On the Management of Churches
Do churches (and other organizations focussed on religious practice) need to be managed?
No-one wants safeguarding to be unprofessional, finances to be left to luck, people to be appointed without scrutiny or fairness, training to be haphazard, worship and the organization of volunteers to be chaotic …etc etc. All of those activities seem to need to be managed in some way to meet expectations - and managing those things doesn’t necessarily cut across (e.g.) pastoral decisions or choices about worship.
And yet the idea of management of and in churches is often bemoaned as ‘managerialism’ - which is when the organization becomes idelologically focussed on management, for the managers’ benefit. I don’t think that is normally the case in churches and similar organizations.
But if you think we don’t need management (people or maybe processes) in churches, what are the alternatives?
- A Barchester Towers model of patronage and the tyranny of taste, which seems undesirable.
- The Quaker model of consensus decision making, which seems admirable but I wonder if it still leaves some (legally required) officers managing day-to-day business?
Maybe there are other alternatives… or maybe we should admit that churches need managing?
No-one wants safeguarding to be unprofessional, finances to be left to luck, people to be appointed without scrutiny or fairness, training to be haphazard, worship and the organization of volunteers to be chaotic …etc etc. All of those activities seem to need to be managed in some way to meet expectations - and managing those things doesn’t necessarily cut across (e.g.) pastoral decisions or choices about worship.
And yet the idea of management of and in churches is often bemoaned as ‘managerialism’ - which is when the organization becomes idelologically focussed on management, for the managers’ benefit. I don’t think that is normally the case in churches and similar organizations.
But if you think we don’t need management (people or maybe processes) in churches, what are the alternatives?
- A Barchester Towers model of patronage and the tyranny of taste, which seems undesirable.
- The Quaker model of consensus decision making, which seems admirable but I wonder if it still leaves some (legally required) officers managing day-to-day business?
Maybe there are other alternatives… or maybe we should admit that churches need managing?
Comments
What would constitute managing churches that’s different from what’s already being done?
Management is just a function of organisational size, and to an extent different forms of management are adaptations to failure situations once an organization hits a particular size (this is nothing new, see Acts 6 or Exodus 18)
So yeah, you can do without management, as long as your organisations are really small and do very little. Usually management becoming a law unto itself is a case of failure to adapt to a new situation, though in any institution of any reasonable size will also act to protect itself by virtue of the interplay between the interests of the individuals within it.
Tangentially; a good book on the topic came out recently ("The Unaccountability Machine" by Dan Davies), while it uses the financial crisis as a case study, most of the book has applications elsewhere.
A number of the local churches in our area now contract their financial management to accounting firms. Certainly helps. Then, too, there are many software programs congregations can use to avoid mistakes in the accounting of funds.
Interesting examples. But:
- Would non-military churches be governable purely by regulations? (I think the Kirk used to be - calling @North East Quine for historical insight.) Isn’t there still someone to say if the regulations have been followed, and what happens if they haven’t?
- Financial software is not infallible, it seems… and so is some honest human judgement needed there too?
I don’t think it would necessarily be different from what’s already done, but (some / many) people don’t like to think of churches as ‘managed’ and I find that interesting.
(In passing, I note that the modern translations of the bible render the parable in Luke 16 as being concerned with managers rather than stewards)
I hear you, but to be fair the question in the OP is explicitly “do churches need to be managed”.
What you are objecting to, I think, is a lack of prophetic action and visionary leadership in churches, which are different things from managing (and can exist whether management / managing is there or not). But I agree they are more important in relation to the values and mission we might hope to see. If that makes sense…?
Of course, I am speaking against myself, being constitutionally entirely allergic to churches which try to be "relevant". But without being genuinely relevant, without having a real contribution to rebuilding the world after the reality of God's love, what the fuck is the point of the church?
Oh yes, the maintenance of good policies.
I’d say appropriate management is necessary to enable a church to carry out its mission. The mission is the important thing, and any form of management that thwarts or hinders that mission is inappropriate, but generally speaking some form of management is needed or the mission can’t happen, or can’t happen as effectively.
And if managerialism were not rampant, we would not have a mediocre junior oil executive as the spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, or a manager of nurses as Bishop of London.
This! Management must always be in service of the mission. Thus, church bureaucracy (yes, it exists and is needed) must always be asking how it serves mission.
And there can be management without managerialism.
The primary and absolute condition for this is that the management is aware that it is temporary, and is not an end in itself. I see little evidence of this in the church, ironically because it is terrified of extinction. To me, it only gains the right to survive by embracing the reality of its eventual extinction.
That points if anything to a lack of proper management, not its excess. I think traditional British management was not great, and has accreted some 'business speak' gloss, but in many ways remains the same as it always was. The CofE suffers because parts of the church structure operate this way, and the rest operates as a chumocracy.
You can see evidence of the latter in the report following every recent scandal.
Thank you @ThunderBunk, I love the phrase ‘dissolve the church into the world’.
Ref management, I prefer the term ‘facilitation’. Yes, things need to be organised, to facilitate the aims and needs of the individual church community in accordance with God’s calling and guidance, and the example of Christ.
Management is necessary. Someone has to make sure that the fabric of the building is maintained, that any staff are paid, that the cleaner knows what to do, that there's a plan and a budget to refurbish the ancient heating system which we know will need to be replaced in the next couple of years, that a replacement organist will show up when the normal organist is sick or on holiday, and so on.
But as I often tell managers at my place of work, the thing that they do is not the work of our organization: it's the necessary support tasks that enable the actual work to happen. Successful management means that the primary function of the organization continues without interruption.
I've had experience of both kinds in church, and clearly you do need the bean-counters and legal people, very much so--but when they get put into roles that require a shepherd, the whole thing starts to stutter and choke like a car about to die. We had a fellow termed the "Mission Executive" who was excellent at figures, but utterly crap at how human beings worked, especially human beings from other cultures, and had a "one size fits all" idea of how new ethnic church plants ought to develop. To give you an example, he ordered my husband to cease as much pastoral work as he could (he was the only pastor to be had) and instead to somehow scrounge up a number of other leaders and hand off the pastoral work to them so that he himself could become a "rancher"--by which he meant, someone who manages several mission congregations from afar. And we were all to be off mission subsidy in three years.
No doubt this is possible somewhere. But not with an almost unreached Asian people group made up of refugees on assembly work wages, at or below federal poverty line. Not if you mean to entrust pastoral leadership to people who are just now learning that there is one God and he actually cares about people...
He finally left (after laying off all the missionary pastors below him) and took a job with a financial company. Good riddance.
I would describe that as "administration", i.e. essential support work. "Management" is the "higher" (!!!) task of getting work done by delegating it to other people. That work includes both the primary activiy as well as support tasks of the organisation.
What falls into the latter category is the plethora of reports, vision statements and management-speak mumbo-jumbo that has become de rigeur in recent years.
I used to have a boss whose conversation consisted almost entirely of management cliches and meaningless 'consultancy' phrases.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against 'management consultancy' when it's done properly. I've seen good and bad examples.
I was once involved in a well-meaning initiative to draw together a pool of lay-people with particular talents and expertise who could assist clergy in a particular diocese with issues like finance, personnel, buildings issues, conflict resolution and the like. It foundered before it even got off the ground. The clergy on the ground were up for it but the Bishops didn't 'get' it at all.
Conversely, I've heard of other Dioceses where senior clergy acted like CEOs and kick-ass business tycoons simply because they'd watched a few videos, attended a few seminars and watched a few PowerPoint presentations.
The same thing happened with FE College principals (collective noun, 'a lack of') and university vice-chancellors in the '90s.
I've nothing against proper and professional management of finances, safeguarding, buildings maintenance and the legal side of things. What I object to are the more 'apparently 'visionary' targets and outcome setting initiatives that involve a lot of brou-ha-ha and don't actually achieve much on the ground.
I don't envy anyone involved in restructuring or reconfiguring the way churches operate. I've been hearing only today about the obstacles and heart-ache involved in a review of a particular Methodist Circuit with possible church mergers and closures.
That's tough and requires insightful management not clixhes and soundbites.
Wait... you mean there are churches where these things are managed rather than haphazardly happen because of casual conversations between members? Who knew?
[seriously, our 3 years broken heating got replaced because I speculatively emailed a contractor, waved the quote at Session and got permission to get it done]
The thing is everything you mention is a pathological example of something useful. Reports are useful to understand how the organisation is functioning, it's good for an institution to have a central and immediate purpose that everyone understands, some things need special vocabulary to explain. There is a lot of wisdom outside the church on how to successfully run organisations.
From observation there are both UK and US variants of this particular failure mode, and they look different, but if you've seen them a few times you start to notice the similarities (also given the well documented deficiencies of British management, the last place you want your Bishops to come from is British industry).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parochial_church_council
No what we want is someone with some decent understanding of history and theology, maybe to degree level. Someone who has experienced some difficulty in life, such as a broken home or personal bereavement, or even just depression. Someone whose spiritual life is nurtured from a breadth of tradition and who has served, say, ten years in parishes, including in areas of deprivation. Someone who doesn’t have any sense of entitlement about the role. Someone who has had a significant ministry of reconciliation, and perhaps some cathedral experience as well. Someone who has a vision for a church which can hold some kind of unity, even in the face of disagreement, which can be focussed on prayer, and can have a sense of the calling to share the gospel.
I think it was Rowan Williams who said something to the effect of ‘the higher you get in the Church of England the less power you have’.
But still, you can always be a lightning conductor.
(*Apparently her MA in theology, her eleven years in parish ministry - three of them part time, her three years in cathedral ministry, her two years in episcopal ministry, and her involvement in theological education are all to be ignored, and her previous role in a full nursing career finishing as most senior advisor on nursing matters to the government is to be dismissed with the phrase ‘manager of nurses’ as though she were nothing more than a jumped up ward sister.)
This is the reason why the minister should not be involved with the business management of the congregation, in my book.
* At our place, three people—the church treasurer and two officers of the corporation, none of whom are the ministers—have authority to sign checks. Checks over $5,000 (I think) require two signatures. We contract with a local financial services company that works only with churches and faith-based organization for bookkeeping and accounting.
No, this is why you have multiple people authorize payments. No organization should have only one person signing cheques. Whoever the lone cheque-signer was could have done precisely what the minister did. Has nothing to do with the pastor's role per se.
For example, does presbyterian organization avoid some of the concerns about individuals and/or does it come with other problems - like the need for individual intervention mentioned by @Arethosemyfeet ? (I am not sure I know how a Kirk Session works, so no criticism intended.)
That was a really interesting, scholarly and thoughtful post.
But I was a bit confused since:
(i) It seems to be advocate both for and against the ministry experience you might need to be a spiritual leader, so are you saying that we need to look at how the person has been ‘formed’ by their experience rather than what the experience looks like on paper? Or am I missing the point there?
(ii) I wondered if you are separating management and leadership as different roles or gifts, or saying that church leaders will need to be managers too and so the kinds of management experience you highlight (perhaps especially in nursing, a profession with a core focus on care) are useful and helpful?
(Although (i) might be a bit of a tangent)
This can work well, provided one has enough people. However there must be an overlap between the two roles, and the concept can run foul of the Charity Commission who consider ipso facto "the people who run the church" as its Managing Trustees, whatever their totle.
The examples I chose were just two historical examples of people who had had other careers before ministry. On reflection I could have chosen an ex-soldier as well/ instead.
I wasn’t making any point about what kind of ministry or pre-ministry experience is required, and yes, looking at how someone has been formed by all their experience is what we ought to be doing.
I wasn’t at all focussed on people’s management experience.
I don't think the eccentricities of my local Kirk are any sort of indictment of Kirk Sessions which, under the unitary constitution common now to most parishes, are not practically dissimilar to PCCs in terms of their dealing with the temporal affairs of the church.
I am, however, reminded that in Episcopal churches the Bishops are in charge, in Baptist churches the congregation wields power, and in Presbyterian churches all authority rests in committees.
My name was put forward as a potential elder, I confirmed I was willing to stand, and someone seconded the proposal. I was then ordained as an elder and signed the Westminster Confession. Eldership is for life, although elders do retire. In our church retired elders are referred to as Elders Emeritus, though this isn't a general term. At 60, I am one of the younger elders, although that partially reflects the fact that I'm still in the youngest third of the congregation on an average Sunday.
The Kirk Session manages the church. It's chaired by the Session Clerk. Within the Session there are sub-committees (Property, Finance, Worship) which meet separately and report to Session. Committee reports are circulated ahead of Kirk Session meetings, so a report that three quotes have been received for a roof repair and the Property committee recommends one tends to be rubber stamped. Discussions as to upgrades or changes involve more discussion, sometimes a lot more discussion. The old favourite "Shall we replace the fixed pews with individual seating to create a more flexible space" has been floating around for years, if not decades. In fact, the last time it came up, I went through our Kirk Session records which date back to 1713 and wrote a short history of arguments over pews.* (The Pewnic Wars, as the NE Man called it.)
I have a single elder responsibility - I am the elder who inspects every gravestone for which our church holds a maintenance legacy, and reports on their condition. I do this roughly every four years. I sign off my reports "Elder responsible for whitening our sepulchres" but this designation has yet to make it into the official minutes.
I'm also on an ecumenical committee with members of other local churches, and report back to Session.
I think Kirk Sessions work well. It's a lot of work for those on one of the busier committees (such as Worship) but at least the work is spread out over several people.
*C18th arguments tended to be over inheritance of pews etc and rights to the more desirable pews (dasks). (Basically seating in our church in the C18th ran from rough benches, to pews, to dasks, which were more of a combined seat / desk)
As I said before, the C of E's Parochial Church Council structure fulfils this recommendation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parochial_church_council
From that article:
A parochial church council (PCC) is the executive committee of a Church of England parish and consists of clergy and churchwardens of the parish, together with representatives of the laity. It has its origins in the vestry committee, which looked after both religious and secular matters in a parish. It is a corporate charitable body.
Legally the council is responsible for the financial affairs of the church parish and the maintenance of its assets, such as churches and church halls. It also assists the clergy in the management of church affairs in the parish, and promoting the mission of the church.
My italics.
Yes. I was wondering what the difference was between Telford's 'management committee' and a parochial church council.
@chrisstiles - yes, I agree that the ills I cite are wonky equivalents of things that can be done wisely and well.