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The crew of unpaid people is at the heart of an effective ministry. Ministry for the electronic culture is not about what staff to hire to accomplish the tasks at hand. It is about empowering laypersons to utilize their gifts in ways they never thought possible for the purpose of advancing God's kingdom.

You will discover that as the media ministry develops, it becomes an entry point for people previously not part of the church community. Because of the opportunity to utilize their gifts and talents, individuals will join the team and become regular attendees at the church. Like the movie Field of Dreams, once you build it, people will come. A couple of years ago I asked a film student at a local state college to create a two-minute promotional piece to recruit people to the sound ministry. The student, Dave, got three friends from campus to help him make the spot. None were a part of our church community, but following production of the spot, two of the three became regular attendees!

The temptation, once you have discovered talented, committed people, is to pay them, to ensure that your team will not collapse on some given weekend. But relationships get a bit complicated when a team becomes a mix of paid and unpaid people, for a number of reasons. The addition of money, especially with Christians who are young in their faith, can obscure motives for services given, and interfere with their growth in giving as an expression of faith. As Cordeiro states, the act of serving is not so much about what the servant is doing but rather who they are becoming. Paid persons have a tendency to hoard knowledge as a form of job security. Paying servants can also lead to the game of secret keeping—does director #one, who is paid to direct, know that director #two is not paid? If so, then does director #one suddenly begin having an inflated sense of importance regarding his/her work in the ministry? Or if not, then does director #one make the mistake of telling director #two about the payment? Such knowledge would obviously hurt efforts in building community. Further, paid staff is no hedge against missed deadlines or failed projects.

One of the two young film students who came to our congregation during the production of the spot, was given the opportunity to become part-time staff to handle the increase in demand for media in education. Although he was an excellent unpaid team member, the expectation of being paid staff was too much at that stage of his faith journey. After a year in that capacity we removed him from a job that did not fit him. He returned to his unpaid role, and since has excelled as a director with strong technical skills.

For the first three years of media ministry at Ginghamsburg Church, as the church tripled in size, I was the only paid media staff person among an unpaid team of ninety people. Through that team we accomplished great things and set the stage for our current mix of paid and unpaid team members. It is through unpaid people, pursuing their gifts and talents in ways they never dreamed possible, that a media ministry can transform lives and build the Kingdom.

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