Course:COS 114 – Pastoral Leadership and Administration
Assignment: Effective Church Administration
Leadership is necessary in any church, big or small, but often goes overlooked in a smaller church. This oversight can be either because the membership is small and thus seems “easily manageable” or because it seems to be “unnecessary.” Douglas Walrath’s book titled “Making It Work: Effective Administration in the SmallChurch” provided insight into both the “how’s” and “why’s” of why a small church should have both effective and determined leaders.
I was assigned to a small church as an associate pastor just over 6 months ago. The assignment was conditional with no salary for the first year, and expenses partially compensated after six months. For the first three-and-half months I participated marginally in worship services as I began the grieving process of my son’s death on the day I had received my assignment. In the fourth month I began making the congregational announcements during worship and attending three of the four Sundays. In the fifth month I conducted the first All Saints service the church had had in over five years and I began attending the Wednesday night fellowship dinners on occasion. By December I was helping with other parts of the Order of Worship on Sunday and helping to plan other special Sunday services, but still limiting the time spent with the members of the church. In mid-January I began keeping regular office hours twice a week and preparing the sermon twice a month and have started a small prayer ministry with several members as I begin to know the members personally instead of through word-of-mouth.
Through this time I have followed the suggestion of my senior pastor and my District Superintendent in caring for myself and my family before attending to the needs of the church. To this end I have not had much of an opportunity to know many members of the church, nor have I been able to learn the workings of the church and community. This situation is reflected in the following paper.
I am presently serving in a church that many would consider a “family chapel”. The majority of members are related over the years and take tremendous pride in their relationship and history. Most members are over the age of 50, only somewhat active in the community at large, are white and married, or have been married and live in their own homes. We have recently added several newer members that are in the 30+ age range with younger children and are seeking to develop close family-type ties with the church and the membership that are not present in their life situations.
There are several characteristics that are unique to this congregation. The first one that I have observed is the strong desire to have visitors and new members become a “part of the family” almost instantly. The congregation wants to get to know folks through various activities held through the church, but rarely wants to extend a personal invitation to anyone that does not initiate their own “joining in”, but when that “joining in” occurs they are made to feel like immediate family. Their desire for me to take a more active part in the social activities was communicated to me through a third party, yet I have been welcomed without comment, at every meeting, supper, or other activity I have attended. I believe this is a product of past hurts and a high level of mistrust of outsiders.
I have also learned through conversations that the church has remained small, but stable for almost 100 years. Congregants have come and gone, and come back again as their life circumstances have fluctuated and changed, they aged, their children moved away from home, and they retired, but the members come home to family – often bringing their grandchildren back with them and starting the cycle again.
The church is also unique in regards to their setting and this is reflected in some of the congregational character also. They are small, rural church that sits in the center of a small town. Folks drive into town for church on Sunday but due to the local surroundings must travel to another location to have dinner or do shopping. The ties with the church building are so strong that the congregation has chosen to do costly repairs before even exploring possible moves to another location.
The church as a whole has strong points when it comes to community within the standard “group.” Community members are compassionate with their own “family” members. In addition to that, they also have a great deal of unity, and they value the heritage of both the surrounding community and the church.
However, despite a deep sense of community there is always an underlying sense of discord that is a concern. This discord often interrupts the church in both the spoken and unspoken arena. Another concern that I see, as a leader of the church, is the vague sense of purpose that infuses most members of the church. The lack of purpose breaks down any outreach or strengthening of community that might be achieved through outreach and other community programs. Finally, there is a strong sense of traditionalism, which could be welcome but in this instance becomes a hindrance.
Up to this point in my relationship with this congregation I believe we have found a good fit. One of their greatest needs seems to be the need for someone to commit to them and to persevere alongside them through various trials. The core family values that I have seen in this church family also match my values. By the churches very nature of being a small church, the sense of family is greatly developed and thus matching with the strong sense of family that I, myself, enjoy. I have learned of the many outreach efforts the congregation has supported through the years and know that I am inclined toward many of the same and look forward to exploring new ways we can touch the world around us. The church shows a strong ability to welcome others and to expand its family which is welcome as I, one of its pastors, also seek to welcome others into the community of faith.
One of the most vivid examples of God’s presence in the life of this congregation has been the prayers and support given to the senior pastor and his family as they spent several years in trying to complete the adoption of a child from a foreign country. The church members not only prayed for the new family, but also supported the orphanage with gifts. This is amazing since the church had a history of prejudice towards people with a Latino heritage and the adopted child is from a Latin American country. The whole process has softened the hearts of the congregation and created goodwill in the community.
I have also been made aware of the many losses the congregation has had during the past few years – death of an adult child, death of spouses, friends and other loved ones. When I began contacting members of the congregation to organize and then conduct the All Saints service as a service of remembrance there were several members who talked about how God had been preparing them for this time to be able to heal from their loss, and God’s activity was made even more apparent to them because of my exposed vulnerability as I stood in the pulpit and shared words of comfort and tears of grief over my recent loss alongside them.
We are blessed with a number of key leaders in our congregation that influence the life and growth of our church in various ways. *Mary is an older adult woman who has been a member of the church since God created rock and who feels like she has the right to choose how whatever program she is part of should run. In order to work with *Mary I need to remember that she feels that she understands the church and as such feels that she has the right to direct different ministries direction. In order to keep *Mary feeling like a leader, but also to increase the effectiveness of her path I should work with her to increase others participation when working with *Mary.
Then there is *Scott. He is a quiet, unassuming man that is the head of the steering committee. *Scott would like to be more hands-on but is in failing health. Yet when there is a need to have something done around the church – new septic line, improving the sound system, a training seminar for the pastors – if he is talked to about the need outside of a meeting, and the need is justified, *Scott will talk with the other committee members and by the time it gets to the meeting the decision will be made to have the project taken care of. Working with *Scott is very effective now, so long as I recall the influence he has. If there is a problem, I can recall that *Scott can serve as an intermediary who can greatly ease any directional transitions that need to be made.
Another key leader is the youth leader. *Martha devotes time to the children’s outreach program, but does so in her spare time and only if she can direct the program according to her needs. She is very influential with our under 30 group, as it is their children she is working with, and also with the grandparents of the church. When working with *Martha, I must remember that she wants to help and has a need to be needed, but that I should also look at gently steering her to another area of the church that perhaps requires less of her time and that she can be much more effective in.
The churches MUST leader is a great help who is very dedicated to what she does. As a strong outreach program within the church, our MUST leader serves as a vital community outreach leader. My work with her needs only to be influenced by the understanding of the strength she holds in his position. By supporting her, I am supporting the church’s MUST outreach.
Finally, there are the two pastoral positions. The senior pastor has been in charge for a great length of time, and as such has gotten used to being the only one making decisions for the church. As the senior pastor, he is key to how the church is run both externally and internally. However, his inability to share responsibility with me as associate pastor or with laity, is limiting the ability of other members of the church to become active leaders. The associate pastoral position, presently serves as a support role and as another link between the pastors and the church members. The prayer ministry is also headed up by the associate pastor.
As you have seen, there are several key leaders within the church. Some hold their positions as the ideal candidate within the church, for example, *Scott and our MUST leader. Others, such as *Martha would be better suited to other roles of leadership. In order for me to help everyone find their leadership gift, I should work with the people who I feel are not doing the task best suited for them. Through personal relationship and mentoring, over time we can help each individual recognize how other tasks may suit them better.
There are several possible ways that we can renew and revitalize our churches organizational structure to make it operate more efficiently. One of the most helpful would be to reduce the number of members per committee, thus reducing overlap areas which confuse and complicate church leadership. As Walrath noted in his book “It doesn’t take a lot of people to complete most of the tasks small congregations face.” [1] This has become apparent as people within our church are simply placed on committees to fill the empty spaces.
When looking over the various committees, both large and small we notice that the church has many key leadership positions. Among those positions, variances occur in the manner in which one leads. *Brad is a prime example of an evaluator, as a member of the Trustees team; *Brad serves as an instigator of ideas. Often time members come up with needs for the church; *Brad serves as the “go to” guy who challenges others to think of the ways in which the problems and/or needs can be served. *Allen, who is the head of the Trustee committee, is the one in the church who can be relied upon to get things done. In essence, *Allen will bring the ladder because he sees the need, not because someone requested this action of him.
We have also observed that there are often problems in defining the responsibilities of the various individuals, including the pastor’s. Presently there has been no description for any lay position in the church. If the garbage needs to be emptied, “someone” should do it, if the plumber needs to be called - “someone” should do it, if the flowers are wilted and new ones need to be ordered -“someone” should do it. Because of this lack of description and often misunderstandings, conflicts arise and Mondays have become the day that we refer to as our “fire-fighting job”. For the most part, every member of the church will call the senior pastor to tell him what their problem or complaint is and then waits to see what he is “going to do about it”. This has become a habit over the years of responding to these types of calls.
We have come to recognize the need to mentor and involve the congregation more in the functioning of the church and are moving towards helping those who wish to be involved at finding the task they would be best at, creating a clearer definition of each role would help all members of the congregation recognize how different roles operate. In addition to helping the members of the congregation understand the roles, the individuals in each role would be able to recognize the responsibilities required of them. This is a key ingredient to the leadership of the church that is lacking at the moment at my church.
Although we recognize that every church needs an evaluation plan so that it can distinguish both growth and reduction in various programs we currently have only one evaluation system in place, and that is the yearly evaluation of the pastors completed by the Staff-Parish Relations Committee. The church has several other programs of worship, outreach, discipleship and relationship that would benefit from a yearly evaluation. In order to get a set of evaluations started in the church and to get the help we need with our efforts, the church has begun working with Proactive Evangelism Ministries. Through this program and the commitment of the congregation we believe we will be equipped with new tools to recognize the many opportunities open to us in our growing community.
We are acquainted with the idea thatthe church, like any other community, can have conflict. Currently the church I am serving in does not use any type of grievance procedure. This has created several problems because discords go unsolved or pushed out into such a public sphere that they interrupt the life of the entire congregation. We, the pastors, have begun to put into place a simple procedure that we feel will help us get on the right track. We have shared with the steering committee that we need their help in creating a “Go to” contact list for the membership. We feel in our situation that if we speak to the congregation about the underlying need for a procedure in which one is expected to handle problems and then ask for help to create such a procedure the community can work together to create one. Once the church has a policy, the pastors must work together to implement this policy any time a grievance is aired through gentle reminders. A pamphlet will be created and distributed so the there is a visual reminder for both new and current members.
Administration is key to any church. In chapter one, Walrath describes administration as those who know “what you can expect and how to draw that out” [2] from the congregation. Since administration deals with the more corporate aspects of the church, one must consider both the big-picture positions, such as the pastors, and the detailed positions such as the “kitchen leader.” At my church we have those who feel that they are true leaders based on their ability to influence others. On the flip side of that, those leaders seem to lack a willingness to allow for others’ opinions when it comes to the final decision making process.
Through the church I serve the congregation has not yet defined a personal stated mission, however each Sunday the bulletin seeks to define a general mission statement along the lines of “to go and make disciples of Christ.”[3] In interpreting that ideal, the church holds weekly Wednesday suppers and services, has Sunday School and bible study for adults and children, and actively supports various outreach programs through local efforts and conference programs.
Although the idea of membership has a very traditional meaning at my church we are continually trying to encourage members to take an active role in the body of the church that they have joined. Being a member of the church I serve is not defined by any standard or prevailing expectation of the membership. I have already seen some members who attend twice a year and still serve on the hospitality committee and others that attend regularly and serve on other committees, but have made no commitment to the church through becoming a member.