Do you know any lay leaders who are spiritually depleted rather than spiritually enriched as a result of their leadership duties? Have you ever known an elected church leader to worship occasionally with a church across town because it has become almost impossible to worship authentically in the congregation where he runs the education program or she runs the annual stewardship campaign? Does the question, "What are we paying you for?" have a familiar ring? How about the following scenario?

A faithful member serving as the chairperson of the congregation's property committee takes her seat in the pews for worship on a Sunday morning only to have an usher track her down and whisper into her ear, "Do you know where we could find extra light bulbs?" She leaves her pew to go find light bulbs, during which a Sunday school teacher breathlessly tells her that the toilet in the kindergarten restroom is flooding. After many months-or years-of these kinds of interruptions to her own spiritual nourishment, she feels spiritually bankrupt and bitter by the time her term of service ends.

Or how about this story? The elder who heads up the mission committee has found it easier to do much of the mission herself, so she serves dinner at the shelter every Monday night with one or two reliable helpers, shelves soup cans and cereal boxes every fourth Saturday of the month, and drags her husband along to help her move donated furniture several times a year. She complains often that she "needs more help." And she considers herself less a "spiritual leader" and more an unappreciated committee of one.

Or perhaps this story is more familiar: The "worship elder" who is in charge of heading up that particular committee doesn't have time to pray for herself much less to pray for other church members-which she heard somewhere was her role as a "spiritual leader." And besides, she feels uncomfortable praying out loud one-on-one with her friends. They might think she's acting "holier than thou."

If these stories don't sound familiar to you, they certainly do to me. After 15 years of serving a Presbyterian congregation of 150 accomplished, busy, well-educated professionals, it had become excruciatingly clear that something had to change in terms of the programming responsibilities of the elders in charge. (The position of "elder" has a different name in different traditions, but "elder" here refers to the elected lay leaders who are vested with responsibilities of church oversight and spiritual leadership.)