Book Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Management- Knowledge is power.

If learning about your community is a priority, coping with the onslaught of meetings is critical if you are not to collapse under the stress and disappointment of them.

     It’s really quite simple. You can’t know everything. Yet the need to be one step ahead of others is crucial to survival. You need to know how things should be done or where to go to find out. You need to convey a certain level of confidence to others if they are to put their trust in you. Be prepared to read documents. Know what is going on generally in church life. If you don’t, you will flounder as others seek to run rings round you, undermine you, and in general not play ball. A congregation can stop things happening by just not participating. So be ‘wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove’

      It will be vital that you can unload onto someone as things go wrong, as they will. Unless you keep it all in perspective you will begin to think it’s all your fault, and the world is coming to an end, which of course is very presumptuous. If you can stop yourself from reacting, give a day or two between the crisis, it usually fades into insignificance. 

     Of course you went into ministry to share the gospel and to care for people! Well I hope you did. At college you were told about systematic theology and pastoral care with appropriate placements. They checked out that you could preach and lead worship. But now you find yourself out most nights at meetings! No, sadly not bible studies, house groups or worship gatherings. Rather church council’s, finance and property meetings which of course you were probably not trained for.

     A working knowledge of finance, property and procedures clearly would be useful even if the church members should or are doing it. But there you are chairing the meeting trying to make sense of schedules about property, finance, Quinquennial reports and annual accounts. Not surprisingly you can feel bemused, even overwhelmed by it all, and certainly wondering what’s the point of these gatherings? I would have to say looking back that the vast majority of them were a waste of time as they rarely got anything done.

      Moving to any church means meetings will already be scheduled for you. You will not control your diary and you may never if you stick strictly with the system. Most Methodist Ministers having more than one church will know the feeling of the September/October round of meetings. From district synods, Circuit meetings, Local Preachers meeting, Church councils, with perhaps a property and finance committee thrown in for good measure. It never at first glance seems so much. In my first appointment I had five churches. One of which by size had a finance and property committee, pastoral committee and church family committee. So before you know where you are its ten evenings out just at business meetings. If they are to be effective meetings then you need additional time to prepare for them thoroughly. 

      The fact is you are driven by other people’s agendas both local and national. Much of it feels like ticking boxes. It’s no good trying to make out to yourself, and others, this is all part of God’s work caring for the resources God has given us, that may well be true. It still remains ticking boxes and often the actions required to follow up these meetings are just not possible with diminished personnel to actually implement the work. So meeting will follow meeting and nothing will have happened about the scheme in hand. It will in the end get you down raising the question what is the point of it all?

     You will seek to give everyone a voice, which in turn stops anything ever getting done as they cannot agree even on the colour of the paint for the door.

If you ever want to check out a church’s priorities then do this simple exercise that I undertook at one of my churches. At a General Church Meeting, not the most popular meeting in church life, I put on the agenda ‘the future of the Christmas bazaar’ so out they came in force. No minister was going to put a stop to that. Having simply agreed we would have one we got on with the real business I had planned. With nearly everyone present we were able to have a meaningful discussion. In groups they worked through areas of church life from youth work, pastoral care, prayer meetings, worship, ecumenical involvement, property, finance etc. Their task was to put them in order of priority. What a surprise! Worship and youth work all came to the top of the various lists as being what we should be about as church. Then the question was posed. On what do we spend our time? With real honesty the lists were reversed and property and finance came top. What an indictment of church life, and after all these years I suspect that hasn’t changed.

I believe that when the church puts worship and care of people, and that includes its outreach into the community first, then God blesses the community of faith and the finance follows. This has been a struggle throughout my ministry to keep the order as it should be, though it feels like King Canute trying to hold back the waves to no avail. So be warned.

You may well find that people often regard ministers as not knowing anything. As if the dog collar makes you different from anyone else. Yet then they expect you to know everything as well! It’s a strange paradox. 

Finance

In my first appointment I found that I was expected to be the auditor at one of my village chapels. Today I would just say no, even though I could do it. Now I would say if need be pay someone to do it. God has not called men and women into ordained ministry to check bank statements. But when I came out from college I was naive and no one had prepared me for the practicalities of church finance. So when I visited the treasurer at one chapel I discovered they had in fact two treasurers. One elderly lady, the church steward, kept some money in a post office book and the rest in a sock under the bed. The other treasurer, whose body language conveyed a woman carrying years of resentment, was waiting for me with it all in bags on the kitchen table so I could count it. Naive I might have been, stupid I was not. I refused and insisted it was to be banked. Consternation was caused in the ranks by this young minister. A new treasurer was found and duly instructed in basic book keeping, by me! 

       This raises a question. Why had previous ministers not stuck to the book and carried things out properly? This is when as minister you have to realise you have a responsibility to the whole church and that includes your successor. There are times when it is really important to follow the correct procedures otherwise you make it difficult for your successor. So get to know the rules and regulations of your church and insist they are carried out. It will be to your own benefit and the benefit of the whole church. Your knowledge of such matters will mean you keep in the driving seat for the benefit of the whole church. It may not be your thing but try and have a working knowledge of finance, to read a spreadsheet and look for trends. It’s too easy to be told the church will go bust on the basis of one year’s accounts. Insist on having the previous two years alongside the accounts. You need to be in the know. How else will you hold what the church is doing to account against the priorities of the kingdom of God. Which leads me to state, I understand the church community as a tool for creating the Kingdom of God. The two are not the same thing.

Power brokers of the church

It perhaps should be noted at this point that treasurers like organists can be a breed all unto themselves. They are hard to come by so naturally you don’t want to upset them. Some of them lose sight of their role and come to see the money as theirs. It is not to be spent, unless at a push it’s on the buildings. It’s another form of blackmail that all ministers will encounter. Treasurers can be one of the power brokers of the church who use their position to get their way. 

So when, as it will happen, someone threatens to resign or does resign, never seek to change their mind. If they do resign accept the resignation with a polite letter of thanks on behalf of the church and move on, lose no sleep. 

In undertaking your pastoral visiting you hopefully will have picked up who runs the church. Small and large congregations face this problem. They may not be an official office holder. They may be a group within the congregation who perhaps went through a youth group together, and find they have influence. Keeping them onboard without allowing them to control you is a fine art and never easy. It will mean some battles so chose your fight carefully.

Church Stewards or your church leadership team

Key in the life of any Methodist church is the role of church stewards. They are elected in theory by the membership to offer leadership to the local church. A good team of stewards can be the making of the church and provide you as minister with another vital area of support for your ministry. The reality may well be otherwise.   

          In small chapels and large, stewards can be the immovable block to change. A good working relationship with your church stewards is critical. You need to meet with them regularly to share an overview of church life. You need to pray with them. You need to encourage them to take on areas of responsibility so they can feed back into your meetings what is going on. With you they are the day to day management group of the church. Resist the temptation if you inherit a team of stewards you would not have chosen yourself, to create an alternative power grouping. Work with the system not against it. If you create your own group there will be added tensions and your successor will inherit it. So how do you get the right team? You can choose to leave it completely to the church community to nominate and appoint church stewards. That’s fine and democratic, but it can create a team of diehard’s defending the status quo. Or a team of let’s change everything and trouble ensues. I prefer to get the existing stewards to pray about and discern what the church needs. So you look for mixed team of ages, sex and ability and of course that they are committed to discipleship. You cannot have the immature in faith leading. Of course mistakes will be made and it does not always work. With declining numbers you may have little or no choice and are just thankful that some people are prepared to undertake these important roles. Remember to use your stewards/elders/church wardens as your eyes and ears. Encourage them to know what is going on, and train them to know when something is serious and when it’s just Mr so and so having their usual whinge. Where it was possible I held a monthly meeting with stewards. This is not always possible in the small chapel context where there may only be one or two stewards. Then a more informal approach of keeping in touch is appropriate, dropping in for coffee and keeping yourself informed. You could of course gather the stewards of smaller chapels for a joint meeting which becomes a fellowship group, it can create greater cooperation between chapels and that’s got to be a plus! As I was writing this I was in an appointment where in theory I was relating to nine congregations so trying to do what I hoped for was near impossible.

As mentioned not all the power brokers hold office. I reiterate there will be characters around who have in the past run the church and who continue to do so by their influence. Try to work with people and create good relationships and be clear in your own mind what really is worth going to the stake over.

Christians - A way of life or volunteers?

You will have to come to terms with the tension that you are working with volunteers. The church is essentially run by volunteers. Apart from yourself who technically receive's a stipend, an allowance to live on, others fulfil roles because they are willing to do so or not. 

Paying other people, which is a growth area, to do jobs may cause controversy. People will recall a time, and tell you, when everything was done by volunteers, and why should someone be paid to do perhaps what they did for nothing? It’s no argument because the world has changed but many in the church don’t associate the church with change.

 The supply of people free to give time as in the past has dried up as men and particularly women have to work to pay the mortgage. The reality was even in the past we did pay people cleaners and caretakers.

 As the minister you may be under the false impression that as committed disciples of Jesus there is a real sense that being a Christian is a way of life. It’s a shared calling and everyone should be willing to give their gifts and time to the work. Part of that is running the church. Think again. Many people will see themselves as volunteers who will give their time when it suits them. For some it is a hobby. The consequence of this will be that it takes a long time to get even simple jobs done. In my view and experience it is often better to get someone in and pay them rather than wait for a skilled member of the congregation to do the job. With the best of intentions people are busy, with full time jobs’, family commitments and they would be better doing other things in church than running off the newsletter or repairing a door.

Much time and energy will be consumed precisely because we own so much property. Our energy, finance and gifts end up being poured into the maintenance of the buildings. This begs the ongoing question. Do we need all our properties to be the church? More about that under handling change.

Control the meetings

Having indicated that you will find meetings eating up your time you do then need to address this issue. 

I feel the first thing you have to do as the chair of all these meetings is to set a little bit of time aside and plan out the meetings for the year. It may seem an obvious thing to write, but in terms of time management, it does avoid wasting time at meetings planning the next ones which I have done on numerous occasions. You can then make sure things flow naturally, after all you want your sub-committee to meet before church council so it can report to it. 

Remember your diary will be the fullest so call the tune. Give good notice, and remember don’t let people see your diary otherwise they will try and get you to book in a time which does not suit you, just because there is a blank there. You don’t get brownie points in heaven for having a full diary. So put in your diary initials in case people do look - EWS 7.30pm - is code for Evening With Wife! But of course you should not feel guilty about having an evening in.

Secondly ask yourself do you need to be at the meeting? For years I went to everything and then reduced them but still found myself going to too many. Ask yourself and the church, especially for those sub-committees, could not a skilled lay person chair the meeting? Probably better than you!  As long as they report back to you it should not be a problem. You do need to know what is happening, but it will free you up for ministry or even the occasional evening in.

More importantly in the light of many wasted evenings, for which as chair you are responsible, so you only have yourself to blame, you need to be clear about what the purpose of the meeting is. Sadly churches have meetings almost for the sake of it. Being part  of the institution you find you easily collude with it all and convince yourself through your busyness that it's acceptable. Certain things have to be done and we do need to be accountable to each other. Sometimes it can feel as if the meeting serves only as the reminder to folks of what they said they would do last time but haven’t, and it spurs them on, hopefully to then do it. That applies to you the minister as well. So we all feel guilty together how’s that for unity! What you need to remember is to not take things on.

You sit there and no one offers to do a job. So you find yourself saying ‘I’ll deal with it’. That then just gets added to the list from all the other meetings you will be chairing or attending. In the end you come to a standstill by the sheer weight of tasks most of which are not your calling. I can write this because I did this time and time again falling short of this ideal and it’s dire. In the end you need to get someone to say they will do it, when by, or if not, simply acknowledge it won’t be done. It’s a corporate community responsibility. You will find that people often dump their jobs onto you on Sunday at the door as they leave. Even if you say yes I’ll deal with it you are likely to forget. So get into the habit of asking people to put things on paper so you have a written record. More importantly don’t take it on by saying no and that you do not have time. Be brave.

The meeting

Meetings need to be focussed and that means careful attention to the agenda. Shorter ones with just two main items that require enough time are best. All churches have their own system of when things should be done. Methodists will be used to property and finance in October, pastoral and appointments in February. When sending out the agenda two weeks prior to the meeting you need to send out as much information as possible. Proposals, lists of names for appointments etc all want to be on the agenda so you can speed through those items to give time to matters that deserve them. 

Time the agenda in advance. Jot the timings on your sheet so it can serve as a rough guide to keep things on the move. 

Remember people given the opportunity will spend hours arguing over whether to charge for coffee or the colour of the paint for a door, rather than discuss worship or pastoral care. 

Church meetings are also notorious for not handling conflict so they can be great talking shops that avoid the real issues. Be prepared to create the right conditions so matters are dealt with and not shelved to fester away. 

Draw up your agenda with relevant papers a good week before the fortnight notice of the meeting. Send them out by post/e.mail and ignore the moans about the waste of money on postage. People need to have the information on time. If you try to give them out at church on a Sunday someone will always be away, and delivering them by hand will waste time and petrol which is money, so post them!! Of course now e.mail means information can be sent out more easily, perhaps too easily. Do not assume everyone works with modern technology.

Don’t forget to ask people to let you know before the meeting if they have any items of other business. This helps you in timing the meeting. An item under A.O.B. (any other business) can in fact take up lots of time leaving everyone frustrated at a point in the evening when you all thought you were ready to go home.  It will give you warning of potential trouble and time to think about it before hand. It may well be you decide the matter deserves proper time and you defer it to another meeting. When you start a meeting always ask again for ‘notice of any other business’ (N.O.A.O.B) just in case someone plans to drop a bombshell. You can then say after such and such an item our meeting will end. Everyone will have been warned.  

When it comes to the meeting I believe it’s the chairs responsibility to make clear that the meeting is part of the life of the faith community, the worship and witness of the church. The meeting should be a reflection of our Christ centred community. So worship should be part of the meeting at least at its outset and end. You can in fact use a simple ‘Iona evening service’ and pause to do the business instead of the sermon/reflection, this way the meeting is encapsulated as worship and work.

When it comes to the bottom line you need to know what’s going on. That requires a good working relationship with your church officials, secretaries, treasurer and the power brokers of the church who may not have official titles. It’s not about stitching up a meeting before hand. It is about making sure you know what is going on across the whole life of the church community. Make no mistake about it this is time consuming and exhausting.

Finally! Don’t forget as minister you represent the wider church community. You will need to bring to bear that broader perspective and theological insight. Your broader knowledge is the source of your influence. Used wisely it helps the church. The money, the buildings, the peoples’ gifts, are God’s not the local congregation.

Secretary and offices

One of the best things that happened for me was when a church member Wendy, recognising that I had too much to do and was floundering paperwork wise, offered to take on some of my administration. This was to start a pattern which I would recommend to anyone in ministry. It was Wendy who started me off doing visits by booking them in for me. I then developed this into a visiting chart (see pastoral visiting section). Getting to this stage of using a secretary was towards the end of my first appointment that lasted for seven years. So I really didn’t see much benefit there, but began to see its potential. You can see I was a slow learner and not doing something about clerical help was a big mistake. 

I was determined then in the light of this experience if at all possible to make sure I got a secretary as soon as I could in my next appointment. I began to learn to be pushy and not driven by others.

 On arrival at my next main church there existed a kind of church office which the previous minister had created and used. The only problem was it had become an alternative source of power to the church stewards. While you can’t always choose your stewards as I have written earlier, I don’t think it’s healthy to have two power blocks in a church. Better to work within the structure and the elected stewards.

 So the sort of office was allowed to fall into disuse, besides which they were not good at the clerical work required, it was too much like a hobby, and the church does need to be professional. 

One of the most important lessons I have learnt about employing people was in my second appointment, through the wisdom of one of the stewards on the team. Joe insisted that if we were to appoint a paid secretary we had to know exactly what we expected them to do. This sounds so obvious. Back then we did not have the wealth of back up from the wider church for advice, let alone all the employment legislation you need to follow now. This led to the drawing up of a very clear job description and a process of advertisement, interviews and appointment. 

It was in fact a church member who gained the job but the process made sure that clear boundaries were set for their work. I and the church were then able to have based in the church building someone to act as receptionist, secretary to the minister and to undertake secretarial work for other church officers after my work was completed. The result was the church was open five days a week during the mornings, a drop in coffee shop began once a week as a consequence, and all round communication improved. For me it meant I in fact got through more work keeping my desk fairly clear.  As an aside from my experience, my view would always be to appoint someone with a working knowledge of the church. Make sure the job description states what you want doing otherwise a person makes their own job and that can be a disaster.

In my next appointment I was able to develop this post further. I had originally suggested in my second circuit that we should appoint a circuit administrator but people were not keen. There is always the politics of where the person will be based and does that give more importance to one church than another. So as nothing could be agreed circuit wise the local church thankfully went ahead on its own.

 In the subsequent appointment I made it clear on arrival that a secretary was essential and the need for an office in the church would be required. This meant and should mean good equipment to work with computer, photocopier, internet, laminator, paper cutter etc. All the essentials of a modern office seeking to be professional about what it does. 

A positive response and encouragement from the local church and in the end the circuit, meant we were able to turn it into a circuit post. All the nine churches pooled their resources and contributed to the job. The main church where the secretary was based paid the lions share as they would gain the most, but as superintendent it did mean circuit work was being funded by the circuit. 

Chapels have got to stop being parochial in their thinking and where possible pool their resources for the mutual support and benefit of all, including the minister.

Over the years due to circumstances change took place and we employed the secretary by the main church alone and another secretary was employed by another church in the circuit for my colleague. This meant two places of worship were open five mornings a week and communication improves, ministers are assisted in paperwork and people’s gifts are recognised.

Back to key people

In management of any organisation how you work with and handle people is critical. The church is no exception to this. 

As indicated earlier as minister you are working with full time Christians who act as volunteers. At any point they can take their bat home if they don’t like something that occurs. No matter how hard you try you will upset people. It maybe something you say in worship so they stop coming. It maybe you failed to make a visit at a critical time. It may be they just do not agree with the thrust of your ministry. It may be you just did not invite them to Christmas dinner as you had the previous two years. 

Do get to know who the key people are, especially those who can either help or hinder what you are seeking to do. In every church there is at least one Queen bee. There is at least one irritating dot every I and cross every T attention to detail character, and so forth. Getting alongside them early in the appointment is very helpful. The occasional visit to float an idea to see how it would be received can be a useful tool.

 I think it’s noticeable that key people don’t always get visited precisely because we see them at church regularly, at meetings etc and so assume we know them and they are okay. There is a strong argument to be made that a minister might in terms of visiting the church community make a priority of visiting the key people. To regularly encourage them, rather than try to visit everyone. Clearly this may not be well received by others who see you as having favourites. 

Your my favourite! 

The perception people have of you having ‘favourites’ is a fascinating area of ministry. You of course will not have them! You will seek to be impartial, objective and fair to all. You will find some people easier to like and get on with than others. At some point you will find that those who regarded themselves as your friend become upset when at a critical point you do not take their side over an issue. That you are in fact impartial and fair to all, with your only bias being your loyalty to God, can annoy them. This will test your resolve because we do all like to be liked. Please don’t have favourites and accept sometimes the loneliness that goes with being a leader.

Yet in terms of management of the church which falls under your brief you are to use the old phrase ‘the servant of the local church but they are not your masters’. You will move on at some point so stay faithful to your calling and to the light by which you live your life that God has gifted you. 

Finally and most importantly management is an aspect of what you do, ultimately you are called to leadership and that is a very different thing. There are numerous books written about leadership and how to exercise it. There is no template. Though there are good pointers that such books can give. You can learn to be a more effective leader. Yet rather than write a whole chapter on this I believe the reader will find that throughout this book reference is made to leadership as I understand it.