Ways to Help the Unemployed at Your Church

The ABC News affiliate serving the Rochester, Minnesota, area posted a piece earlier this week highlighting the efforts of some local churches to help the unemployed. The article makes an interesting point about the challenges presented by unemployment to an area, as well as underemployment--the number of workers who take part-time or low-paying jobs to help make ends meet as they seek permanent employment in their careers of choice.

I'm guessing the never-ending stream of daily and weekly media reports about unemployment probably have turned the issue into the equivalent of static in your eyes and ears, as it has for me. It's vital we not forget the need to administer outreach programs to people in our congregations and communities right now.

In the July/August 2009 issue of Your Church, we covered the multiple ways churches can serve as the unemployment rate reaches 10 percent (or more) around the country. You can find the article here, and an accompanying box listing the efforts of more than a dozen churches here.

Report: Finances Steady at Two-Thirds of Churches

New research released this week by Indiana University's Lake Institute on Faith & Giving and The Alban Institute suggests giving remained steady--or grew--during the first half of 2009 for two-thirds of the 1,540 churches they surveyed.

More than three-fourths of those surveyed hail from Protestant denominations, the two organizations said.

Nearly 37 percent of congregations said their collections grew during the first half of 2009 compared to the same period of 2008, while another 34 percent said their collections remained flat year-over-year, the research showed.

The remaining respondents said giving declined in the first six months of 2009 compared to the same period a year ago--up 8 percent compared to survey results from a year ago, the two organizations said.

Other highlights of the research:

• On average, nearly 40 percent of responding congregations reported an increase of 8.7 percent in pledged giving during 2009, while 35.1 percent reported a drop of 10.4 percent;

• Among churches that faced reduced or flat budgets in 2009, nearly 16 percent froze salaries, while almost 15 percent reduced utility costs, and 13.6 percent reduced program costs;

• 6.8 percent cut full-time staff, while another 10.7 percent cut part-time staff.

To view the entire report, click here.

Your Church conducted research earlier this year that showed widening effects of the recession on church budgets, staffing, and spending priorities. Click here to see that report.

You Want to Donate What?

Join us on Tuesday, November 10, 2009, for a live webinar event with nonprofit CPA, Elaine Sommerville titled, "You Want to Donate What? How to Handle All Types of Charitable Contributions" (Click on "You Want to Donate What? on the left side of the page to sign up). Elaine will present a sensible plan to help your church receive and document these contributions with confidence. She also will provide tips on educating members to give donations that comply with tax laws and benefit the giver as well as the receiver.

Creating Missional Space for Your Church

Assumptions about church facilities are changing. The young are looking for sacred space. Others believe the church should spend more on the poor and less on multi-media theatrical buildings. And the multi-site movement is decentralizing church programming. What does all of this mean for how we plan our facilities? Ed Bahler and Bill Couchenour from the Cornerstone Knowledge Network have decades of experience as church architects. They have also been helping churches think more clearly about vision and facilities in our rapidly changing culture. Leadership's managing editor, Skye Jethani, will be interviewing Bahler and Couchenour about what church leaders should do before they decide to build or renovate their facilites. And you will have the opportunity to ask questions as well.

Sign up for this live webinar event featuring Ed Bahler and Bill Couchenour with Skye Jethani of Leadership journal, on November 17th, 11 a.m. (CDT). Also sign up for Building For Ministry's free e-newsletter.

Will Mancini on "Discerning Your Unique Call"

Editor's Note: Marian Liautaud, editor of BuildingForMinistry.com, is blogging live this week from the Cornerstone Knowledge Network's Alignment4 Conference and WFX. Watch for more dispatches throughout the week:

Will Mancini moved from the trenches of church leadership and founded Auxano, a church consulting group that takes a unique approach of helping churches find their vision frame before proceeding with typical consulting services. To that end, Will calls himself a "clarity evangelist."

Will spoke about how a church can discern its unique calling at the 2009 Cornerstone Knowledge Network conference in Charlotte. Click here to see what he had to say.

Fast Ideas for Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers

I'm live at the Cultivate Conference '09 in Chicago today (see my other updates on Twitter: @MattBranaugh). This gathering of a couple of hundred church leaders primarily focuses on communication inside and outside of church walls, but one of the breakout sessions in the morning looked at how to recruit and retain volunteers to fulfill various roles, including graphic design work, web development, and other strategic communication roles that churches often don't have the budget to cover.

Jami Ruth from Granger Community Church and Blair Farley from Mariners Church hosted the workshop. Here are several ideas worth noting in your church's efforts, courtesy of Jami and Blair (and some of the conference participants who shared ideas):

Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers:

• Jami said Granger hosts ministry fairs and "volun-tours," which give congregants glimpses into the various ministries--and volunteer opportunities--available at the church.

• Many churches already do this, but it bears repeating: Jami and Blair both emphasized the need to do volunteer-focused Sundays a couple of times a year. The senior pastor should recognize volunteers and talk about the vision of the church, and the integral role a volunteer plays in the work to fulfill that vision. One audience member said many people commit to causes and community, so in these Sunday events, it's vital to show the cause, and the community served (or built) through them.

• Blair said too many churches focus on asking people to do a volunteer task. Instead, he said emphasis should be placed on developing people into volunteers through personal invitation, training, and then the assignment of a duty. “If you think of it as development and not task fulfillment, it shifts the focus of what you’re doing," he said.

• Jami suggested giving "on ramps and off ramps" for people when you ask them to do a volunteer role, providing specific start dates and finish dates. "Oftentimes they continue past that, but we give them an out," she said. The reason: The prospect of an endless commitment discourages many from committing at all.

• One audience member suggested churches communicate how everyone can help with handling tasks that are required of everyone in the church family. For instance, when Park Community Church (the host of Cultivate today) previously met in rented space, volunteers were tasked with setting up chairs before services and stacking them afterward. The pastor, in a desire to ease the burden on volunteers after the service, would tell congregants, "You don’t need to know your spiritual gift to pick up and stack your chair.”

• For those churches who are worried about burning out their regular volunteers, one audience member suggested engaging directly, and face to face, with each of those volunteers on a regular basis and offering them the chance to say no--or to step away from their duties for a break. It ensures regular communication between both sides, and it affirms the volunteer's worth when he or she sees a church leader regularly checking on their well-being.

• Celebrate volunteers through some big events. But do a number of things in between those events to celebrate and thank them, too. Some ideas:

- Handwritten, personal thank-you notes to a different batch of volunteers each week;
- Use photos of volunteers in action during services, in slide shows, in common areas, on the church's website, even the pastor's blog. When you have a particularly exceptional photo of a volunteer, frame it and give it to them as a thank-you gift;
- One audience member, a pastor, said he spends one hour each week visiting the Facebook and Twitter accounts of his volunteers to write thank-you messages on the publicly accessible areas of their accounts as a public way of acknowledging and supporting the work they're doing.

• When asked about how to recruit new volunteers, Blair said Mariners finds new volunteers only by starting something new. It works like this: Develop strong volunteers in the existing ministries offered by the church. When the pastor and staff are ready to start something they believe God has called the church to do, they pluck some of the best volunteers in those existing ministries to tackle the new initiative. The staff or lay leaders of those existing ministries then are tasked to find new, untapped volunteers from elsewhere in the congregation to fill the spots vacated by those drafted for the new ministry.

Kevin Ford on Leading Change

Editor's Note: Marian Liautaud, editor of BuildingForMinistry.com, is blogging live this week from the Cornerstone Knowledge Network's Alignment4 Conference and WFX. She posted this live dispatch on Tuesday (watch for more throughout the week):

Kevin Ford is the Chief Visionary Officer and Managing Partner of TAG Consulting, a management consulting firm specializing in strategy, leadership and ministry development. TAG's client list includes Merrill Lynch, the Federal Aviation Association and the Salvation Army. While Kevin loves consulting with companies and ministries of all sizes, his passion is to help leaders of the local church.

In his workshop at the 2009 Cornerstone Knowledge Network Conference in Charlotte, Kevin presented on the topic of "Leading Through Change." Here are some of the highlights:

The primary task of leadership is to distinguish between what needs to be preserved and what needs to change. Work on what to preserve before tackling what needs to change.

How do you take your church through the process of change? First, determine what you need to preserve.

To read more, click here.

Facing a Financial Crisis: Three Experts Weigh In

A headline I read earlier this week from the newswire service United Press International gave me pause: “More Churches Face Foreclosure.” Upon reading the piece, I quickly understood why: While the rate of foreclosed church properties continues to climb, thanks partly to some widely publicized defaults in Naples, Florida, and Temple Hills, Maryland, among others, the overall number remains small.

As the article points out:

“The scope of the problem is difficult to measure. Most of America’s 335,000 churches are well established, building costs paid off long ago. The situation among a minority of congregations, however, is certainly worse than it was last March, when the New York Times found that 0.31 percent of the 82,441 churches it studied were facing foreclosure.”

Not many can say 2009 delivered a banner year, but these types of headlines suggest a widespread financial problem among churches, which just isn’t the case. (As Dan Mikes from Bank of the West pointed out to me, his division has $1.3 billion in direct church loan exposure “without a single delinquency, loss, or foreclosure.”)

Nevertheless, these headlines remind me that some churches are struggling with how to make a mortgage payment. To help, we asked three lenders to tell us what churches facing a financial crisis should do if they aren’t able to make mortgage payments. Here are their responses.

Henry Chi, vice president, Evangelical Christian Credit Union’s ministry development group:

1. Evaluate your ministry priorities in light of the present situation. Based on those priorities, review your programs and budget, then reallocate financial resources, cut expenses, and, if necessary, cut programs that don’t align with your priorities so that you can meet your mortgage obligations and still stay on mission. Circumstances like this can be a catalyst for thinking more strategically.

2. Communicate with your lender. Inform them of the actions you’re taking, find out if there are ways to restructure your banking accounts to reduce fees and increase returns, and ask if they’ll work with you to modify your loan so that you can make it through this difficult time.

3. Evaluate your financial management. Beyond looking at expenses and banking practices, review your cash management policies and procedures to be sure funds are being handled well and wisely. We recommend doing so through a grid of ministry banking priorities that examine cash flow, liquidity, and stewardship of other ministry assets, such as real estate and personnel.

Finally, in the spirit of prevention, ministries that are still able to make their mortgage payments should monitor the impact of the economy on their community and congregation, and develop forecasts that will enable them to make proactive decisions to prevent this kind of financial crisis.

Dan Mikes, executive vice president and manager, Bank of the West’s Church & Educational Institution Banking Division:

1. Implement a policy of monthly board meetings for the foreseeable future. The primary focus should be review and analysis of year-to-date actual contributions and budget performance. The most common mistake we are seeing is over optimism and procrastination in making tough and timely expense reduction decisions.

2. Don’t lose sight of the big picture. If you lose your building, your credibility with your donor base will be severely or terminally damaged. You may not survive to provide any level of ministry. Therefore, begin by targeting expense reductions that have little to no impact on revenue flows, such as television and radio efforts, foreign endeavors, and so on. These are hard decisions, but they hopefully will only need to be temporary.

3. We are seeing churches reduce salaries, replace some staff positions with volunteers, increase the employee’s share of benefits costs, and reduce or eliminate honorariums.

4. Talk to the lender early and often. Don’t wait until you can’t make your payment to contact them. Have a comprehensive dialogue, including expense cuts made to date, additional planned cuts, board involvement, and plans to contact key donors. The board should also know, and discuss with the bank, the collateral value, and the possibility of marketing the church property and salvaging equity prior to foreclosure. This assures the lender that the church leadership is looking at all scenarios. Lenders will be more willing to work with a borrower when they can see a good management team is fully engaged and communicating.

J. Scott Reitsma, senior vice president, Christian Community Credit Union- Ministry Development Group:

The Three “A’s”—a checklist for financially challenged churches:

• Make a “brutally honest” assessment of what you owe/own.

Evaluate all historic sources of income: Ordinary tithes and offerings, special/designated or capital campaigns, school income, planned giving/bequests, or other (less common) sources, such as rental income from church properties. These might include your reviewing all records demonstrating such things as declining trends in income or attendance. Also, take inventory of all church assets: Bank accounts (both operating and savings), brokerage accounts (even if designated), real property, vehicles, audio/visual equipment and other personal property (meaning non-real estate). Now, decide if you will keep all of your prior commitments in a God-honoring way and in the appropriate priority. If your answer is yes, then you must pledge that ALL church assets will become available to resolve the current financial distress.

• Make a “brutally honest” analysis of your ministry model.

Review all expense categories and consider expense reduction in all discretionary line items. Re-evaluate every ministry program’s “value proposition.” In other words, look at your ministry’s “cost of delivery.” In this analysis you must make the toughest choices immediately because it will not become easier, particularly with regard to staff reductions that may become necessary. Evaluate your utilization of the church’s facilities, land, and other assets. Are all available building areas fully used? Have you considered sharing (renting) your facility with other churches? Perhaps you need to consider selling under-used portions of your property, if possible. Shedding excess land, buildings, or other under-utilized assets may be a difficult, but critical, step in your financial recovery.

• Make a “brutally honest” announcement to your congregation.

The most effective financial recovery step that any church can undertake can very often be the most frequently overlooked because it sounds too obvious. Why not allow your congregation to make a “fully informed” decision about their participation in resolving the financial situation of the church? Let’s be careful that we do not deny the congregant the opportunity to engage in ministry in a very meaningful way. There is nothing more heartening (and faith confirming) than watching God’s Spirit miraculously move within a congregation in situations like these. Very often, these congregationally initiated financial “turn-around” stories provide the powerful testimonies that produce dramatic impact in our communities.

If you have done the above, then approach your lender with absolute transparency, disclosing every fact, situation, and circumstance that you believe has contributed to your financial hardship. Then, detail (document) every step, measure or strategy you have undertaken to remediate your own financial hardship. Remember that your lender (if they are a regulated financial institution) has much more flexibility if you are current on your obligations. Your lender’s options diminish dramatically once you are in default. Nevertheless, your lender is certain to expect that you have done the entire process above prior to approaching them about providing any assistance in your financial recovery.

Other Resources

• The Essential Guide to Church Finances
• The 2010-2011 Compensation Handbook for Church Staff
• Your Church Executive Report: "2009 Church Budget Priorities"
• “When Layoffs Loom,” (May/June 2009 Your Church)
• “Budget Bullseye,” (July/August 2009 Your Church)
• “Asking for Big Gifts,” (September/October 2009 Your Church)
• Audio interview with Brian Kluth on building a culture of generosity in your church
• BuildingForMinistry.com’s "2009 Church Facilities Expansion Survey"

Consider Adding Windows 7

Ministry Business Services Inc., the church consulting firm I started in the 1980s, began testing Microsoft Corporation’s Windows 7 Professional in January. On Tuesday, MBS announced it adopted Windows 7 Professional as its preferred operating system, and it recommends churches to do the same.

This may surprise some, since the challenges with Microsoft’s Windows Vista, the preceding operating system, have been many. Clarence White, the chief information officer for the Salvation Army’s western territory, even asked me on a recent podcast if MBS really believed in Windows 7 Professional. The answer is yes. I told him it’s almost like Vista was a beta for Windows 7, or that Windows 7 is the first service pack for Vista that really fixes it.

Corporate customers have embraced Windows 7’s release as well. The Gartner Group recently said the operating system is ready (Gartner also recommends a 12- to 18-month integration process, saying earlier this month that organizations should start now), and a recent Softchoice study with ComputerWorld found that 88 percent of corporate PCs are capable of running Windows 7. That means many churches and ministries likely are in a position to upgrade to it as well.

The minimum hardware requirements to run Windows 7 include a 1-gigahertz (1 GHz) or faster processor and 1 gigabyte (1 GB) of RAM. A church that upgrades to Windows 7 Professional will pay about $70 for the charity licensing that Microsoft charges.

MBS also announced it prefers the 64-bit version on all PCs that can run it because it doubles the processing speed of the computer. Think of a school bus. The number of seats determines how many people can be carried in each load. Most of us are running 32-bit software, but 64-bit moves twice as much in each data packet (or load). That means an immediate potential doubling of processing speed.

Free Excerpt: The Essential Guide to Church Finances

Earlier this year, we released The Essential Guide to Church Finances by Richard Vargo, a professor of accounting in the Eberhardt School of Business at the University of the Pacific, and Vonna Laue, a partner at nonprofit accounting firm Capin Crouse.

Below is a free excerpt, which discusses the advantages of program budgeting and why churches that use incremental budgeting strategies put themselves at a disadvantage (and, if you like what you see from this excerpt, you can order your copy of Essential Guide to Church Finances here).

"Traditional budgeting focuses on individual expenditures, such as salaries, supplies, and other costs. As a result, decision-making comes down to increasing, decreasing, or eliminating individual line items. Another approach to preparing the annual church budget is program budgeting. With this approach, costs are identified with the specific programs being carried out by the church. Significantly, each program indicates its goals and objectives prior to funding. Program budgeting operates on the premise that programs are run to achieve certain purposes, and by clearly establishing these purposes, the church can improve both the use of its resources and the effectiveness of its programs. This approach to budgeting forces the church to do its planning before preparing the budget. It also is the same methodology used for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) Statement of Activities and Statement of Functional Expenses, which means your reports will follow these standards.

Steps for the program budgeting process

The program budgeting process begins by requiring the church to identify each program/activity it conducts and the needs each one serves. Next, each program leader examines his or her program in terms of how well it is achieving its purpose. If the leader feels improvements are needed, he or she will also provide an assessment of the benefits that would be derived from making improvements to a program, as well as any cost implications of making improvements. Finally, an estimate of the resources needed to operate the program for the next year is developed. (Churches using multiyear budgets would have data prepared for a several-year period).

Each program leader then compiles the data into a program budget format that includes a statement on the purpose of the program, a description of the services provided, program goals and objectives, the amount of money needed, and the benefits and cost of any program change requested. In preparing the program budget, each program leader receives information on how much of the common costs of operating the church (costs that are allocated among all programs) should be included in his or her budget. The final step involves review by the finance and program evaluation committee, which evaluates the costs and benefits of each program.

Benefits of program budgeting

The benefits of program budgeting are well documented. First, program budgeting provides a better understanding of what each program is attempting to do. Also, because the purposes of each program are specified, the costs of each program can, at the end of the year, be compared with the benefits achieved. Second, this budgeting approach directs program leaders' attention to program achievement--the outputs of spending the money. Remember that traditional budgeting emphasizes the disbursement and control of expenditures, such as those for electricity maintenance, and so on.

As a consequence, the purposes of the programs can easily be overlooked. In program budgeting, program purposes and annual goals and objectives are stated up front so they are not likely to be forgotten when program success is measured.

Program budgeting offers church members a clear picture of what their contributions are supporting and provides them with numerous opportunities to become involved in the process. Both results of the process can help generate a high level of member support for the church's activities.

Disadvantages of program budgeting

On the negative side, program budgeting takes much more time to complete than incremental budgeting. But the extra time spent is not wasted with trivial matters. It is spent planning, establishing measurable goals and objectives, and evaluating how programs should operate. Put differently, incremental budgets can be prepared without planning; program budgeting cannot be done properly without planning. Sadly, too few churches uses this advanced method."

Building a Culture of Generosity in Your Church

Some estimate giving to churches is on a 40-year decline. In contemplating the reasons why, here's a thought that should give church leaders pause: A church budget usually is set to the level of its people's unfaithfulness.

That's one of the messages Brian Kluth is taking to churches around the country.

Brian spent 10 years as the senior pastor of the First Evangelical Free Church of Colorado Springs. Nine out of those 10 years, the church ran a surplus budget. In the four years prior to Brian's arrival, the church never met budget.

Earlier this year, the church commissioned Brian to become a "generosity minister at large." In addition to developing his resources and writing a book, Brian now is touring with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and its 14-city "recession-proofing churches and ministries" workshops.

Brian recently visited Christianity Today International and sat down with me to share more about the tour, and about developing a culture of generosity in your church. In our short interview, Brian makes several interesting observations, which you can hear by clicking the link below (the audio player you need appears with the rest of this post).

Brian's observations include:

• In his 10 years as senior pastor, the church never mentioned the budget to the congregation;
• Teaching generosity means teaching people to excel in the grace of giving;
• When it comes to talking about money, the responsibility presumably falls to the pastor--but maybe shouldn't;
• Why "budget cutting" shouldn't be our mentality during tough economic times;
• The biblical view of how God uses "cold economic winds" to draw His people closer to him.

Links to help

• Church Finance Today
• Church Finance Update e-newsletter
• BuildingChurchLeaders.com's best church practices for responding to a recession.
• http://kluth.org
• http://kluth.org/ecfa.htm (this includes a $50 discount for an ECFA workshop)
• 50 Best Practices to Increase Church Giving e-book
• http://generouslife.org
• http://ecfa.org

Get Organized!

A number of years ago, my church needed an office manager. Aware of my experience as an executive assistant, the pastor offered me the job. I was looking for change, so this new position seemed like a win-win. After my first day, I wondered what I had gotten myself into!

I discovered an office devoid of any filing system or operational procedures for managing daily tasks. Disorder abounded! Feeling claustrophobic from the piles of decades-old church bulletins, and other useless “stuff,” I rolled up my sleeves and set to work on an extreme organizational make-over of our church office.

Today there are whole companies devoted to creating manageable office environments that promote efficiency. Ultimately, efficiency is the end product of organization. According to Monica Friel, CEO (that’s Chief Executive Organizer) of Chaos to Order, “employees lose an average of six weeks per year looking for documents.”

That’s six weeks per year per employee! The cost to companies (and church offices) is enormous, and in these hard economic times as we see more businesses metaphorically “clean house,” perhaps it also makes good, financial sense to reclaim the literal meaning and actually clean house.

Where Do We Begin?
Organizing for better efficiency may be divided into three parts: the physical environment, attitudes, and maintenance. Like any major undertaking that requires change, it’s also important to enlist support. Don’t set out to do an overhaul of your office systems without first meeting with the person in charge of your church office. As much as possible, keep this individual involved in the step-by-step changes taking place.

The Physical Environment
Remember, organization is all about efficiency. Think of your desk as your command center. Everything you need for control ought to be at your fingertips. Eliminate clutter on your desktop by determining what you need for the tasks at hand.

Liz Davenport, author of Order from Chaos, suggests “setting up your office based on frequency of use.” She offers this checklist:
• Anything you use daily should be in hand’s reach.
• Anything that is in hand’s reach should be something you use daily.
• Anything you use weekly should be in arm’s reach.
• Anything that is in arm’s reach should be something you use weekly.
• Anything you use monthly should be in the office.
• Anything that is in the office should be something you use monthly.
• If you use it less often than once a month, try to keep it elsewhere

Consider your personal comfort as well. Ergonomics looks at the design factors, especially in the workplace, which will maximize productivity by minimizing operator fatigue and discomfort. If you aren’t comfortable, you will tire easily and your work will take longer to complete. Is your chair comfortable? Is the telephone positioned to the left for those of you who are right-handed, to the right if left-handed? What about your computer? Is the screen a comfortable distance from your line-of-sight? Do you have a wrist rest and foot rest?

Supplies
Once you are comfy, consider the tools you have at hand. Basic supplies might include: stapler, staple remover, tape, rubber bands, paper clips, correction fluid/correction tape, calculator, hole punch, reference manuals, pens/pencils, calendar. The one tool that ought to be on every desk? A daily planner. A planner is your tracking system for appointments, work assignments, and important notes. Forget those desk-top “month-at-a-glance” calendars. Staying in control requires focusing on the tasks at hand, and this means having a daily planner.

Filing
Now that your desktop is clutter-free, let’s take a look at your filing system. This is where you need to enlist the help of your senior pastor or other person-in-charge to provide input on what documents to keep and what to pitch.

When Monica works with clients, she begins by creating a temporary filing system using sticky notes. Equipped with box-bottomed hanging files, file folders, and sticky notes, she sits with her clients and goes through files one-by-one asking questions to help determine what to keep and what to toss. In this age of online information retrieval, many of us still keep too many paper files, so one question Monica asks is, “Do you need this document, or is it available online?”

As files are sorted, documents are grouped into categories and filed in folders labeled with sticky notes. At the end of this process, file folder labels are created for the finalized system. Monica cautions, “Be careful not to over-organize. It’s all about efficiency. How quickly can you get to what you need. If you keep too much, you can’t find what’s truly important.”

Computer files ought to be treated similarly to your paper files. Don’t save everything under “My Documents.” Create a system of file folders that complements your paper files.

Finally, don’t forget the bulletin boards. Routinely check these boards for out-dated information, overlapping notes, and unnecessary clutter. Keep only information not found elsewhere and that truly needs to be posted.

Attitudes That Empower
When I was faced with the task of overhauling my church’s office, my inherent organizational abilities rescued me. In short order, the office was humming along with filing systems in place, daily schedules, and a place for everything with everything in its place. In fact, five years later, when I left my church office position, my replacement telephoned to thank me for leaving behind “a filing system that makes sense.”

But what about those who aren’t born with the itch for order? Is there any hope for them? The good news is yes! Organization can be learned.

When Pastor Robbie deMarigny announced his plan to leave South Park Church in Park Ridge, Illinois to start up Impact Church in a neighboring city, Monica offered to help her pastor make a smooth transition. Pastor Robbie equates the experience to working with a life coach—someone who comes alongside to help you make a change for the better.

Monica spent five or six hours with Pastor Robbie weeding through his library and files. She asked clarifying questions to help him determine what to keep, what to toss, and what to leave for his successor. He marveled as she whittled his five-drawer filing system down to one drawer. Creating order in his office reaped exponential benefits for Pastor Robbie and his staff. The clutter-audit created a smooth transition for the new pastor, and it even inspired Pastor Robbie to take his new-found skills home.

Along with an “I-can-do-this” attitude, getting organized requires “do it now” determination. Choosing to deal with information as it comes in (rather than waiting for that non-existent “later”) will empower you. Make a decision! Certainly, you can’t do everything at once, but you can decide immediately what is to be done and when. This is where your daily planner comes into play. If you can’t deal with it now, decide when you will deal with it, and write it into your schedule.

Exceptions
As with any rule, there will be exception. Maybe it’s that piece of paper that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. For example, you receive a flyer announcing a conference that might interest the women of your church, but the date is months in the future. For those cases, you need a file labeled “pending.” This file should be placed on your desktop, or at the front of your most frequently visited file drawer.

Using the example of a future conference, read the flyer and note the “early bird discount” date. Consider how much time in advance of that date will be needed to announce the conference and gather registration forms. When you’ve determined that date, write the name of the conference on that page of your daily planner and put a notation beside it indicating “Pending File,” or write a “P” next to the conference name—it doesn’t matter how you designate “pending file,” just be consistent. Then, file the flyer in the pending file. When you turn your planner to that page, you will be reminded to act, and you will know where to retrieve the information.

Daily Habits
You’ve done it! Your office is a masterpiece of order. Comfortably seated at the command center, you are the ruler of your work domain. Now what?

Your orderly office will remain in order through daily habits and regular review. Divide the day into three sections: beginning, middle, and end. At the beginning of the day, review the notes in your daily planner. Prioritize your list—schedule larger tasks as appointments, allotting sufficient time for completion.

The middle of the day is for accomplishing that day’s goals. Focus on each task individually. Assemble whatever materials you need to accomplish the project, do the work, return materials no longer needed to their assigned places, and move on to the next task. Be sure to cross off jobs as you complete them.

At the end of the day, take five or ten minutes to assess the day. Give yourself a pat on the back for your accomplishments. Anything that was left undone needs to be forwarded to the next day. If a task gets forwarded more than five times, it probably is not essential and should be eliminated from your list.

Clean off your desk. File whatever needs to be filed, return supplies and tools to their proper places, and enter any stray notes into the planner.

Regular Review
To maintain the order you’ve worked hard to create, regularly review the following items:
• Review your desktop. Are the tools and files at hand still the ones you need? Do you need to replenish your supplies?
• Review the pending file. Have papers been removed as action was taken?
• Review the filing system. When a file is too full, it’s time to clean it out. Take the time to do so.
• Review your behaviors. Are you still acting now, rather than later? Are you still prioritizing to get the most out of your day?

Now, with daily habits established and regular reviews in place, you turn off the lights, close the door, and head to the parking lot with a sense of satisfaction. Nothing has been forgotten, there are no specters of the day to haunt your evening. You are organized!

Engaging Congregation Members in Community Ministry

All around the United States, congregations are reaching out to their neighbors with creative community ministry programs. Churches are providing after-school and job training programs, developing affordable housing, offering medical care, opening day care centers, and distributing food and clothing, among many other outreach efforts. In my experience, getting congregation members involved in community ministry programs is the key to their success.

The best community ministries that I have seen have “bubbled up” right out of the congregation. A small group of people may come forward with a vision for providing an after-school program, for example, or starting a free legal clinic (as was the case in one of the congregations where I served as a staff member). When people do come forward with an idea like this, it’s important for staff and lay leaders to take them seriously, and consider what it would take to move forward. Not all ministry ideas are good ones, but over the years, I have found that God can move a congregation forward into new ministry by giving vision to a small group of laypeople.

Here are several ways to develop the planning and logistics that helps shape the churchwide strategy on community outreach:

• Get to know the community around the church (if you don’t already). It is a key aspect of developing new community ministry. Be sure to involve congregation members in that process.

• Spend time in the community. It will help you gather data, and it will also lead to new relationships that will be critical to the success of your ministry.

• Attend community meetings and events. This can be a great way to get to know the neighborhood—you’ll meet both leaders and “regular” residents and have a chance to talk to them about key issues for the neighborhood.

• Walk around the community. This is another great way to gain new insight, and church members can participate in this as well. You will notice things that aren’t obvious when just driving by in a car—for example, the condition of buildings, where people are gathering, what it’s like to stand at the bus stop, and who’s coming out of the neighborhood public school at the end of the day.

• Ask church members to help survey the community or lead focus groups of residents. This works best with a short list of open-ended questions (maybe three) that allow residents to really talk about what’s on their minds. Your congregation may also consider holding a special event for neighbors—a celebration of the community with opportunities for residents to talk to each other and to you about their dreams for the neighborhood and how they could see your congregation getting engaged. Place church members at each table to listen to residents and help guide the discussion.

Planning

Once the congregation has decided to move forward with a community ministry idea, be sure to engage church members in the planning process. It may be faster for church staff to plan and implement the new ministry idea, but getting church members engaged at this level often helps the church body to feel a greater sense of ownership for the program. That sense of ownership can be what sustains a ministry over the long-term, as church members are more willing to give their time and resources. The plan should identify who the ministry will serve, when and where it will be offered, the human and financial resources needed to pull it all off, and the key results the program is designed to achieve.

Volunteers

Community ministries often grow and flourish because of the energy of devoted volunteers, so be sure your plan for ministry includes a variety of volunteer opportunities for congregation members to plug in to. Volunteers can tutor, mentor, provide medical care, repair and construct housing, provide job search help and transportation, and distribute food, among other things.

You will have the best luck in recruiting volunteers if you develop “job descriptions” that outline the key duties of each volunteer “job.” Be specific, so church members understand the amount of time involved, the frequency of the commitment, and the tasks they can expect to be involved in if they say “yes.” Also, be sure to create a variety of volunteer opportunities—from the more demanding position that requires at least several hours a week to more occasional opportunities. For example, an after-school program for youth may need several kinds of volunteers:

• Tutors who are willing to put in 2-4 hours every week working directly with youth;
• Chaperones for field trips who can volunteer 3 hours a month;
• Volunteers who can help in November and December each year to plan and host a holiday party;
• People to help with mailings on a quarterly basis.

Breaking the volunteer opportunities into specific sets of tasks like this makes it easier for church members to say “yes” and to stick with their commitment over the long term.

This post first appeared on the Alban Roundtable blog.

Study: Donations Grow 42% With Face-to-Face Time

In fact, it matters so much, the study reveals “donors to religious organizations gave an average of $2,904, or 42 percent more, when they were asked in person by someone they know,” according to an article published Wednesday by Philanthropy Journal.

That stat provides a tangible reminder of the power of relationships. Of course, when it comes to ministry, face-to-face time should matter more than just to land a big-dollar donation. We were created for relationship with the Lord, and for relationships with each other. Relationships matter a great deal to Him. We should strive to maintain healthy, edifying ones with all congregants, regardless of their financial situations, because the fruits of such efforts are eternal.

Keeping that in mind, there are people in your congregation who feel the Lord has blessed them in terms of finances and resources. For a church leader, the key is to learn more about these people by listening to them, and to hear about how their passions might align with the church's vision.

Tom Burggraf, who pastors a church in Gunnison, Colorado, while leading multimillion-dollar capital campaigns for a nearby college, explains this further in the Your Church article:

“It’s a level of relationship that requires depth, rather than just looking at our goal and the dollars needed to succeed,” he says. “If all we do is talk about what the institution does and why that is important, that’s not the essence of a relationship. If we can get to know people and what’s important in their lives and what moves their hearts, then we can better serve them by approaching them only about those projects that resonate with what’s important to them.”

For more guidance on the art of relationship-building with donors, including six practical tips from Bill Dillon of PeopleRaising, read the rest of “Asking for Big Gifts,” here. Also consider checking out:

• This electronic feature resource from our sister publication Church Law & Tax Report, on how to responsibly—and legally—handle designated contributions and gifts from donors.

• Our 2010 charitable contributions bulletins, which answer congregants’ questions on charitable giving and tax deductions as 2009 draws to a close.

The new study was commissioned by Campbell & Company and conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, according to Philanthropy Journal.

Church Shootings in the Spotlight

The Post’s piece recounts several recent, high-profile shooting incidents, including one that took place in February, when a man arrived at a Maryland church’s Sunday services toting a Bible and .38 caliber revolver, confronted his estranged wife in the parking lot, and shot her five times. She died on the scene. He recently received a life prison sentence.

The article makes two interesting observations:

1) Violence at churches appears on the rise (our sister publication Christianity Today covered this trend in its October issue, providing specific statistics that show this increase here);
2) and, a “small cottage industry of faith-specialized firms has sprung up almost overnight, offering nervous churches, synagogues, and mosques vulnerability assessments, security systems, and emergency planning.”

With more than 300,000 churches in the country, the rate of shootings in churches remains very small (in a separate chart, Christianity Today shows the odds of dying in a church shooting are 1 in 18.4 million). But with the steady increase in incidents, and the expanding publicity these events draw, it’s even more important for church leaders to plan and prepare. This will help minimize risks and liabilities.

The Washington Post article makes loose reference to a cottage industry emerging to help. Indeed, it seems numerous consulting firms and resources have “sprung up almost overnight,” as the writer asserts. Like any purchase or contract, it’s imperative for church leaders to do their due diligence before hiring a consultant or acquiring a training program.

In addition, the following resources may help along the way:

• ChurchSafety.com’s free article “Simple Tips for Confronting Gun Violence at Church”;
• ChurchSafety.com’s free article “Violence in the Church” (preparing yourself and your staff for the unthinkable);
• A free, three-minute video clip from church law expert Richard Hammar on the risks and dangers of allowing churchgoers to bring concealed weapons;
• Church Law & Tax Report’s Feature Report, “Does Your Church Need a Security Guard?”
• ChurchSafety.com’s electronic training resource on dealing with dangerous people.