Leading and Managing a Growing Church

According to George Hunt the three main roles of each pastor of an effective and growing church are:

1. Leader communicating the church vision, purpose, and direction
2. Manager utilizing people and resources, assigning specific roles, jobs, and tasks, in order to achieve the mission’s purpose.
3. Administrator facilitating the flow of the organization and makes sure it is efficient. (p. 26).

The following paper is a basic list of my actions in my present context of ministry grouped according to the above categories.

Leadership

1. Creating, providing and consciously supporting a spiritual environment of prayer for leadership decision-making.
2. Vision: Receiving the vision for the department and communicating a vision through all existing structures to all people in the department without any exception.
3. Purpose: presenting a purpose of the vision – what would be the results of fulfilling the vision.
4. Mission: how does the vision compliment the overall mission of the congregation?
5. Relationships: relating to people s needs, spiritual growth and transformation.
6. Message: in the church context providing a message related to the vision empowering the gifts of the people, encouraging with a hope for the future and at the same time ministering to their present situation personally, in their families as a basic church structure, and in the corporate presence of the church congregation as a community.
7. Interacting with existing systems, structures and hierarchy in the church through providing an adequate leadership model in the assignment department.

Management

1. Creating, providing and consciously supporting a spiritual environment of prayer for management decision-making.
2. Creating an environment for adequate and timely problem solving in relationship to relationships between people and resources or both.
3. Forming and continuously developing a dynamical financial strategy in accordance with the overall financial strategy of the congregation that provides for the ministry needs.
4. Budget planning as a part of the annual church budget presented by the senior pastor and approved by the pastoral/church council.
5. Creating relationships with long and short term sponsors.
6. Providing and implementing long and short term fundraiser strategies.
7. Finding, creating and building resources providing and adequate model for their purposeful usage.
8. Creating annual and/or five-year projections for the further development of the ministry department in accordance with the available resources and the adequately provided leadership plans.

Administration

1. Creating, providing and consciously supporting a spiritual environment of prayer for administration decision-making.
2. Establishing communication with leaders and members through a variety of mail outs, websites, weekly bulletins, monthly newsletters and presentations.
3. Cataloging member profiles in an information database to create a holistic church communication structure, and available for planning an extended church strategy.
4. Forming basic structures and systems to aid the youth ministry:

• Volunteer leaders
• Student leaders
• Small groups
• Small group leaders
• Weekly meetings
• Wednesday night leaders
• Sunday school teen program, etc.

1. Providing training, feedback and communication with the department structures aiming better results and relationships.
2. Participating in church boards, interacting with directors, establishing and executing the proper chain of command.
3. Creating and publishing reports and statistics inclusive of results.
4. Analyzing the available data, structuring the results with proper feedback and providing a strategic plan for further development of the ministry.