurch.org. Along with the Web site, the Brandywine staff promotes ministry opportunities through the weekly bulletin, by giving a ministry catalogue to every member who attends 3^rd Base class, and at Ministry Fairs in response to a weekend message specifically focused on serving.

In order to allow members to begin serving right away, the church has a “First Saturday” in which anyone, individuals, small groups, families, can come to the church on the first Saturday of every month and participate in different first-serve type of activities. The “First Saturday” events allow members who have not yet taken the 3^rd Base class or gone through the post-class, ministry focused interview to still begin serving as soon as possible. Helping members to quickly begin serving is actually a way to value volunteers. Matt says that each ministry team appreciates their volunteers in its own way, but recently the church dedicated the month of November to appreciating the volunteers who help with the church worship band.

Wickham says that Brandywine Community Church tries to hold to the Saddleback motto of “Every member a minister.” He and the staff want to change the mindset that church attendees can often fall into of thinking that the paid staff is the only ones who should be doing the work to keep the church functioning. He hopes that every member will have a desire to get his or her own hands dirty, helping to do the work of the church.