How have you overcome this?

Something that I’ve noticed in my parish, and I think it might be fairly common, is resistance to new ideas to bring more men into action.

By this I mean there are regular activities some of the various groups do. And for the most part it’s the same group of men doing them. And many of these men have been doing these thing for years, because of lack of new men coming in.

But this seems to have made a problem in 2 ways. First, many of the men doing these activities aren’t actively inviting new men to come. And when the occasional new men does come to participate, the ones that have been doing these things don’t come off as inviting to the new people because they have become stuck in their roles and don’t make room for new people.

Conversely, if an idea for something new is brought up, these same men are against it, because they are already involved in too many things to do something else. Even if it is pointed out to them that they really won’t have any new responsibilities, only to participate if they want to. They are stuck in the mindset that the same 2 dozen or so men do everything, and it will wind up falling on them.