101 Great Ideas for Growing Healthy Churches. John Nelson

Idea 7: Be About Your Father’s Business – Part 1

      MICHAEL LOFTHOUSE

      My Father is always at his work to this very day and I too am working

      John 5.17

      Top Tip: Church leaders need to formulate profitable objectives for their organization.

      Business Perspective: When leaders know clearly what their objectives are and can legitimate those decisions within the management team efficacy is the result. Effective leaders discover how their environment and the capability of their organization are changing by gathering facts through a continuous process of scanning, research, consultation and monitoring. Formulating objectives that are feasible, sustainable and acceptable is the primary task of the leader of any organization. This is the management heart of leadership. And why do leaders engage in this process? It is because they want their organization to grow, continue and succeed. They want it to be a profitable organization.

      The Church is no different; it needs to grow, continue and succeed. It needs to be a profitable organization. Church leaders need to formulate profitable objectives for their organization.

      The difficulty is that the collection, analysis and exchange of information uses resources, is time consuming and incurs costs, and the process is often outside the skill set of most church leaders. An additional significant difficulty is that church leaders conflate ministry with management. They fail to disaggregate the organization leading to aggregated decisions that are bounded by individual preference.

      The first step is to understand and accept that at the management level the church is a business; that effective management is the necessary foundation of effective ministry. Now a church leader can disaggregate the organization so that strategic elements of the organization can be identified (see Figure 1). By disaggregating the organization we create a linear model that segments the organization into its component parts.

      Now we can engage in a decision-making process that is also disaggregated as we make decisions within the confines of each component part of the organization. Given a problem or opportunity we can identify which part of the organization needs our managerial attention. For example, one of the organization’s products, the Sunday service, is failing to attract a target audience as defined within our purpose, and as a consequence we fail to be in profit in this area of our ministry.

      By utilizing the disaggregated business model we can examine in detail each component part of the organization to find a solution. Perhaps the problem is in the marketing, or in the product; it is just not attractive to the target audience, or in the economic environment; we have failed to invest in the infrastructure surrounding the product.

      This disaggregated business model also draws our attention to the connective nature of our business. The efficacy of each component part of the organization is reliant on the efficacy of the rest of the component parts. For example, a church could be delivering excellent ministry to a dwindling set of customers. Perhaps the problem is in leadership or finance, we simply do not have enough capital to expand or support the infrastructure of the church. Perhaps the problem is the current culture of the organization?

      The challenge is that you must be able not only to disaggregate the organization, to think of it as a business, you also have to take the next step and disaggregate each of the component parts of the business.

      The tough question to ask is: ‘What counts as profit for your church?’ You have to be able to disaggregate profit by creating performance targets that are connected to your purpose. And of course this means disaggregating your purpose.

      For reflection and discussion

      1 How do you measure profit in your church?

      2 Are your meetings dominated by discourses that are generalized and aggregated?

      3 Is it difficult to reach implementable management interventions that support your purpose and generate profit?

      4 Are you managerially frustrated? Why?

      Great Idea 8: Be About Your Father’s Business – Part 2

      PHILIP DOWN

      Who then is the faithful and prudent manager? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you he will put that one in charge of all his possessions

      Luke 12.42–44

      Top Tip: It is necessary to improve the disaggregation of every element of the organization’s life until you can see the issues clearly enough for either celebration or reform.

      Business Perspective: Successful organizations understand that they are first and foremost a business where profit and loss is equivalent to life or death.

      In the business and commercial world a production model disaggregates the various complex steps into more fundamental elements for measurement, refinement and development. This enables the manager to understand successes, to treat failures and to overcome risks.

      How might the church, as an organization interested in producing certain outcomes, be able to disaggregate the elements of its own organizational life into more recognizable fundamental elements?

      It might just help church leaders manage change better and be more productive in their common life with respect to desired outcomes (see Figure 2).

      Under the scrutiny of disaggregation we are faced with a number of challenges by such a materialist model.

      In the commercial world it is relatively simple to work backwards through the linear model from the desired outcome to establish what is required in the other parts of the organization. For example, how many widgets need to be produced and how, for which customer and in what time frame to produce a profit?

      This is not so simple for the church leader as we tend not to be driven by the concept of profit. Instead of talking about profit we can talk about a fruitful and productive church where we find that ‘ministry’ is a desired outcome while simultaneously being an input, a process, an output and the key to the market!

      Therefore in terms of disaggregation we need a deeper level of understanding in respect of each part of the model. Consequently ministry as an ‘input’ might be the conduct of a wedding or some other occasional office.

      Ministry as an output might be the married couple not only being married but being cared for pastorally by the church. Ministry as a process would be the actions by which such care has been shown to the couple by the church.

      Ministry as a marketing operation would be the marriage leaflets produced by the church which describe such care, although the act of showing such care is perhaps the strongest sales pitch to the market and is to do with relationship. The desired outcome is ‘ministry’ as a relationship fulfilled in marriage and supported by the church both as agent and caring friend.

      It is necessary to improve the disaggregation of every element of the organization’s life until you can see the issues clearly enough for either celebration or reform.

      Perhaps our best advantage in reflecting on the life of the church in this way is to be reminded constantly of the purpose(s) of the church by which the remainder of the model must be judged and, where necessary, reformed. Conformity to purpose will drive the engine of production in all its parts. Purpose gives energy!

      Such purpose needs to include: the worship of God, and the love of neighbour.

      The church, in today’s world, has great challenges in the areas of ‘process’, ‘outputs’ and ‘marketing’. This is the world where fresh expressions of church may be able to help and where more traditional elements will have a place but may need to be reformed. It is here that a disaggregated management model will help.

      Ultimately the Spirit of God will use the faith and practice