Effective church administration refers to the proper management of all church resources.
Church resources include people, finances, and time. When you consider all of these, it is easy to see why church administration is a business function.
Viewing church administration in this light emphasizes why we need to employed structured business practices for efficiency and proper management. The church has a unique structure that requires a lot of tact to properly manage. Since a church is as efficient as its administrative processes, here are 8 principles to help you develop effective church administration.
Principles of Effective Church Administration
Pastors and other ministers hardly ever say that they were called into the “administration ministry.” However, it doesn’t matter the ministry that you are called into, administration comes with the package. This is why you must understand the basic principles of effective church administration.
Find the right hands
The church is a people-oriented organization. Everything that you do boils down to how you can properly handle congregation management. You cannot run the church without hands, skilled hands. While so many people come in with the desire to help, you must work on getting the right hands.
Before you fix someone in administration, you need to ensure that they are the right fit for the job. Not everyone is skilled in this area and putting round pegs in square holes wouldn’t get the job done. You have to pick perfect individuals, however, they must be inclined towards administration. The same goes for choosing hands for different departments in your church.
Training and retraining
The fact that you have someone with administrative abilities handle your administration doesn’t mean you’ve gotten it all. There is still a lot of work to do. Remember the Berean Christians? They continually put extra time into studying the word after Paul had preached. There is always a place for personal training and retraining.
You need to invest yourself and other administrative staff in acquiring administrative training. Some of these training programs will be personal while others will be collective. Getting trained once isn’t enough since systems evolve. At best, you should invest in retraining your administrative staff after every few months.
Set and maintain high standards
God recognizes standards and all through the scripture, He set very high standards. We are His children and can’t afford to do less. Excellence is always the next level. No matter how much we have achieved, we can always take it up a notch.
It is very easy to rest on our oars in church administration. After all, most church administrative offices are run by volunteers without formal training in administration. Raising the bar helps such individuals to acquire training and improve efficiency and effectiveness in handling tasks. Don’t forget, “what is worth doing, is worth doing well.”
Communication
Church communication is a very important aspect of church administration. Without proper communication channels, congregation management, digital donation, and the likes will be impossible. You cannot afford to run a ministry without proper communication. It will hinder growth in so many areas.
Here are a few things that you must consider in church communication:
- Never assume: Don’t jump to the conclusion that people know what you want or have certain information. Always clarify information to ensure that you are on the same page.
- Inform and confirm: Always disseminate information appropriately. Find out who needs what information and let them have it. When you have sent out information, always confirm that the other party received and understood it.
- Send reminders: People can forget certain information after a while. We suggest that you send out reminders to help them out.
Be proactive
Church administration requires a lot of proactivity. There are different areas of church administration that require prompt action and reaction. Some of these areas include policy development, finances, personnel management, etc.
These aspects of administration require you to have the foresight and act quickly before issues arise. One very important aspect of church administration is risk management. Many ministries shut down just because they are not proactive in this area. You cannot allow yours to fall into the same trap. An easy way to do this is by drawing up proactive policies to protect your church from avoidable situations.
Goal Setting
Every church has a vision and a mission statement. Achieving your mission and vision statements is impossible without goal setting. The church administrator must work with church leadership to set achievable and SMART goals. This process is usually tough, time-consuming, and tedious. However, it yields amazing results since it gives a clear direction towards achieving mission and vision statements.
You will need to come up with goal documents. Such documents identify church needs, who will carry out tasks, and when such tasks should be completed. With this document, you have a clear indication of what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Most importantly, it helps you to know who is responsible for what tasks so you can hold them accountable.
Volunteer management
Volunteers are the wheel of any church or ministry project. There is so much to do in church and you need hands to accomplish these tasks. Volunteers provide the church with free labor even though, most times, they are unskilled.
Volunteer management helps you to recruit volunteers, allot them to departments, train them, and oversee them efficiently. You need to develop a proper volunteer orientation program for each department. Finally, ensure that your volunteers have a customer-friendly experience to encourage them to give their best.
Use a ChMS
ChMS stands for church management software. Such software help to automate church administrative processes such as congregation management and church communication. They also improve digital donation, text giving, and check-ins.
The idea behind using a church app is that it helps to automate workflow. By so doing, you make the running of the church a lot easier across the board. There are different church apps that you can invest in including ChurchPad.
Wrapping Up
It doesn’t matter the size of your church, effective church administration is very important. We have shown you some important principles to guide you. Don’t forget to check out ChurchPad to see which of its features will improve your administration.
