I’ve noticed a lot of churches today are reorganizing their operating structure. I hear about Simple Board Governance, Single Board Operations, Streamlining, Downsizing, Effective Ministry, Winning Teams, and on and on. All of them are attempts to create new more efficient operating procedures.
There is an old truism that comes to mind: “Any plan will work, if you work the plan.” There are lots of reasons why churches become inefficient and cumbersome organizations. One reason, I often find, is that they forget how to do things. There are lots of ways to do things, but many of them are not really beneficial in the long run.
Some pastors, recognizing that they hate the committee work, the laity missing deadlines, and the lack of communications, decide to just do it themselves. This doesn’t promote teamwork, instill confidence in the laity, or improve the organization, and it does overburden the pastor, build resentment in both pastor and laity, and ultimately erode the effectiveness of the whole ministry.
Some churches — observing that every meeting seems to spiral into arguments, disagreements, distrust, and dysfunction — decide to cut some people out of the decision-making process, start conducting undermining meetings in the parking lot, and ultimately erode the confidence of the laity and pastor.
Before you decide to reorganize the whole structure, start by making better decisions and trying to do things a bit differently. To make better decisions, refer to my article on Making Wise Decisions. If you want to be smarter about the things you do, read on.
I think the following list of steps can be used to facilitate any process; but I find these steps most beneficiale when working in teams. Some steps are very obvious. Some steps are tedious. But all steps are essential to doing things well.
- Begin with the purpose
This seems simple enough, right? But how often is the purpose simply, “We did it last year” as if that is sufficient reason? It’s the Friday before Easter, so we have a Good Friday service at 7:00. Why? Because it’s what we do, and we did it last year.
That’s simply not good enough. Why do you have a Good Friday service? What is the purpose of this worship event? What do you want people to take away from this event? You must understand the purpose.
If an event has no purpose, then there is no incentive to doing it well. However, if there is a clear and understandable purpose, then you really want to make sure it is done as well as possible.
Can you write out in one clear sentence exactly what you hope to accomplish? Once we understand the purpose, we can begin to create something which will accomplish that purpose.
Create with the end in mind – what will we have if we succeed?
- Establish a process (This creates a framework.)
Most things worth doing around a church will involve more than one person. To help everyone understand who is responsible for what and when, we first establish a clear process. It’s terribly simple stuff; just don’t assume everyone knows. Nail it down and be very clear: Who, What, When, Where, and How? There might be several steps to this process. If there are, then be very clear about the WWWWH for each step.
Most important is the “who”. For every step in the process there must be a name. Someone must be in charge, supervising, overseeing, or sometimes doing the whole step, but be clear who it is, what they will do, by when, and where, and how it will be done.
Make sure every step is clearly identified. If you miss a step, it will be that step that you will trip on because no one was responsible for it.
- Evaluate resources and make decisions
Now that you fully understand the purpose, and you have clearly established a process to achieve it, you are ready for the first major decision point: Is it worth it? To proceed, you have to understand the cost. Given all the steps we have outlined for carrying out this project, what will it cost us to accomplish it? Are the benefits we hope to realize worth the costs we will incur?
Given the projected costs in time, people, and other resources versus best end results we can hope for, is the project worth doing?
At this point, if we find the costs are too high, we may choose to scuttle the whole thing. If the best that we can expect isn’t worth the effort, don’t go forward. Chalk it up to experience and go back to step 1. What else do we want to do?
If we find the costs are acceptable in relation to the best results we could hope for, then we happily go forward with a strong resolve to carry out the project successfully.
- Involve people in working on the program
Yes, we put people’s names on every step in our process. Those people are leaders. Now we want to build teams around our leaders. We don’t want anyone doing these steps all by themselves. We want to find three kinds of people:
People with the right skills to do the work
People with the experience needed to do the work
People who will gain experience by doing the work
Hopefully your leaders have the right skills and experience so it should be easy for them to help identify other people who also have those assets.
It is harder to find new people who have never been active in anything around the church. You must feel bold to go meet new people and ask them to join your team. When you do this, a bunch of good things will happen:
New people will be honored to be asked to work on an important project.
New people will be flattered that you think so highly of them.
New people will bring their own experience and skills with which you may not have been acquainted, to do this work, thus enriching the whole team.
New people who step up to help might develop into next year’s leaders, because they will gain skills and experience from working with your team.
The whole church benefits from involving new people.
- Run the program
Bring everything together and make it work well. Aim for the highest quality event you can. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right. So, make sure that everything that can be done is done well.
Enjoy the whole event!!
- Evaluate everything
Having run the event, most churches simply move on to the next event on the calendar. Usually the next event has been building momentum as the last event was in process. So, as soon as we have one finished, we simply race off to the next one.
Evaluation is a critical step. I cannot emphasize this enough . If the project was worth doing, it is worth evaluating.
At the next meeting of whatever group was responsible for this event, spend the first few minutes of the meeting evaluating any events that just happened. I will usually do this as seasons roll through to completion. For instance, every January we will take time evaluating all the events that happened during Advent/Christmas just past.
Most important: did we accomplish our purpose? (Or, sometimes, did it accomplish another purpose we had not foreseen?)
How did the event(s) go? Did we follow our process? How could we refine that process? How was our implementation, our people resources, our cost effectiveness?
Finally, is it worth doing again? Be honest with this question. Sometimes it was worth doing once but it’s not really worth doing again. Sometimes doing it once leads to a better idea for the next year, in which case we should change directions as warranted. Sometimes it is so labor intensive that it is best to do it every other year.
If it was worth doing and you want to do it again, then move on to #7.
- Improve
Having evaluated everything, you have some idea of what went well and what could be improved. Always improve. Doing it the same way next year leads to complacency, and quickly the quality will decline until no one wants to attend. But if year after year the event gets better and better, people will want to attend and get the full benefit of your planning. So, adapt, change, refine, and improve.
Put the next event on the calendar now.
Who will lead the event next year?
Who on the team do we want to elevate into leadership in either this event or perhaps another event?
Take careful notes of all that went well and that needed to improve. Put these notes in several places where the next leaders can find them easily as the event gets closer. Make a special effort to improve all aspects.
Now that you have run a great event, you have some idea how to do it better the next time and you have a date and a leader for next year. Every group in the church can watch and take notes, and soon everyone will be organizing their events as well.
Regardless of how your organization is structured, if you follow these steps, your whole organization will improve.