[0:02]
LifeWay Leadership Podcast Network. G'day, I'm Scott Sanders and welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel-centered ministry every week. Now today we are coming to you live from Ireland. We've got a special guest, Samantha Jensen from Virtual Church Assist. G'day, Sam.

[0:34]
Hi, Scott. It's good to be here. It is. Sam is an Australian, but she's currently living in Ireland with her husband, Dave Jensen and kids and they're just about to, well, they just launched a church plant in Ireland. Is that right? In Belfast. That's right. Uni Church Belfast. I'm going to have to correct you, Scott. It is Northern Ireland. We live in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. And yes, we started Uni Church Belfast on the weekend. Excellent. So if she's coming through just a little bit softer, that's because we're crossing seas and oceans to bring you today's episode of The One Thing.

[1:06]
Now, The One Thing is brought to you with thanks to Geneva Push, the Australian Church Planning Network. You've pressed play on episode number 42, Church Administration. Now, a lot of people think that church administration is not that important. A lot of pastors, I think, don't give it the attention that it deserves. I've done a little bit of research and reading on this and Gary McIntosh in his book recommends that even for a church of 100, having one person staffed on church administration

[1:38]
can free up ministry staff to be able to actually function and work at their best. Today, we've got Sam Jensen from Virtual Church Assist. She's been working as an administrator in church, part-time, full-time, and now she runs a business that serves local churches by putting virtual church assistants in their church. It's not a chatbot. It's actually a real person who works alongside you in the church to help pastors with their administration.

[2:10]
So, Sam, it's great to have you on here. You bring a wealthy experience. I'm really keen to sort of start the conversation off by hearing you talk about, well, what is administration? How would you define it? Administration actually has a whole lot of different facets to it. It's basically the things, when it comes down to it, it's the things that a lot of pastors and leaders in ministry organizations, it's the jobs that they're doing that they actually shouldn't be doing. It's the things they end up sitting at their computers instead of being out pastoring, planning, preaching, doing those things that actually really matter.

[2:42]
So it's the things that could be something smaller in terms of putting together the PowerPoint slides for your Sunday services. It could be coordinating and managing and preparing for events. It could be sitting and organizing your email inbox and getting things ready for whatever's next and coming up. It's those things that take you away that need to be done in order to plan and to move forward and to prepare for the future, but actually can be passed off to someone else.

[3:16]
So you've worked in this area for a number of years. What are some of the common mistakes that you see happening with church pastors? And you don't need to give any names here. You just want to hear sort of general hypothetical situations. Yep, sure. No names, promise. Two major things. And the first one I'm going to say, I think a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and say, no way, really, this actually exists. But I've dealt with this a lot of times, and that is not having a centralized location where everything is kept.

[3:46]
A place where all the staff members or the people who need it have access to that information, all those documents or files or whatever that is. So a place where all your PowerPoints for Sunday are kept, all the songs, anyone who needs them can have access to it. A place where your parish council or your presbytery meeting minutes are so that anyone on staff or the person who needs it can get straight to it from their computer, not having to call your administrator or call another member of staff to find that information that you're after.

[4:18]
That includes having a shared calendar and any number of things just where everyone can access it. So that used to be the church computer up the back that ran the PowerPoint and did the parish council meeting minutes and everything else. Now we've got the iCloud. It kind of seems a bit obvious. Yeah. It seems a bit obvious that churches should be able to do that quite simply and easy. You've got Dropbox and Google have a whole free resources to do that as well. Exactly right. Where you used to have someone who may have been a volunteer or a retiree or someone kind of sitting at a desk,

[4:51]
whether that's the desk up the back of church or in an office, and that's where things were located, we now have this thing called the internet and we've got to use it. We've got to use all the technology that we can to make our lives easier so we can do more ministry. Issues of privacy around that though, they're real. So I can see why some pastors will say, hey, that's great, Sam, but this stuff's really important and we want to keep it private. Of course. Of course. That's actually a really important point to make. And there needs to be things that aren't accessible to everyone.

[5:23]
So whether that's on Dropbox and you have files and folders that are shared just for the music team here or the songs, or just for the vestry, you can all access this one folder. So that's a really important way to do it. Or if you have some sort of online database, you can toggle the settings and that sort of thing. So that only, yeah. So that's the first common mistake. Not actually having a central repository of documents and things to store that people can access so that you as the pastor aren't the blockage in sort of getting that out.

[5:53]
What's the second biggest mistake? There's two extremes where a pastor might be working with an assistant. One is micromanagement and the other one is no management at all. So micromanagement actually says, I don't trust you fully to get this job done. So you're coming in, you're checking on what they're doing, or you're changing plans and adding extra work unnecessarily rather than just letting them get on with it. That's micromanagement in a nutshell.

[6:24]
Or then at the other end of the spectrum, there's no management at all. So I need this done. You're here. Here it is. Now go. Go get it done. No direction. No guidance. No input. And expecting results out of that. So thinking, okay, this person has experience. They're an administrator. They know what to do. Here it is. See you later. It's never a good idea. Really important if you're listening in to jump back into episode number 23 on delegation, not abdication. That's got a whole bunch of really helpful stuff. That was a great one.

[6:55]
But I get that wrestle that a pastor has of sort of handing over some of those things because you used to manage a calendar. And the way that I do PowerPoints is just that I put the photo over here and I give attention to spatial things over here. I just do it better than other people in the church. What would your answer be to that pastor? Hypothetically speaking here. I'm just speaking hypothetically. Yep. No, no. Absolutely. No, this is good because this takes me to my main key point and that's communication.

[7:28]
I mean, I as an administrator, I cannot read your mind. But you can tell me this is how I like it done. This is how we as a church are going to function. This is how we do things. Can you fit in with that? Can you do it this way? Can you do it this way? Or you make sure that you can access it to make the changes yourself once it's done. But you don't want that happening. What you really want to happen is to get a really good working relationship so that you can trust your administrator to get the work done and do it the way that it needs to be done.

[8:00]
So what I'm hearing is it's going to be a conversation. It's going to be going back and forth. The administrator is not going to get it right, so to speak, the first time. But actually investing in communicating what you're after, the end result, means that ultimately you can actually delegate and hand over a whole task. And often I find they do a better PowerPoint. They get a better job done. I did say that out loud. I did say that out loud.

[8:30]
They can also probably do it in half the time that you can. This is very true. Putting it out there. This is very true. Well, that's really helpful to hear those common mistakes. After the break, we are going to hear more about setting up best practice and how to leverage someone part-time as a volunteer in your church administration or actually leveraging, say, a virtual church assist. We come now to one of the most important segments of the show. A lot of people are looking forward to the toolbox. So this week's toolbox, we've got a number of different things.

[9:04]
One of the things I think that's really helpful in thinking through this is actually just thinking through your staffing plan. I don't think people give a lot of attention in church life to their staff mix. And so there's a great book called Staff Your Church for Growth by Gary McIntosh. It's got some really helpful rules, which I think you should read with your leadership team as you think through, well, should we employ someone in this role? What are the gifts and skills that we have in our current ministry team? How can we think about size of church as to when we might have one administrative person or two administrative people?

[9:40]
There's lots of sort of contextual questions that we sort of can't answer here in this, but it's a great book. If you're looking for some admin tools, I'm going to recommend Dropbox or Google Suite. They are great tools for storing some things. There's some excellent project management software out there as well. Asana, we've talked about that before. These are all tools that actually help communication within your team. And as Sam has said, you can lock off things and invite people to certain folders so that privacy, especially around sort of safe ministry,

[10:14]
safe ministry and areas is kept. Now, the final website is a new website that Sam's working on called Church Admin Hacks. Go to www.churchadminhacks.com. And that's a website where Sam is pulling together a whole bunch of church administrators and getting their sort of best practice. So if you're looking for some event tips, if you're looking for bookkeeping tips, if you're looking for communication tips, that's a great website to jump on.

[10:46]
Great. Well, I want to jump back into this conversation, Sam. How do you set up this sort of administrative relationship? What's the best practice? Can you help us sort of work through that? One of the biggest things that we think is really important at Virtual Church Assist is we always require a minimum of four to six weeks where the pastor or the leader is spending the time communicating well, leading and guiding the administrator. So a good four to six weeks where the administrator will ask as many questions as possible.

[11:21]
And it takes a lot of patience on both sides so that they can fully understand because they want to understand your voice and how you do things and making sure they're working alongside you properly. And then after those four to six weeks, they can then start, the administrator can then start to offer suggestions. They might be able to see a hole in the system or a way that things could be done a little better or a little faster, a bit more efficiently. So we always say at least up to six weeks because you might actually realize I need someone to do these things.

[11:53]
And then once we start, you realize, actually, that's not what I want them doing. I need them in this area once you kind of figure out that working relationship. So it's important to take the time to build a relationship, but also then over time, trust that the administrator potentially has better hacks or better ways of doing things and start handing that over. You've actually worked as an administrative person in a church and been a member of the church.

[12:24]
That's sort of one of the questions I've got. What are your thoughts on employing someone outside who it's their job versus employing someone who's a member of the church and using their gifts and skills for paid employment or to volunteer? Yeah. Look, I think any church needs to value admin as a ministry area of service. So you might have people in your church who are really gifted in this area and they can do it on a volunteer basis.

[12:57]
And that's fantastic. I mean, in the same way that a graphic designer or a musician, that's what they're gifted in. And so they enjoy doing it. There are actually people, you might think they're crazy, who really enjoy admin type roles. So finding those people is fantastic. And if they're able to do it on a volunteer basis, that's awesome as well. And when it comes to actually working for the church and attending the church as well, there is a slightly fine line because that administrator actually knows a whole lot of what's going on, more than what the regular church attender would know.

[13:33]
So there are conversations that need to be had to make sure that that information is kept private and that person is not using any of that information for the wrong reasons or anything like that. But it is a case of just figuring out how that works in terms of ministry, in terms of life and in terms of work as well, particularly when it's a paid role at that point. So when would you start paying someone? Someone's using their gifts, they're working in the office four or five hours.

[14:07]
That's how they're using their serving time in the church. When would you actually start going, okay, actually, we need to really pay you for this role that you're doing? Yeah. Often it can start as a really small role if someone's doing something on a volunteer basis. So they might put their hand up and say, yep, I can create a church directory. You know, I've got the skills to do that. And that's fantastic. And then as time goes on, you start to realize, hold on, this is actually, this has become a role and this person, we really need them.

[14:42]
We need what they're doing and they're adding a huge amount of value to our team. And if we lost them at this point, that could be, that wouldn't be good. They're an asset and we need them. Yep. Yep. It might also come to the point where if it's taking them away from paid work, you need to sit down and have a conversation about that. You don't want someone who's doing this role and starting to resent doing it. So it comes back again, as always, to open communication, having those conversations to make sure that that person's happy and willing to keep doing what they're doing.

[15:18]
Or if, yeah, it might get to the point where they need to be paid. One final question for you before we hear your one thing. How can you actually care for your administrative staff? So what's the best, some of the best things that a pastor can do to actually care for their administrative staff? It actually comes down to the way that how are you working? You need to think about how am I working and is this helping the people around me?

[15:48]
So I found that there are pastors out there who are working reactively. So often things will come in and there'll be urgent things that need to be done as a response to something that's happened. So the administrator, all of a sudden, although they're focusing on something else, they all of a sudden have to deal with this. You know, there's an event happening and we need printing right now. So you've got to do that. It's not loving to your administrator. And I'd love to encourage ministers, pastors, leaders to really move from working reactively to working proactively.

[16:21]
So actually planning ahead, knowing, OK, my administrator works Tuesday and Wednesday. There's an event the following Saturday. So I'm going to email them the week beforehand to get these things done. You know, so actually having that plan ahead. That's a really good way to love your administrator. But again, it's communication. It's giving them a deadline, asking in advance, making sure that, yeah, they have proper instructions to get the work done properly rather than throwing something at them.

[16:53]
And then they do, it could be hours of work and then give it back and it's all done wrong and they need to start again. That's really helpful. That's never a good thing. That's really helpful to have that. Not be reactive. Not be reactive. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. So, Sam, what's the one thing people should be taking away when it comes to church administration? I think I've said it a few times, but you need to communicate with your administrator. You need to value your administrator.

[17:24]
You need to value admin as a ministry and as a way that they're serving church and working alongside them. And a really good way to care for them is to communicate, to get the best out of your administrator, to get the best working relationship, which will ultimately lead to greater efficiency and allowing you to do more of the stuff that matters the most, to do your role properly. Excellent. Well, thank you.

[18:02]
It's as simple as that. And we're going to be seeking to answer more and more of those as we actually build people who build a listenership and an audience who are listening to this podcast. So, thanks for joining us for another episode of The One Thing. Coming up in our next episode, we're going to be thinking about how do you understand your local community? We've got Mark McRindle from McRindle Research coming in and we're going to be talking to him about how do you actually unpack and understand the ABS data. Well, I'm Scott Sanders. Chat soon.