I want to manage the church to God’s glory. Anything less contradicts the Creator, who after creation surveyed his work and said, “It is good.” He didn’t say, “Oh, it’ll do.”
—Don Cousins
Few pastors graduate from seminary hoping to become administrators. The term administration, itself, hardly sets feet dancing. In many people’s minds, administration stands precipitously close to bureaucracy. It smacks of endless details, of rigidity, red tape, and routine.
Yet, administration—managing the affairs of a church—often spells the difference between pastoral effectiveness and ineffectiveness.
The ministry philosophy of Willow Creek Community Church, where I’m associate pastor, has been adopted by a number of other churches. One pastor, who started a ministry like ours several years ago, recently returned to Willow Creek.
“We duplicated Willow Creek’s philosophy and strategy pretty well,” he told me, “and that led us to about four hundred members. But now we’ve hit a wall.”
He came back to figure out what was missing. Finally he discovered it. “I underestimated the role of leadership,” he confessed. “I see now that strong, effective management is as important as the teaching gifts and the format of the services.”
I couldn’t agree more. While administration may be an unpopular word, the task of leading and managing a church effectively remains at the heart of ministry.
Management and Leadership
Management is one way leadership manifests itself in the church; it’s leadership being implemented in the day-to-day operation of a complex organization.
One of the great biblical leaders was Nehemiah. He exhibited three abilities that every leader needs to develop and demonstrate.
First, a leader needs the discernment—the street sense—to assess accurately the current condition of the organization, to say, “This is where we are now.” When Nehemiah looked at his countrymen, he saw people on the verge of losing their identity. Because Jerusalem was unprotected and vulnerable to attack, its inhabitants sought security in small villages outside the city. Gradually they melted into these foreign cultures, losing their unique language, culture, and religion.
Nehemiah had the discernment to assess the situation correctly. He saw beyond the obvious—that the Jews were drifting geographically—to the more subtle fact that they were drifting spiritually.
Second, a leader needs the vision and understanding to add, “And this is where we need to go.” Nehemiah realized that Jerusalem needed a wall if it hoped to be the truly Jewesh city God intended. Without a wall, the situation inevitably would worsen; the nation would lose whatever grip on godliness it had.
Visionary leaders know the status quo won’t last forever; most static organizations are actually in the first stages of decline. So leaders look ahead. They envision change. Nehemiah pictured his nation as it ought to be—strong and sure of its identity. In his mind he “saw” the protecting wall.
Third, a good leader knows how to bring together the people and resources needed to move the organization from where it is to where it needs to be. Nehemiah was a master at this. He gathered together hundreds of workers and inspired them to work “with all their heart” (Neh. 4:6). When the completion of the wall was threatened by those who feared Israel’s rise, Nehemiah organized half his laborers for battle. They would not give up their goal, even in the face of opposition.
Lead is an active verb. A leader is able to say, “Here’s how we get to where we want to go,” and people follow. Leadership is measured in great part by its ability to generate and direct movement.
As most good leaders know, management is the process of getting things done through other people. Even Boy Scout patrol leaders realize that leading doesn’t mean personally doing all the fire building and pot cleaning. Good managers have the ability to bring together the necessary people and resources to accomplish the group’s goals. They delegate responsibilities to those who can do the tasks with joy and excellence, so the jobs get done better than they themselves could have done them.
The Drawbacks of Being a Manager
Most workers fantasize about the bliss of being a manager. Authority, access to information, freedom to delegate work, and other perks make the position look inviting. But management is anything but easy. Consider the drawbacks:
— Time. Management obviously devours large chunks of time. It takes time to tune in to details; time to find, delegate, and train other workers; time to redirect a ministry or troubleshoot a problem.
We’d rather set up programs that run forever on their own. But that’s like buying a car, driving it, and never doing anything to maintain it. Ministries, like cars, need regular maintenance and sometimes even replacement. People wear down. Leaders move away. Facilities become cramped or outdated. Methods lose their sparkle. Curricula don’t work out.
Who has to deal with these, and scores of other problems? The manager. And that gobbles up time and energy.
— Obscurity. Many tasks a manager accomplishes get little notice. Preach a good message, and what happens afterward? People pat you on the back. Visit a grieving widow, and you earn the affection of her family and friends.
But what happens when the Christian education director, after much study, subtly changes materials to guarantee the quality of the Sunday school program? Or what is the response if you arrange to have the sidewalks swept and the main hallways vacuumed late Saturday nights to prepare for Sundays? Probably nothing. Managerial activities like those rarely draw accolades.
The summer before we added a second midweek service, I received a letter from a church member. He wrote, “Going to two weekday services in the fall may have a crushing effect on Bill [Hybels, the pastor]. Why don’t you take more of the services?”
On the one hand, that was a compliment; he apparently appreciated my teaching gifts. On the other hand, he was saying, “Bill has too much to do; you certainly have time to ease his load.” He had little appreciation for the management responsibilities that fill my days. He couldn’t see my work directly, so he assumed I had little to do.
A person insecure about laboring in obscurity will find management an unsatisfying, thankless task. For me, the key to being a satisfied manager is to develop a spiritual perspective, to remind myself constantly that my heavenly Father, who sees in secret, knows what I’m doing. As I learn to be a God pleaser, and not a man pleaser, I find great joy in accomplishing the behind-the-scenes tasks that enhance the overall ministry of our church.
— Tedium. Management involves attending to details, and because detail work is tedious, a manager needs to keep in mind the bigger picture. He needs to look down the road and say, “This may take longer now, but it will pay off in the long run.”
Keeping budgets in line involves the tedium of poring over stat sheets, income projections, and expenditure requests. But careful evaluations allow us to make sound decisions and give our church financial credibility. Likewise, I can’t say I enjoy reviewing job descriptions, but it’s a key to staff effectiveness and heads off time-consuming misunderstandings. So I’ll bear the tedium now, because I know these tasks actually will prevent more work later.
— Competing demands. My job includes coming up with creative ideas, setting visionary goals, and initiating action. But too often I get pulled from the role of initiator to the role of responder—carrying out this request, solving this problem, greasing this squeaky wheel. When this happens, I get bogged down in the mire of competing demands and lose my ability to generate positive action.
My calendar is the clearest indicator of who’s in control. Am I spending the majority of my day taking steps to reach predetermined goals? Or are ancillary tasks devouring the bulk of my time?
The key, of course, is to be perfectly clear about my goals. Any time I lose sight of them, or the steps necessary to reach them, I become vulnerable to competing demands. I’m on a string, moving at the whim of whomever pulls the hardest.
Another help is to establish “A priorities” and “B priorities.” A priorities are the creative tasks I need to do to fulfill my ministry. They’re proactive. They move the program, department, or ministry forward. B priorities are the tasks that merely support or supplement my main priorities. They’re important, but they don’t have the highest claim on my time.
For instance, I recently worked on a video of a training session for our leaders. To make that tape, someone had to attend to administrative details such as hiring a production crew, finding props, and arranging for refreshments breaks. Each of those things needed to be done—but not by me. Had I arranged every aspect of the taping, I would have had little time for preparing the message to be taped. My A priority was the message; the B priorities had to be delegated.
Another aspect of ministry I need to manage lest it overwhelm me is people issues: personal crises in leaders’ lives, conflict between team members, or people who have outgrown their responsibilities and want a change. Scores of these management problems arise that demand consideration.
Most of us would like to ignore these situations and hope they heal themselves. They don’t. We need to consider people problems an A priority and work proactively whenever possible. If we don’t give these problems our attention, they’ll end up demanding it in destructive ways. But if we handle the situations while they’re small, they won’t grow to the point where people get hurt. Nor will they capture us by surprise and devour unnecessary time and energy.
— Detachment. You enter the ministry because you love people, and then you spend your day reviewing budgets, evaluating programs, and purchasing curricula. Although a good manager quickly learns to delegate many of these tasks, there always will be managerial responsibilities that take us away from contacts with people. If we fail to appreciate the importance of troubleshooting a ministry, we will become frustrated by the detachment of managerial tasks.
On the other hand, good management rarely occurs in an interpersonal vacuum. So a good manager brings other people into the process. If I become unnecessarily detached as a manager—pushing papers and operating in an isolated realm of executive decision making—I deprive myself of the stimulation and gifted-ness of others, and deprive them of the satisfaction of contributing.
When I involve others in the managerial process, we solve problems jointly. We’re “in the foxhole” together, and it gives us a sense of camaraderie. Meaningful relationships develop in the midst of doing ministry.
— Exploitation. Managers, responsible for incorporating others into the church’s ministry, sometimes wonder if they’re exploiting others. A few months ago, we hired a staff member from an environment in which he had operated pretty much as a Lone Ranger. He taught all the lessons, led the classes, and came up with the curriculum. I’ve been trying to help him realize that his present environment is bigger than he is. He can’t do the whole job; he needs to solicit help from others.
When we discussed that, he mused, “Don’t you sometimes feel you’re using people?”
“Not in the ministry,” I replied. “Giving people an opportunity to discover, develop, and use their gifts in ministry is doing them a favor. They gain the fulfillment of being God’s instruments.”
If I have to ask my friends to help me with a personal need—such as a home-maintenance project—I feel very uncomfortable. I find that kind of recruitment terribly difficult and always postpone it until the last minute. But when I’m asking people to serve the Lord, I don’t hesitate or apologize. In fact, I believe it’s one of the greatest gifts I can offer them.
The Value of Management
Being a manager has its drawbacks, but it’s a challenge that gets my creative juices flowing day after day. Why? Because of these important contributions a manager makes:
— Purpose and direction. A manager is in a position to reaffirm purpose and direction for a ministry. If a ministry is not moving forward, it’s probably moving backwards. Eventually it will become a victim of entropy, the tendency of anything to wind down, become random, move toward disorder. Managers can head off entropy by redefining purpose.
Years ago we set up a children’s program, Promiseland, that adequately met our church needs. Over the years, however, it lost its effectiveness. Why? We hadn’t managed it properly, and entropy had set in.
Our first step was to focus our purpose. Because Willow Creek draws many unbelievers who are not committed to weekly church attendance, we have many sporadic Promiseland attenders. So one of our primary goals in Promiseland was to provide a children’s environment that was so inviting and enjoyable that the children would be excited about returning. We also wanted parents to have confidence in the care their children were receiving.
Reaffirming that goal helped us see how we had failed to reach it. We acknowledged that we were understaffed, our facilities were too cold and sterile to excite children, our curriculum didn’t communicate effectively to the nonchurched, and our workers sensed a general lack of direction.
So we reassigned staff, made our general-purpose classrooms child centered on weekends, changed our curriculum, and made sure each of our teachers understood our goals. The results speak for themselves. Today children enjoy Promiseland more, parents see it as a tremendous benefit for their children, and both are attending more consistently. Through good leadership, we returned purpose to a faltering program.
— Midcourse corrections. Sometimes ministries need more than an affirmation of purpose; they need a whole new direction. They need leadership to take the wheel and turn the ship before it ends up in unwanted ports.
Some time ago our ministry to young singles, PrimeTime, reached the point where it couldn’t grow because we had no appropriate facility big enough to accommodate a larger group. Even if we could have gathered more people under one roof, the large meetings would have been impersonal, and it would have been almost impossible to assimilate visitors or identify and train leaders.
It was time for a midcourse correction to better meet the needs of singles. We had to divide the ministry, forge manageable groups, locate and train new leaders, and shift facilities. Growth is a wonderful kind of problem, but it does force readjustments. In fact, this was the fourth time we had to steer a new course for PrimeTime. We’re learning that most rapidly growing ministries need to be restructured once a year.
— Increased effectiveness. Simply put, good management enables a church to meet needs it couldn’t meet otherwise.
Our ministry to older singles. Focus, provides a good example. Careful midcourse corrections have enabled Focus to grow steadily. As usual, with growth came increased financial support, more servants, and a broader pool of potential leaders. This opened the door for new ministries to start.
So Focus decided to start a branch of ministry specifically for single parents. As this ministry grew, it spawned a special ministry for children of single parents. And on it goes. Careful management leads to growth, to increased resources, to new ministries, and ultimately to more people’s needs being met.
One nonchurched woman, a single parent, was struggling financially and had her hands full with two adolescent boys. A friend told her, “Go to Willow Creek; they’ll help you.” So she did. She attached herself to the single-parents’ group, and her boys joined the children’s group. Then our food pantry gave her food, our benevolence board helped her financially, and church members gave her rides to church when her car broke down. Over the months she’s been overwhelmed by the love she’s found and seems well on her way to becoming a Christian.
How could we have met that woman’s needs if we hadn’t been organized? We couldn’t have. And if we had tried, it would have taken so much time, energy, and money, we would have vowed never to get involved again. But because the programs had developed as a natural result of management and growth, we were able to help her.
— Increased scope. Good management increases the number of people a church can reach. Personally, I could disciple eight to ten people a day—and then only if I scheduled them like an assembly line and didn’t mind going home exhausted. Would it be possible to run my ministry that way? Yes. Would it be wise? Of course not. I’d be drained, and only a few people would be reached.
Carefully managing my ministry, however, helps me broaden the scope immensely. On an average day, I meet with three or four of our key staff and help them evaluate and organize their ministries. They in turn do the same for several other leaders who work with scores and scores of people every week. The breadth and depth of an organization’s work depends on how it’s managed.
McDonald’s is a prime example. The original founders, the McDonald brothers, figured out how to produce a good product —burgers and fries—and deliver them quickly. That was their genius. It worked so well in one store, they decided to franchise in their area. But they failed miserably. Why? They were great in the hands-on business of running their little store and cranking out a fast hamburger, but not so good at reproducing their method.
Enter Ray Kroc. He knew little about fast food, but he was an expert at franchising. He reproduced the McDonald brothers’ operation at location after location. Ray’s management of the organization enlarged its scope tremendously.
Similarly, the pastor who manages poorly may keep a small operation afloat through warmth and sincerity. But no matter how much he loves people or how fervently he preaches, the scope of his church will forever be limited to the few people he can associate with personally. The well-managed church, however, can provide the warmth and care of the small church in a multiplicity of organized subministries.
Signs of a Well-managed Church
1. A clearly defined purpose. There ought to be no mystery, no guesswork, about why a particular church body exists. Is it to be a loving Christian presence in a dark comer of the city? Then state it. Is it to present the claims of Christ to Nonchurched Harrys? Then let it be known in everything the church does. Is it to pro vide a place for worshiping the Living God in grandeur and power? Then go for it.
Whatever it is, the specific purpose of the church ought to be spelled out. The life of a church will be only as directed as its purpose, only as orderly as its philosophy and strategy.
2. A widely understood purpose. In a well-managed church, both the staff and congregation can articulate its purpose. Often the purpose statement has been reduced to a single sentence or a brief and memorable list. Willow Creek has a fourfold purpose: exaltation, edification, evangelism, and social action. This purpose is spelled out clearly in our membership classes, and once a year it is reiterated in a message at our midweek believers’ service.
It’s one thing for pastors to know clearly what the church’s business is; it’s another to impart that vision to those they lead so the people also own the vision. That’s what Lee lacocca did at Chrysler. He was a master at conferring the vision of a resurrected Chrysler to every employee. When they all understood the purpose and believed in it, they could work together enthusiastically to bring it about. When the purpose permeates every level of an organization, you know management is doing something right.
3. Servants who understand their unique contribution. In a well-run church, the individual players—the pastor, staff, elders and deacons, small-group leaders, and members—know their role in making the church’s purpose a reality.
It’s like a football team. The obvious purpose is to get the ball across the goal line. But unless the split end knows his route, and the left tackle his blocking assignment, and the center the snap count, they’ll trip over each other and go nowhere. They need to know their specific assignments.
So it is in the church. If the worship leader doesn’t know how much time he’s allotted in the service, or if the youth minister doesn’t know what activities he’s expected to plan, or if the ushers aren’t informed of special events, there will be disarray. In the well-managed church, these players not only know the overall purpose, they also know exactly what they can do to contribute to the goal.
4. A strategy that works. This may seem obvious, but it’s equally obvious that some churches employ strategies that don’t work. Let’s say an American church wants to reach lost people. They adopt the strategy of singing on street comers, which has worked remarkably well in Brazil. But their efforts fail to win people in Minneapolis. Wise management will throw out that strategy and look for one that will work.
In fact, good management proposes, tries, refines, rethinks, scraps and starts over—whatever it takes to hit upon a strategy that bears fruit. Unless there is objective proof that the purpose is being fulfilled, the effective manager remains dissatisfied with any strategy. He keeps searching and experimenting until the ends of the church are met in a God-pleasing way.
5. Financial integrity. Since money is a major player in most church activities, the way it is raised, recorded, expended, and accounted for says much about the management of the church. When I see a ministry hurting financially because of irresponsible debt or ill-advised expenditures, I question the quality of management overall. But when a church runs a tight financial ship, even amid healthy challenges, I know it’s well managed.
How money is handled also makes a statement to the unbelieving community. The church that invites people to inspect its audit and gives an accurate accounting of its expenditures will quiet the suspicions and inspire the confidence of the unchurched.
6. A well-cared-for “Main Street.” Another sign of good management is a neat, clean, and attractive facility, especially those areas people pass through on Sunday morning—Main Street.
At Willow Creek, Main Street is the corridor from our entrance sign on the road, through our parking area, entrances, lobbies, and main halls, to our auditorium. It’s the portion of our facilities everybody—and especially visitors—will traverse on Sunday. They may not see the offices or rehearsal rooms, just as guests in your home may not see your bedroom closet or the upstairs shower stall. But people at church will walk through Main Street.
Therefore, we give Main Street the same attention a host gives the front steps, living room, dining room, and bathroom prior to entertaining. Of course, we try to keep all our facilities neat and attractive, but in a pinch. Main Street gets the attention and resources. We want it to look inviting and pleasant.
Neglect of Main Street speaks volumes about a church’s leadership. Managers who are careful about details such as these likely will have other aspects of the ministry under control.
The Case for Management
Not every pastor is gifted in church leadership. Some feel their call is to the Word and prayer, not to wrestling a congregation into organizational orderliness. Such pastors have two options: either find someone else to manage the church or learn to do it themselves. The third option of going without is unacceptable; the church lacking management will pay too great a price in ineffective evangelism, discouraged workers, and missed opportunities. So whether by inclination, delegation, or gumption, the work of leading a church must be accomplished.
But some think management is overrated these days. “We need more pastors,” they say, “not an organization chart full of administrators!” So why should a pastor be concerned with management?
Theologically I can think of two reasons. First, we serve a God who deserves our best. He’s given us the gifts and abilities to do ministry well, not just to muddle through. I want to manage the church to God’s glory. Anything less contradicts the Creator, who after creation surveyed his work and said, “It is good.” He didn’t say, “Oh, it’ll do.”
Second, pastoral management best serves God’s people. People are drawn to the brightest light. It would be wonderful to be a mega-watt searchlight, sweeping vast stretches of humanity, but few are called to that. Nonetheless, why be dull, 40-watt bulbs when we have the potential to be 200-watt beacons?
Management helps us make the most of the light we have. Organization helps us enhance our capabilities. If we order our lives well, and carefully manage those placed in our charge, our churches will shine brilliantly, as lights set on a hill.
Copyright © 1990 by Christianity Today
