As a former businessperson and now as a pastor, I know firsthand two areas of operation every church, business or organization has to have in place, and that must be managed well, but most ministers and many leaders, especially the more entrepreneurial leaders, usually know little about and really don’t enjoy doing:
Financial Accountability
Human Resources
It is important to keep the entity legal and ethical in all its dealings.
Here are some things to keep in mind in regards to these areas:
- Young pastors and leaders, especially in the start-up phase, need to pay special attention to these functions, because if not they may become experts unwillingly by experience. (In the form of suits showing up on your doorsteps!)
- Established organizations often have these areas in place, but laws are consistently changing. The leader doesn’t have to know all these changes, but he needs to be sure someone in the church does.
- As much as these areas may seem to get in the way of “real” ministry, or as in business, making “real” profits, the leader needs to realize that these are vital to keeping the organization’s doors open.
- Depending on the size of the church, these may be issues, which can be fully delegated to someone other than the pastor, and probably should be if possible. Someone in a senior leadership role, however, must be knowledgeable enough about these areas to ask the right questions and insure the church remains legal. (Both of these areas can be outsourced if necessary, but someone in the organization must still remain knowledgeable.)
- The best-case scenario for a leader is to see these areas not as a necessary hindrance to operation, but as a critical part of making the organization successful, as a friend to the process, not an enemy of progress. Each of these areas, when done well, actually play a huge part in helping the organization succeed.
After reading this post, what questions do you need to ask in your organization?
dude, good stuff, I think one thing has helped us at GCC is allowing professionals from the business world to help us have the same accountability they have in the real world. Adventurous, yes we are BUT we have to be responsible and we will give an account to God with how we handled HIS resources!
Excellent points for all organization to take heed of. I pray that churches will not run into the problems that many I work with everyday are now dealing with.
Sadly, the organization I work in, Education, is being held financially responsible with a negative impact to our human resources.
As you listen to all the headlines concerning executive bonuses at the floundering finacial institutions, you have to wonder what type of voice HR actually had in these organizations? From my experience in the secular workplace, the job of HR is often to keep businesses operating within the law but not necessarily to uphold the spirit of the law.