Editor's Section




Systems

In the business world systems form the backbone of well run organizations. Many companies now work hard to achieve recognized certification to demonstrate they are well run. The certification most recognized is ISO9000 and we recommend a websearch of this as preliminary research.

One thing that becomes clear to me as I dig into various churches and Christian organizations is that seminaries do not or can not adequately train their students in systems. This is a serious lack, although understandable to some extent because of the limitations of time during a seminarian's studies. As a consequence, the initial conditions of the church self-organizing system are not correct and the system can easily therefore go chaotic. Correcting such a system is, thankfully, not difficult. So, how do we start?

If I were to begin a study of a church's systems with a view to providing a report of recommendations, I would begin with two actions:

First, I would sit down with the senior minister/pastor in a quiet room away from the church and get her/him to draw an organizational chart in traditional form, i.e., with the minister/pastor at the top and the various department heads etc branching down. The chart would include all staff and all volunteers.

Then I would get the minister/pastor to write a brief job description for each person in the chart, including her/himself.

Second, and now without the senior minister/pastor, I would spend time with every person in the chart and write down the answers to two questions I learned long ago from Federal Express. FedEx managers used to have on their desks a circular card held vertical in a wooden base. On the card on the side facing the manager were the two questions an employee needs to have answered: What is my job? How am I doing? In other words, I would ask each staff member and volunteer to give me what they understand to be their job descriptions.  And, importantly, I would ask each of them how they thought the church thought they were doing.  In most cases, this would mean how the senior minister/pastor thought they were doing.

Along with the second action I would also be looking for staff and volunteers the senior minister/pastor did not mention!

(The senior minister/pastor is perhaps more significant in the lives of the church's volunteers than s/he might think.  In the mid 1990s I discussed this with a volunteer at one of London's leading non-charismatic Anglican church.  A middle aged lady was a regular volunteer, working as an usher and on the Welcome Desk.  She was the Head of a Church of England girl's school in outer London.  Given the additional respect that seemed to accrue to members in 'significant' occupations and positions, I thought she would have been well-known to the well-known Rector.  She told me she had been volunteering for seven years and that she doubted the Rector even knew her.  So, I asked him.  He shook his head and muttered, 'No, I don't think I know her'.  I waited a few months and talked again to the Head Teacher and, no, the Rector had still not spoken to her.

A lot of these guys (you guys, if you're a minister) really have their heads in the clouds and do not have a basic understanding of the care and feeding of volunteers.

When the information gathering exercise was completed it would become a simple matter to compare the senior minister/pastor's perceptions with what was actually going on. Generally speaking, a competent minister/pastor's organizational chart and job descriptions would be a good match for what was learned by talking to the staff and volunteers.

As a kind of corollary, I would keep an eye open for morale. This would emerge from the 'How am I doing?' query. Again, it would be interesting and useful to compare the perception of staff and volunteers with that of the senior minister/pastor.

Before the report was complete I would have a good look around the neighborhood myself, perhaps talking to people living or working near the church to learn their perceptions. This would put the church into its immediate context and permit an assessment of its self-awareness of mission/task.

Using the words of our Lord inActs 1:8Acts 1:8 (NIV)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

 (remember that Jesus has something to do with Christianity!) I would then move beyond the neighborhood and see how the church performed elsewhere.

Acts 1:8 is of fundamental importance in the structure of a church's systems. It requires scalability in that the mission/task extends from the immediate neighborhood to the ends of the earth and demands crossing the 'barrier' between the cultural meme of the church people as they learn what is their 'Samaria'. This is perhaps the most difficult of all steps. The ends of the earth are easy, because we usually just send money and a few people, plus we don't have to go there ourselves. (Although some Christians do and their practice is one to be commended and spread more broadly) The Jerusalem bit is also easy because that is the immediate neighborhood. It is Samaria that is the stumbling block and also the litmus test. Returning again to Luke 14:13Luke 14:13 (NIV)

But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.

, in churches where the senior minister/pastor are willingly obedient to this command the church will not have problems identifying their Samaria and extending themselves in that direction.

This last exercise is more complex because it moves beyond the internal workings of the church. It requires a return to the senior minister/pastor and the staff and volunteers to ask them for their understanding of their church's mission/task. The answers derived from this second layer of questioning may be a real eye opener. Even well-known organizations can fall down on this point. When I worked at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (don't get too excited - I was the janitor) there was an away day for the staff and one of its essential purposes was to discuss what the Institute did. Sadly and disappointingly, the staff could not verbalize what the organization actually did! It is not surprising, therefore, to find similar confusion elsewhere.

There is something else that needs airing. Some senior ministers and organisation leaders treat their staff as if they were their personal serfs and consequently there can be an unusual turnover of staff. From my own close observation I can say that some of our more well-known churches and Christian organisations suffer from this. In these cases there will probably be Christians within the church or organisation who know what they are looking at and know how to fix what's wrong. Typically they keep their lips zipped and look on from a distance while grinding their teeth down to a fine white powder. May I suggest they instead get an audience with the great person and firmly explain the facts of life to him or her. However, this won't be of much use unless they offer a solution and volunteer to help out.

Readers might wish to make their own survey of what their church or organization does and how well it is run.