Minding God's Business

Dear Pastors

Rightly or wrongly the Church universal has accumulated a huge amount of asset’s, in fact billions and billions and billions of dollars’ worth. The same is true right here in NZ. For example, let’s assume there are 3,000 church buildings in NZ¹ and each has a book value on average say of $1m then the total value is $3,000,000,000². And that’s not a typo. Three billion dollars……at least!

I have long been of the view that a ‘key’ role we have as Pastors is to be a good steward of all the resources God has given us. In other words viewing our church facilities and income as resources to carefully look after in the same way we look after our personal homes and incomes etc. Given that, a good set of questions pastors and elders might ask themselves every year is:

• Are we making the best use of every sq.m. in our building(s) and our property?
• Are we maximising the use of all our equipment, furniture and fittings?
• Are we squeezing the most out of every ‘sacrificial’ dollar given (without adopting a poverty mentality)?
• Are we minding God’s business in an efficient and effective way?
• Etc

These are fundamentally management questions NOT leadership questions as such. Indeed, another word for stewardship is in fact, management. So biblical stewardship is about how we manage or look after all our resources including of course human resources (or HR), which is without a doubt our greatest resource. But here is our problem. Most pastors aren’t trained in management. Let me go further most pastors don’t even like management. In fact let’s be honest, you hate it! The relatively few pastors who are good at it are those who come out of middle or senior marketplace management jobs or who have a natural bent for all things management.

So this is a dilemma to be honest. In my opinion so much more utility could be derived from our incomes, our churches and our christian ministries if we had a basic grasp of management.

Earlier this year Mike Crudge³ asked me if I would consider facilitating a Guided Learning (GL) option on Church Management for Carey’s Life Long Learning Centre starting in February 2019. I have agreed to do this. Many of you reading this are not Baptist pastors but you too are welcome to register for this GL (and for that matter any of the others on offer as well). So for a mere $110 you could get a fabulous introduction to ‘Management For Churches’ or whatever other GL you choose. You can find out more here.

Some of you know I have quite a varied background in management in fact I love the stuff. I have taught it at tertiary level, led and managed three churches and two NFP’s, owned and operated my own businesses and served on a good number of Boards. My goal in facilitating this GL is to translate business management principles so that it is suitable for churches and equip those who sign up with actionable content that will enable you to tackle this important work of ‘managing your church’ more efficiently and effectively and thereby being a good Steward/Manager of God’s business.

Blessings

Alan

P.S. Former First Lady, Michelle Obama has just published her book called, ‘Becoming’. 20/20 interviewed her and it was screened here last week. A truly inspiring story of perseverance, leadership and success. The programme is online for another 20days.

¹ As at writing I need to update my research but we can safely say that the Catholics and Anglicans have more than 500 church buildings each, Presbyterians = 380, Baptists = 240. So that’s 1620 church buildings just there. Then add in the Methodists, Brethren and all the Pentecostals and Independents and the total must be around 3000, probably more. And this is saying nothing about all the other properties owned by churches as in houses, schools, hospitals, rest homes, social service centre’s etc. Not to mention the probably billions of dollars in Investments of one kind or another.

² A billion equals a thousand million.

³ Mike is the Director of Carey’s Life Long Learning Centre. He’s a cool guy. You should get to know him.

Alan Vink is currently the Executive Director for LeadershipWorx. Prior to this role he has been the Executive Director of Willow Creek Association NZ (WillowNZ), a Baptist pastor (23 years), Bible College teacher, and church consultant.