Optimizing Ministry Effectiveness
What is your current role?
1. The Senior Pastor
Are you the senior pastor of a multi-staff church who wants to improve the effectiveness of your church’s ministry and does not yet have an Executive Pastor?
If so, you may be approaching burnout and overwhelm which can adversely affect your capacity to achieve your vision.
2. An Executive Pastor
Are you the executive pastor charged with improving the effectiveness of your staff and programs?
How well are the expectations between you and the senior pastor aligned?
Lack of clarity and alignment of expectations is the number one cause of tension, stress, and limited capacity to get the right things done.
Considering Ephesians 4:11-12, do you believe a key role of these positions is “equipping the saints for the work of the ministry”?
3. Ministry Executive
Are you an executive director or CEO of a Christian Ministry with 20 or more staff and volunteers, or expect to be soon?
As you add more staff, your ministry will become more complex requiring optimal executive effectiveness.
Effectiveness Defined
The late Peter Drucker was considered the greatest management thinker ever. He authored thirty-nine books including the classic The Effective Executive.
Drucker devoted much of his time in later years working with Christian Ministries, Churches, and Not-for-Profit Organizations.
He taught, “Effectiveness is getting the right things done.” He also taught that every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an “executive” if, by virtue of his or her position or knowledge, he or she is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and obtain results (pp 5-9).
Recent Research
One researcher concluded the time is ripe for the development of the specialty of Executive Pastor, comparable to other specialties such as education or counseling.
The position of Executive Pastor is a highly workable response to the challenges and problems presented by rapid growth and expansion of church programs.
Payoffs Revealed By Recent Research:
For the church–the congregation–the payoff from having an executive comes in the form of better management of their programs.
And, a senior pastor who is better able to do for them what he does best.
As viewed by lay leaders: with an executive pastor things are more tied together–fewer things fall through the cracks.
A senior pastor identified the addition of an executive pastor as the primary factor enabling their church to move beyond a growth plateau.
Other senior pastors reported the relief from what had become an almost intolerable load of responsibilities.
Alongside relief was freedom:
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Freedom from
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Guilt at being unprepared
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Neglecting family
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And freedom to
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Read, study, write
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Immerse oneself in preaching
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Start new things
Conclusion
One researcher concluded the time is ripe for the development of the specialty of Executive Pastor, comparable to other specialties such as education or counseling.
The position of Executive Pastor is a highly workable response to the challenges and problems presented by the rapid growth and expansion of church programs.
Where to Begin: Managing Oneself
In the Harvard Business Review article, “Managing Oneself” (originally published in 1999), Peter Drucker said,
“Success in the knowledge economy (whose staff are knowledge workers) comes to those who know themselves—their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.”
This applies to Christian Ministries too–maybe more so.
The Ministry Executive Effectiveness Approach
The Executive Effectiveness approach begins by focusing on Mastering Your Inner Game.
This three-step process includes a collection of assessments that measure what Drucker advised us to concentrate on.
Drucker also taught that unless we can manage the use of our time, we can’t manage anything else.
Here are the three steps:
1. Reclaiming Your Personal Life
Ministry leadership effectiveness requires everyone in senior leadership roles to set a personal and professional example. Burnout and overwhelm are not options.
Reclaiming Your Personal Life can transform you from disorganized to efficient so you can complete more of the essentials in less time with reserves of time and energy in 21 days or less
2. Discovering and Fully Developing Leadership Skills, Talents, and Competencies
Leverage your capacity to achieve extraordinary results by assessing Behaviors, Motivators, and Competencies.
3. Applying the Five Practices of Effective Leadership
a. Managing your time
b. Focusing on essential contributions
c. Making Strengths Productive–yours and all key staff
d. Concentration on the most important results
e. Making effective decisions
Application of these five practices can transform you from ineffective to consistently getting the right things done while creating a culture that brings out the best in others —and yourself in 30 days or less.
Summary
Drucker emphasized that effectiveness must be learned and reveals itself as crucial to a person’s self-development.
Self-development of the knowledge worker—key ministry staff, both paid and volunteers–is central to the development of an effective ministry.
As leaders work toward becoming more effective, they raise the effectiveness of the whole organization.
Optimizing leadership effectiveness is the one best hope to make society more viable economically, socially, and spiritually.
Ready to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness?
Get started with Step One of Mastering Your Inner Game: Reclaiming Your Personal Life
In this step, you will discover How to Get More of the Essentials Done with Reserves of Time and Energy.
You can be transformed from time-challenged and distracted to focused and energized in 21 Days or less.
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