I’m one of the odd ones. I don’t just like admin, but I love admin when it works. When it blends seamlessly into the background. That is how most ministers or people feel about admin — they like it when it disappears. But church admin only disappears into the background when you’ve done it well. When you’ve been intentional about it.
Until then, church administration takes the wind out of ministers’ sails. Just mention the word admin and you are met with a groan. Alas, we all have to do some form of admin to effectively minister to the people God entrusted to us.
Why Is Church Admin Important?
If your ministry is an arrow, then vision is the arrowhead that determines the effectiveness of ministry, and admin is the shaft that carries the arrowhead. The bigger the shaft, the bigger the arrowhead that it can carry.
Ministry rises and falls on the effectiveness of your admin. If your administration isn’t strong enough to carry the weight of your vision, your ministry is in real danger of stagnating.
To help you, here are three aspects that I have found you need to have in place for your journey to effective church administration:
1. The Right People
Anybody can learn how to do a task on a system, but it takes a skilled administrator to tie it all together and make it work efficiently. The Bible has many examples of skilled administrators organizing events, managing resources or communicating with the God’s people.
Why not trust God for someone on your team to come in as a skilled administrator to create and implement your tools and processes?
2. The Right Tools
We use tools to simplify, capture, and automate the tasks and information that we need for ministry purposes. Some tools are more suited to bigger churches and some to smaller churches — it all depends on your ministry environment. Tools can be paper-based or digital, free or paid for, an online service that you log in to, or software that you download. Tools can help you if you have the right ones, or hinder you if they aren’t best suited to your needs.
No single tool will solve all your problems, but in combination, they can lighten the load of the admin required for ministry to take place.
The free tools we commonly suggest for use by churches are Google Forms, Bitly.com, GoDoChurch, Mailchimp, Canva.com, Audacity and Whatsapp for Web etc.. All of these tools have a free and paid-for version. In most cases, the free version is strong enough for the needs of a small church.
If you are go-to person for admin in your church, then one of your main roles is to get the right tools in place for your church context. There are many more tools out there — you can do an internet search and find a solution to fit your needs.
3. The Right Processes
Processes are the admin steps you put in place around a tool — it refers to how a tool is implemented in your specific context. It also refers to how you use multiple tools together to make ministry and church admin easier.
Processes can, and should, be captured in documents. There is no need to reinvent the wheel each time a new person fills a position. Capturing your processes helps to create clarity in your ministry and admin teams. This avoids duplication of tasks, misunderstandings of who should be doing what and increases general team effectiveness and unity.
Tying It All Together
When these three things — people, tools, and processes — come together, you will start to see how time and resources flow from solving admin hiccups and problems to releasing people to focus on ministry and getting to the people God loves.
If you need a system to help you create church operations that support ministry, then contact us. We are passionate about church administration and seeing churches thrive.
GoDoChurch is Web-based church administration software that helps the small modern church stay connected to its congregation. Get a Mobile App, online event management and ticketing, small group management, a follow-up module, pretty newsletters and more. Sign up for your FREE 30-day trial!
Blessing Mpofu says
I’ve been in church forever and Iove how you’ve highlighted the foundations of great admin and systems. This is super helpful.