Three Aspects of Successful Church Administration
Church administration takes the wind out of most ministers’ sails. Just mention the word admin and you are met with a groan. But, we all have to do some form of admin to effectively minister to the people God entrusted to us.
But admin is important, ministry rises and falls on the effectiveness of your admin. If your administration isn’t strong enough to carry the weight of your vision, your ministry is in real danger if failing.
Admin is important.
So to lighten the load, here are three aspects that you need to have in place for your journey to effective church administration:
1. The Right People
Anybody can learn how to do a task on a system, but it takes a skilled administrator to tie it all together and make it work efficiently. If vision is the arrowhead that determines the effectiveness of ministry, then admin is the shaft that carries the arrowhead — the bigger the shaft, the bigger the arrowhead that it can carry. The Bible has many examples of skilled administrators organizing events, communicating to the tribes of Israel.
Why not trust God for someone on your team to come in as a skilled administrator to create and implement your tools and processes?
2. Systems/Tools
Systems are the tools we use to simplify, automate and capture the tasks and information that we need for ministry purposes. Tools can be free or paid for, an online service that you log in to, or software that you download. Tools can consist of lots of manual work, or they can be used to lessen the time spent doing the same task manually.
No single tool will solve all your problems, but in combination, they can lighten the load of the admin required for ministry to take place.
The free tools we commonly suggest for use by churches are Google Forms, Bitly.com, GoDoChurch, Mailchimp, Canva.com, Audacity and Whatsapp for Web. All of these tools have a free and paid-for version. In most cases, the free version is strong enough for the needs of a small church.
There are many more tools out there — you can literally do an internet search and find a solution to your need.
3. Processes
Processes are the admin steps you put in place around a tool — It refers to how a tool is implemented in your ministry and in your specific context. It also refers to how you use multiple tools together to make ministry and church admin easier.
Processes can, and should, be captured in documents. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Capturing your processes helps to create clarity in your ministry and admin teams regarding how you use the tools in your context. This avoids duplication of tasks, misunderstandings of who should be doing what and increases general team effectiveness and unity.
Tying it all together
When these three things — tools, processes, and people — come together, you will start to see how time and resources flow from solving admin hiccups and problems to releasing people to focus on ministry and getting to the people God loves.
If you need a system to help you create church operations that support ministry, then contact us. We are passionate about church administration and seeing churches thrive.
GoDoChurch is Web-based church administration software that helps the modern church stay connected to its congregation. Get a Mobile App, online event management and ticketing, small group management, a follow-up module, pretty newsletters and more. Sign up for your FREE 30-day trial!
