The following is an exert from chapter 10 of the book Missionary Guidebook For Ladies by Mindy Bush

Work Yourself Out of a Job!

This is also your husband’s goal as he teaches and trains future pastors and leaders. You should be looking from day one who could be a potential teacher. When we got to Argentina, I took all the children from 12 years old and under. I had to teach many classes with one of my babies on my hip because I was both nursery worker and Sunday school teacher. Within a few weeks, God brought a sweet young lady into our church. I started training her right away to work with the children. She was my helper for several weeks, each week taking on more responsibility in the class, such as teaching the memory verse, leading in a song, and teaching the Bible lesson. Eventually she became our first children’s teacher, and I moved into the nursery ministry. As women started coming to church, becoming believers, and being discipled, I was able to start a nursery rotation. It wasn’t perfect, but sometimes you have to accept less than ideal if you want to do something or you won’t do anything at all! I played the piano for services, but started teaching people to play. Pretty soon we had two keyboards on the platform, one with me playing on high volume and my student playing along as best as she could with lower volume. After a few years, I purposely and completely dropped out of the picture. So work yourself out of a job and recruit volunteers as soon as you can! Your goal should be to fill your shoes, not stay comfortable in your shoes! One day you will leave that church with the national pastor and the leaders there, and they need to be able to continue on without you.

Don’t start a new ministry without someone to run it. You want your church to grow, but without workers, you can’t start all kinds of ministries! Stick to the necessary ministries like Sunday school, children’s church, etc, before working in more without the help to do it all. You might like the idea of a kid’s mid-week Bible club, but you also don’t want to do too much and eventually quit. When you are the only one running ministries, it is a lot of work. It is better to start out small and grow as your ministry grows. Train teen girls, young ladies, and moms for the purpose of one day doing these ministries!

How do you find workers? The key is to always have helpers. Never work alone! Choose helpers from faithful people who are being discipled and have a desire to serve. We would use special weeks such as camp and VBS as times to gauge who would make a great teacher or who could be helpers! When they know they only have to commit to one week, they are more willing, and a successful week gives them the boost they need to want to be involved more.