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A church secretary can be like the hub of a wheel. All good things revolve around her well-organized, dependable, and caring center.

"A good secretary is important in a church setting because she is on the frontlines and is the first person the public sees or talks to," says Bobbi Linkemer, an author and expert in business communications. In that sense, the secretary becomes pastor, church, and denomination to visitors or callers.

It's important, then, that a church secretary does everything possible to represent who she works for in the best way possible. Four traits no church secretary should be without include:

1. Discretion . The wisdom to refrain from indiscriminately sharing information is critical in a secretary. For example, when the pastor is out, a wise secretary will say to a caller, "I'm sorry, he's not available" or "He's not in at the moment; may I take a message?" That's greatly preferred to "He went to pick up his daughter from aerobics class" or "He's not back from lunch yet." Even if the latter is true, that's really no one else's business.

Even more important is the ability to handle confidential information. A secretary who talks openly about giving records or the personal problems of church members can cause serious problems in a congregation.

David Borst, director of the master's-level church administration program at Concordia University in Mequon, Wisconsin, says confidentiality is the number-one concern he has with clerical staff. "As a test, I will let a secretary in on something, ask for privacy, and see how long it takes for me to hear about it via a third party," Borst says. Typically, he hears the information from someone else within an hour.

Lack of discretion can cause disruption, embarrassment, or something worse. So a secretary's ability to refrain from sharing private information is a major plus in a church office.

2. Willingness to Learn . If a secretary's primary tools are a typewriter and correction fluid, your church office may be in trouble. Today's church secretary must be proficient in word processing and familiar with using modern office equipment.

At the same time, exceptional technical skills aren't necessarily a prerequisite to the job. More important is the flexibility and willingness to acquire new skills as needed.

For example, Ruth Chuvala, administrator of First Baptist Church in Brewster, New York, says that traditional typing skills are way down the line in qualifications for a church secretary today. More important is that a church secretary is "articulate, verbally economical, and able to work effectively with desktop publishing and multi-media communication," she says.

At First Baptist, secretaries (who are called staff assistants) spend more time creating flyers, posters, brochures, and slide presentations than in straight typing of correspondence or other documents.

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