Needs for Church Administration

Needs for Church Administration

Needs for Good Church Administration

There are many needs which call attention to the importance of good church administration and to the necessity of an adequate conceptual approach such as this book sets forth. Some of these needs are rather apparent.

A Church Needs Good Administration
A church is an organism. An organism is a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole. The church, an organism, is a basic unit constituted to carry on the activities of its life by means of parts separate in function but mutually dependent. Such an organism requires administration— good administration—if it is to be very effective.

A Church is of God and people

There is an essential partnership between God and persons in the life and work of a church. Church administration concerns itself with presenting the human element in the partnership equation as a disciplined, orderly, purposeful instrument to be directed and used of God as He sees fit. The premise of this book is that a well-administered organism is required by the very nature of the church and is likely to be more usable under God than a disorderly organism. The maxim attributed to W. T. Conner captures this perspective: “The Lord can cut more timber with a sharp axe than with a dull one.” Church administration at-tempts to sharpen the axe.

Church resources are limited

Church administration concerns itself with the overall guidance provided by church leaders as they utilize the spiritual, human, physical, and financial resources of the church to enable the church to move toward fulfilling its purpose and objectives. On the human plane, church resources are limited. The limitation of resources makes the management of them more imperative. Church administration offers good management for a church’s limited resources.

Churches are experiencing sagging influence and lagging pace

The well-documented decline of the influence of churches on society, the continuing decline of participation in many churches, and other signs of the times indicate that churches are losing ground. Presently, most churches are decreasing in both numbers and percentages in relation to general population growth. If allowed to go unchecked, this trend portends the reduction of churches to mere remnants in the lifetime of some persons now living. Church administration offers no panacea to such conditions. Yet, good church ad-ministration, like Christianity itself, has not been tried and found wanting. It has not yet been tried on any large scale. Gross inefficiencies in the administrative affairs of the church glare to the observant church member, with resulting ineffectiveness.

Many churches have been administered poorly

Henry Ford is credited with observing that he took it as a sign of the reality of “Deity” that the church had survived at all; no other enterprise run so poorly could stay in business. The concerned church administrator would ask, in the light of such a diagnosis, “How long shall we go on presuming on God?” Many persons are experiencing an awakening in their relationships to God and to their neighbors. The time is right for such an awakening. The time is also right for churches to support those who are experiencing new or renewed commitments to Christ with a more effective stewardship of the al-ways-limited resources at churches’ disposal. Good church administration would maximize the stewardship of these re-sources.

Churches Deserve Good Administration

A church is part of the cause which is just and right. It is the instrument of God. It is under the lordship of Christ. It is relating the gospel in all its fullness to all the needs of the people.

A church proclaims the good news and witnesses

This pro-claiming and witnessing is not only within the walls of church buildings but beyond those walls wherever receptive people may be found. Leaders in this work of a church deserve the best guidance available, as do their co-workers and those who are the objects of their efforts. Much of this guidance can come from good administrative leadership.

A church educates and nurtures

A church is learning, teaching, educating, and nurturing. Happily, the emphasis of this work is maturing from the often-limited question “What?” to include the question “So what?” A church desires to help make some significant things happen. A church is increasingly interested in learning that results in responsible living. This is really the gist—the essence of Christian education. It is the function of a church which deserves the best leadership a church can discover and develop. Good church administration can lead in the discovery and development of effective leaders in learning and nurturing.

A church ministers to persons in need

The number of per-sons in need continues to spiral. Their needs proliferate at a progressively faster rate. A church is a ministering organism. It attempts to minister unselfishly. This attempt merits the best-guidance a church can muster. Good administration can provide much of this guidance.

A church worships God

A church experiences His presence in an encounter which is life-changing and empowering. The members meet Him frequently and perhaps regularly in private and in corporate experience. These encounters, in addition to providing benefits to the worshiping person as an end, also supply the stimulation, dis-position, and spiritual power to enable the church to engage in all its other work—proclaiming and witnessing, educating and nurturing, and ministering. Such encounters deserve to be multiplied and enhanced. Good church administration can help significantly in multiplying and enhancing the occasions of worshiping encounter.

Church Leaders Need Help in Administration

Ministers and other church leaders find themselves subject to increasing demands for administrative effectiveness. They are increasingly caught up in administration. Many ministers report spending more than half their work time on administrative activities. Some of those who report spending a majority of their work time on administration no doubt do so. However, some of these may only think they are spending most of their time on administration. There is a tendency to think you are spending more time than you actually are, if the activity is disliked, is frustrating, or is one in which you have limited skill or knowledge. Whether the situation is real or imaginary, the need exists for upgrading the administrative knowledge and skills, and perhaps the attitudes, of these leaders. Some busy themselves with administrative activities of the lowest order. Usually they neglect some or all of the activities of a higher administrative order. These leaders would likely feel that they spend most of their time in administration. Again, some doubtless do. Some actually enjoy being busy with administrative work which requires more knowledge and skills in doing things than in developing persons. To them this seems to pose no problem. They seem to be unaware of what they might accomplish with the same expenditure of effort directed toward developing persons. Some persons really don’t enjoy doing things. They perhaps don’t know how, or wish they didn’t know. These people prob-ably would be receptive to help in moving up in the order of the administrative work they do. There is hope for them! And once these leaders move up to developing people rather than doing things, they are seldom content to revert to their former state. A few persons would probably rather continue and complain than change. The hustle and bustle of the arena of busywork has for them a thrill in its agony with which they are unwilling to part. This book, nor little else short of the miraculous, offers little help for them. Church leaders feel the impact of changepace

The world has become more complicated in many ways for the church leader. Many actually are spending unprecedented amounts of time and energy in administrative work. The church in the world is feeling the impact of changepace. The effects are often confusing to individuals and to institutions. The alert church leader is much more aware of the many needs of persons than in previous times. He is more conscious of the need for response from the church. The responses from the church must be more and more sensitive. And the more sensitive the response to human need, the more complex the enterprise. The more complex the enterprise, the greater is the demand for democratic participation. Working with people heightens leaders’ tensions—Democratic participation demands keen administrative insights. The increasing necessity of working with people raises the pressure on church leaders. The tensions are heightened by the fact that many leaders are happier doing what they can do alone rather than having to subject their efforts to the com-plications of involving other persons. Administration of a democracy calls for more than one person can do alone. Like it or not, the effective minister must learn to work with people. He must also maintain excellence in performing those parts of his ministry which he alone must do. This situation creates an annoying dilemma for some church leaders.

Improved leadership in nonchurch sectors affects the church

The quality of leadership in other than church organizations has generally, though not universally, improved. There is a higher educational level among church members which reflects that of the general population. More church members are in places of responsible leadership in their occupations. There they are expected to perform according to increasingly high leadership standards and to employ ever more sophisticated techniques. Many church members expect leadership intensity and qual-ity of effort in the church comparable to that with which they work in their jobs outside the church. Some expect even better effort—the church is God’s “business.” The pressures produced by improved leadership outside the church may be somewhat offset by the possibilities of transfer-ring some of the good concepts and skills from members’ occupational experiences to the area of church leadership. The church leader must be adept in administration to make the most of this potential. Hence, the minister is “on the spot” again. He can never afford to stop improving his ability to lead in deploying leadership resources of church members.

Churches are doing more things with and for more people Church programs are multiplying. Church organizations are growing more complex. Church members have heightened expectations of their leaders. Leadership is becoming more and more intricate, both in its artistic and in its scientific aspects. Physical resources demand increasing attention. Financial resources require astute handling. Guidance in all these areas is expected from the minister.

Complications of communicating seem to increase, even as media are improved and expanded. Motivating seems more difficult than ever before. The demands for better planning, better performance, better evaluation, and better guidance in every administrative function threaten to bury the minister who cannot seem to get on top of the job. The stresses brought on by this situation are not likely to diminish in the foreseeable future. A thorough working knowledge of good church administration, accompanied by the attitudes and skills to make possible the use of this knowledge, may be the best, most hopeful option for the minister. Such knowledge, attitudes, and skills enable the leader to multiply personal energies through others and rise above the avalanche of responsibilities.

Church Leaders Need an Administrative Style of Leadership

Church leaders need to discover, accept, and develop an administrative style of leadership. The need is not a new one. Neither is the approach to the remedy. Both are apparent in history at least as far back as the Exodus. In Exodus 18:17-18 is the beginning of Jethro’s counsel to his son-in-law, Moses: What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it alone (RSV). Jethro followed his consultation on administration with the promise of these benefits: So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace (vv. 22-23, RSV). The illustration from Exodus does not imply that a Mosaic structure suits all needs for all times. But the lessons should be clear that for leaders to endure and to get the work done, they must lead others to bear the burden too. This is the meaning of an administrative style of leadership. Many have been slow to learn that an effective ministry is an equipping ministry. Some have been even slower in unlearning that other approaches to ministry are not only unproductive in terms of potential but border on being unbiblical. The effective ministry is an enabling ministry. The effective minister is an enabler of others. He is a leader in equipping. The equipping, enabling approach becomes his style of leader-ship. It is an administrative style.