Send Labourers!

Terry Durose reflects on a potential ministry skills shortage.

According to the Edge Foundation’s recent report on the impact of skill shortage on the UK economy, skills shortages continue to depress productivity in the UK.

• In November 2022, 13.3% of businesses surveyed, reported experiencing a shortage of workers.
• In September-November 2022, there were 1.19 million vacancies in the UK.
• In August 2022 the Federation of Small Businesses found that 80% of small firms faced difficulties recruiting applicants with suitable skills.

(Source: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2023-0001/)

Suggested reasons for the shortage include Brexit, Covid 19, working from home and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but whatever the cause, the result is that many organisations are struggling to recruit the right staff.

Anecdotally, this same problem is affecting Christian organisations in the UK. At a recent gathering of City Mission CEOs some reported that they are also struggling to fill vacancies.

Our experience at MCM seems to confirm this. In April 23 we posted our vacancy for the position of Operation Support Coordinator. Normally we would expect to be inundated with applicants for this important role. The response has been underwhelming.

Perhaps this is a good thing. For a missionary organisation, it’s important that we get the right people on the right seats on the bus, and central to this is that the applicants experience a call from God to the mission field. Maybe the social factors that are at play are helping us to sift through the possible applicants so that we are left with a smaller Gideon’s Army of potential recruits.

On the other hand it seems sad that believers might be being driven by the same social factors as everyone else, making them slow to respond to God’s call.

Jesus instructed us “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.” (Luke 10:2 ESV).

Please pray that MCM will receive God’s labourers!