It’s been extremely helpful to have a coordinator for the volunteer secretaries. We have ten secretaries, two for each day, and each works five hours a week. Not all of them type, and only one takes shorthand, so our coordinator has posted the schedule of who covers what days. This allows the staff, who know which secretaries can type, to plan ahead for what they want done.
On Mondays the two secretaries take care of the needs of the nursery school. It’s a big operation in terms of mimeographing, stencils, and telephone calls.
Tuesdays, the coordinator meets with me and we review what needs to be done that week. The next two secretaries do personal typing for me, handle the recording of the offering envelopes, and start to prepare the weekly church newsletter.
The volunteers on Wednesdays cut the stencils for the newsletters and prepare them for mailing.
There is only one volunteer who takes shorthand, so on Thursdays I usually have a lot of dictation for her.
Then on Fridays they put the Sunday bulletin together, and anything that the teachers need done for Sunday is completed.
Our coordinator works only five hours; besides overseeing the secretarial schedule, she also handles membership transfers, keeps the minutes of the session, and coordinates the use of the building. If one of the secretaries can’t be there, she has four or five people to use as substitutes, basically to answer the phone. The details of the administrative load are well taken care of by her.
-Eugene H. Peterson
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