Last week, I had the privilege of taking a lecture on the topic of ministry and administration at Spurgeon’s College. The audience was a room full of third year ministerial students, who are only months away from graduating and being ordained.

There was, to be fair, a general look of despondence when I introduced the topic of administration and ministry, with more than a few identifying with the sentiment I popped up on screen “I’ve been called to be a pastor not an administrator!” and I understand this. As I unpacked the topic and reminded them that administration was listed as a spiritual gift, three things really stood out to me as they considered the place of administration.

1. There is power in administration. As we looked at the classic types of administration in churches; minutes, meetings, newssheets, rotas – we explored the idea of power. Take minutes for example, the language, the accuracy and the actions recorded in what might seem like a dry set of words can change, nuance or totally derail what was actually agreed. People’s memories are poor, meetings are often long and therefore what is recorded holds much more power than we realise. Likewise who is or isn’t on a rota can have positive and negative affects, changing the way engagement happens in church. To ignore administration as a pastor, is to miss the power dynamics.

2. Administrative actions can be at odds with the contents of sermons. When we preach a sermon on loving each other and on building a relational community and yet our church administration is anything but loving, how does that hinder or help the gospel message? The sermon challenging us to think about how we should value each other quickly becomes undermined as the preacher fails to reply to calls, “forgets” pastoral meetings or writes curt, hostile emails. As preachers we have 20, maybe 30 minutes to preach, just once a week, yet the main way our congregations may experience us, is through numerous little administrative acts; the weekly email, the pastoral note, the rota, the request for help. When our gospel message and administration culture do not align… our congregations notice, so maybe administration speaks louder to the heart than we think?

3. The delegation of administration should not become the abdication of responsibility. We are as a church, a body of believers. As pastors, our task is to equip, release and support people in using their gifts in the church and we can never be in the position of thinking we need to do everything ourselves. However, we also need to be careful not to delegate a task and then run away, never to have to think about it ever again. Lets take an example. If we delegate the completion of a fire risk assessment to a competent deacon, we can breathe a sigh of relief that we do not have to try and get our heads around the wonders of fire assessments. However, we do need to still be looped into the process. We need to know when it will be completed, so it can be checked off as completed, so trustees can assure themselves of compliance. There either needs to be a system to monitor these things or a human check. To run off and forget about it, means in effect that you actually don’t know whether the task is completed!

So….. there is still much to ponder and more sessions to be had to discuss administration further – but I wonder if you are a pastor, how you feel about administration?