Today our our church (not Catholic), we’re having a “Ministry Fair”. The pastor wants EVERYONE to be involved in one way or another in the church. The Staff believes everyone in the church should have a primary ministry (choir, Sunday School teacher, Usher, Small Group leader, Visitation, Prayer, etc.) while having a Secondary ministry (one of these, fill-in for one of these, or support). This not only makes the church grow and more involved in the community, but it takes a lot of the load off the Pastor and his assistants.
My parish holds similar events, with the aim of having as many people helping as possible.
This is a great thing. The more we are involved, the more we are doing the work of God.
I am the chair of our Ministry Fair, which we schedule with a pancake breakfast cooked by the Knights of Columbus — we have a huge crowd. Even have cheese and wine tasting after the Saturday evening Mass to draw people out.
I believe the last time they did a count (since we are building a new church) was that there are over 100 ministries with over 280 meetings per week. They finally had to have a staff member take charge of the calendaring.
Oops, I just realized that the 280 meetings figure was a monthly figure.