Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

It’s that time of year again in most Episcopal congregations – time to fill out the parochial report.

There’s a lot of good to this report and, in general, I like having reasonable metrics and a disciplined pattern of going through the books, if only to give me and the parish leadership a bird’s-eye view of what, most of the time, feels like slightly organized chaos. It’s good to figure out just what happened in the year that’s past. It’s good, say, to see how many funerals we did versus the number of baptisms, weddings, and confirmations. It’s good to check in with the Average Sunday Attendance (ASA), and compare that number to previous years.

There are some pronounced limitations to the Parochial Report, however, and I suspect that most people who do the bulk of the report grin and bear it and give thanks when it’s over. Kind of like taxes, and I don’t really blame them.

But I also believe that revamping the Parochial Report – I mean, really revamping it – would be a good kick-off and clear indicator that we’re really serious about restructuring and reimagining and revisioning, or whatever it is we like to say we’re doing these days. That is, I have this wild and crazy idea that instead of denying that we are an institutional church, instead of trying to become more a movement and less a spiritual corporation, we could, instead, used the patterns and disciplines of our, yes, very institutional church to move forward the conversation about mission and flexibility.

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This has been an unusually busy fall for me. For several weeks, I was working on two issues of Trinity News, the magazine I edit for Trinity Wall Street, at the same time. During these weeks I learned several lessons in patience and project management, and now that I can reflect back on the experience, I thought I’d share a few of these lessons:

Set realistic deadlines. It’s easy to think about a single project and set deadlines that seem plausible in a vacuum. The trick is remembering that your project is almost always one of many. When setting deadlines, be honest with yourself about how much time each task will take and consider it in the context of all the other professional and personal demands on your time. Recruit help early. As soon as you know you might need help, ask. This gives people time to arrange their schedules or for you to enlist other people to help if your volunteers or other staff members can’t help. Do the small things sooner rather than later. It’s easy to leave the small, seemingly easy things to the end. I’ve been reminded recently it’s better to do those first, rather than let them accumulate to the crunch week, when everything is coming together. An small and simple task, left to the last minute, can turn into a headache.

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Whether we want to hear it or not, paying attention to feedback – solicited or unsolicited – is critical. When we listen for – and to - how others see us, it opens a window on how we, or our ministries, are perceived by others. This month in the ECF Vital Practices mid-month digest, we offer articles and resources for generating critical feedback, from tough conversations to audits, in practical and palatable (and, in some cases, far more affordable) ways. 

Our team at the Episcopal Church Foundation is committed to helping you develop the leadership and financial skills to carry out your congregation’s mission and ministry. Subscribe to ECF Vital Practices and get Vestry Papers and the mid-month digest delivered right to your inbox - it's simple and free! Click here or on the subscribe button on the top right side of each webpage.

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I always hated group projects in school. Other people were too unpredictable and I never knew what to expect. But give me a to-do list and my own desk in a quiet room and I’ll get things done.

Unfortunately, life is not a string of solitary tasks, nor is the life of a church.

Even writing these pieces right here on ECF Vital Practices is not typically a solitary exercise for me. I often run ideas by my wife, Denise, and she’ll often read my drafts and make suggestions before I submit them. Nancy Davidge also reads and edits my writing, and occasionally sends me helpful feedback to inform my future writing.

Since my high school days when I dreaded group work, I’ve worked on various team projects, have planned events, and then became managing editor of Trinity News, so I’ve learned a few things that help make collaboration a little more effective and relatively painless:

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Sharing Vital Practices

Over 6,000 church leaders have subscribed to ECF Vital Practices to gain ideas, tools, and resources for building up vibrant ministry. As our congregations start back into the program year, connect your congregation to these great resources by subscribing to ECF Vital Practices. Use this link, or click on the Subscribe button in the upper right hand corner anywhere on the ECF Vital Practices website.

As a subscriber, in addition to receiving Vestry Papers each month you will also receive our monthly digest - a collection of articles related to your ministry as congregational leaders. This digest, "Empowering Volunteers," is an example of this resource. Subscribers may also post comments or resources directly on the ECF Vital Practices website.

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This past week I signed up for something called SoulPulse. It is designed as both a large research study and a personal resource to help you measure your spiritual life. Twice a day for two weeks, SoulPulse sends you a survey about what you are doing and your spiritual health at the time. 
As this New Yorker article points out, measuring your spiritual health may be a somewhat dubious undertaking, but collecting more information about yourself can be a useful and revealing exercise. It's a way of paying attention. 
I’m learning a bit about myself as I take this survey. Just the act of answering the questions forces me to reflect a bit, which I find somewhat helpful. 

We talk a lot about numbers in the church—Sunday attendance, donations, the number of visitors to the church’s website—which is necessary and helpful. You can’t really understand your organization without collecting a bit of data.
But the numbers aren’t everything. Statistics have context, and require interpretation. I say this as a big believer in statistics and the scientific method. Dismissing something just because "you can make the numbers say anything you want" is lazy, but so is believing every number put in front of you without understanding the context or how it was collected and all the data that isn’t represented.

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Spring cleaning is a pipe dream for most congregations. It’s too busy, with Easter and end-of-the-year celebrations.

Summers tend to be a little slower and thus a better time for “spring cleaning.” Here’s one place that almost always needs the dust knocked off: the mailing lists. All too often, the mailing lists are a one-way destination; once you’re on the list, you never get off. You may still be receiving the newsletter from the church you visited with a high school chum four decades ago. Like official church rosters, mailing lists are more helpful when they’re (mostly) accurate.

Most congregations have a variety of mailing lists: leadership, acolytes, commission members. There are also the list of people who receive the annual stewardship appeal and those who receive the newsletter and parish Christmas card.

It makes sense to cull through the lists on an annual basis. This isn’t about saving stamps, although you might save a few shekels. It’s really about making sure the messages reach the intended audiences. People move, change positions, switch churches. They divorce. And die. 

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Right-sizing the structure of your church is a critical element to its health (and maybe to your sanity as well).   

In an earlier blog, I talked about how structure needs to change to support the realities of the congregation. A growing church can’t rely solely on old systems, and a declining church likely will need different structures to be effective. Someone on Facebook commented that it was great to hear about the need for changing systems but what would really help are some practical steps to implement such change. Good point.   

I’m not a change management expert or a congregational development guru. But I can share some of the ways our church has deliberately shifted its structures to accommodate current - and prepare for future - growth.   

Often in a family- or pastoral-size church (with attendance of 150 or less), a handful of key committees can lead the ministry and mission work. As the church grows larger, these committees need to be better defined and more intentionally focused.   

Our congregation knew some things needed to change. But what? And how?   

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Summer officially began on Saturday, and your church will probably be a quieter place as programs take a summer break and people leave on vacation. This may be a good time to look at workflow and job descriptions for your church’s staff.

I’ve been the parish administrator and receptionist for a few churches and small nonprofits, and I’ve found that if the job description does not match what the job actually entails, it can lead to frustration and confusion.

There are at least a couple things that can lead to this gap between job description and the actual job.

One is simply underestimating how much there is to do at a church, the many daily tasks—from ordering new communion wafers to sorting the mail—as well as the time-consuming but less obvious work of interacting with people. I was a parish administrator who was also a receptionist for a while, and found that the constant interruption from phone calls and visitors took up far more time than any other task, but was just one of many items on my job description.

Another reason that job descriptions and actual jobs might not match is that the staff may be over-functioning, either out of a desire to be helpful or a sense of obligation.

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The announcement was deceptively simple: Sign up to host "Cookies under the Tree."

But the path to the announcement was long and winding.

Church growth doesn’t just affect Sunday attendance and the bottom line. It also requires a systematic review of structure and administration. A pastoral-size church, for instance, doesn’t need a bunch of different committees. It makes sense to have two or three primary working groups. But as the church grows, it needs a different structure to support the weight, otherwise those few groups will buckle. (And by the way, this scenario also works in the reverse. A declining church may no longer need a dozen working committees. Don't wear out the faithful remnant!)

For many years, the Episcopal Church Women group was the catch-all. If it didn’t have to do with stewardship or vestry decisions, the event/fund-raiser/formation/fellowship program came under the auspices of the ECW. In the past couple of years, the ECW has floundered. Everything from the annual Thanksgiving dinner to a large annual fund-raiser to book club to cookies under the tree fell under the auspices of ECW. With so many different activities and responsibilities, it became hard for the ECW to answer some simple questions: Who are we? What is our mission? What is God calling us to do? 

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As congregational leaders, we seek to find the right balance between tending to the temporal matters of our churches and working towards our hopeful vision of what God is asking us to do in our communities. Having the right tools in place helps us be more efficient in managing our business affairs; this month we offer practical guidance and resources related to endowments and insurance as well as an introduction to the congregational coach approach used by the Diocese of Massachusetts to support congregations.

Our articles this month include:

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Summertime means audit-time in the life of congregations of The Episcopal Church.

The Canons [I.7.1(f)] state the standard accordingly: “…All accounts of parishes, missions, or other institutions shall be audited annually by an independent certified public accountant, or independent licensed public accountant, or such audit committee as shall be authorized by the finance committee, department of finance, or other appropriate diocesan authority.” In our Diocese of Washington, an audit report is due by September 1. Given that the work has to be done and the report written, presented to and approved by the vestry – presumably, during the vestry’s August meeting at the latest – this means the summer is spent on internal financial audits.

Audits are a good thing. In an earlier Vestry Papers article, Tom Patterson does a fine job of explaining why, in fact, audits are “a necessity, not an option.” I commend this article highly.

But audits can be expensive, and inexpensive audits can have little impact.

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Early on in my first job as an office manager, I was pretty easy going. It was a small nonprofit and everyone was busy, so if a coworker needed some help getting his or her timesheets together or forgot to get a receipt, I was not a stickler. I’d help them out or let small things slide. I’d often put off filing in order to deal with things that seemed more pressing.

Sometimes, this turned out to be a mistake. I got behind on filing, and some employees never learned how essential it was for them to keep their receipts or keep track of their hours. Trying to make other’s work easier just made the office less efficient.

It can be tempting, especially at a small organization with limited time and resources, to let the little things slide. But the processes that we have in place—the filing cabinets and accounting software, the attention to detail—is a sign of good stewardship.

In some instances, of course, flexibility is appropriate. Sometimes receipts for small things get lost, and sometimes filing really must be put off to another day. I’ve worked with people who get so caught up in having every form and file in place they lose sight of the bigger picture, and the office becomes an unpleasant place to work.

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Policies, structures, and procedures every church needs to think about.

Are you swimming naked? In his Vestry Papers article “Swimming Naked,” Ken Quigley notes congregations with endowments may have trouble below the surface that no one can see at the moment. He writes, “Swimming naked, you say? How is that like using endowment income for operating needs? Answer: No one notices ‘til the tide goes out.”

Our congregations are busy places, full of programs, busy staff and volunteers, and calendars that just never seem to have enough hours in the day. As the program year winds down and summer schedules begin, consider taking some time to review your policies and processes; making it a priority to tackle those that need some work. The articles and resources in this digest might be just what you need to get started; reminding you to look at some areas you may not have considered recently.

While we are thinking about finances and resources, I’d like to remind you of next month’s TENS Conference in Atlanta. Several of the presentations are available online via live webcast, providing access to their educational offerings for those who can’t be there in person. Click here to learn more and register for the next TENS Conference, Walking the Way, June 6-7, 2014.

Do you find these monthly digests helpful? If so, please share Vital Practices in your congregation. Forward this email and invite your church colleagues and friends to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices; they’ll receive our midmonth digest in their inbox along with our monthly Vestry Papers publication.

How Does It Work?
Policy and structure for day-to-day things can really make a difference in the life of a congregation. Whether a copy machine, fire alarm system, or lawn care contract, all of these things ensure that a congregation operates smoothly. How do all of these things work? Who is responsible for what? In “How Does It Work,” Leonard Freeman offers some suggestions on how to compile the information needed to create a helpful guide going forward.

Knowledge is Power
Financial policies can feel daunting, especially if you’re a volunteer. In “Knowledge is Power,” William Doubleday breaks down Canon 7 (Of Business Methods in Church Affairs) of the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, providing commentary on what to look out for and implement in your congregation.

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Thank you. 

While this may seem an odd way to start an editor’s letter, I’m eager to show my appreciation for all of the ECF Vital Practices and Vestry Papers bloggers and contributors, Facebook and Twitter followers, readers and subscribers, and those of you who have filled out our reader surveys or contacted me with feedback.

Why? Because all of you played a part in creating the online resource that is ECF Vital Practices. And, because at the recent Episcopal Communicators and Associated Church Press conference, ECF Vital Practices was awarded the Award of Excellence, Best In Class/Online: Independent Website by the Associated Church Press. The mobile version of the site was recognized with an Award of Merit, Best In Class/Online: Digital Edition/Mobile Publication. So, let me say it again, thank you.

We couldn’t have done it without you. You share your stories, your ideas, your questions, and your comments. You remind us of your need for practical resources and you ask for guidance in building stronger leadership teams, managing change, and visioning and planning. And when we ask for your help, you also deliver.

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Thank, equip, and empower our unsung heroes.

As Richelle Thompson writes in her blog post, “Holy (and Heck) Week,” “the intensity of this week is one of the privileges of the vocation, but imagine if the Academy Awards carried on for eight days.” During Holy Week there is much to do, coordination and organization are paramount, with much of the logistical work being done by volunteers and staff ‘behind the scenes.' You know they have done their job well when things are seamless. Church staff serve vital roles in their congregations and the articles and resources below point to ways that we can equip and empower them to further the mission and ministry of your congregation.

Next week brings Earth Day on Tuesday, April 22, followed by Administrative Professionals Day on Wednesday, April 23. We invite you to consider ways to care for our planet and thank the often unsung heroes who make the life and ministry of your congregation possible each and every week.

Do you find these monthly digests helpful? If so, please subscribe to ECF Vital Practices and invite your church colleagues and friends to do so as well. You will receive our midmonth digest in your inbox along with our monthly Vestry Papers publication. Also connect with us on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation and think about sharing your great resources on Your Turn.

Church Secretaries are Saints
A Hallmark holiday or not, church administrators deserve a special time of gratitude on Administrative Professionals Day. In "Church Secretaries are Saints," Richelle Thompson reflects on the many ways administrators and secretaries help keep things running smoothly and how we can use this holiday to sing their praises.

Bylaws & Shared Ministry: Entrusting and Empowering Parish Staff
“The role of parish staff is the role we expect our key lay leaders to play, as well…,” but how does the vestry go about equipping the parish staff to handle and care for the business of the church each week? Greg Syler shares in “Bylaws & Shared Ministry: Entrusting and Empowering Parish Staff,” how the vestry of his congregation discerned and cultivated a more decentralized leadership structure and the expectations of the parish staff to be key leaders in the congregation.

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Fifty years ago -- even twenty -- that might have seemed a bizarre question. But these days, many things are up for grabs. How regular is regular worship? What constitutes preparation adequate for church leadership? Instruction of young? With walls or without? Creed? No creed? New creed?

I heard a story on the radio yesterday that referenced the IRS fourteen-point test for determining what is a church. Episcopalians may be questioned for many reasons, but it’s rare that someone challenges our church-hood. So I had never examined the definition.

Our Sunday school situation is a little shaky, but otherwise my current congregation seems to measure up for now. Unfortunately, it’s not at all clear that meeting the criteria on this list prepares us very well to feed the spiritual hunger around us, to respond to the needs and anxieties of a new generation, to be a place of reconciliation among new communities.

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Forget the future. We don’t even have room for the present. When you have something that needs to be put away, is there an empty drawer or closet shelf handy? Active files in temporary boxes, plastic tubs of art supplies out in the open, piles of recently purchased books sitting in front of shelves of 1940 hymnals -- all signs that it is time for serious spring cleaning!

Cleaning the church isn’t easy. It’s boring and dusty and it doesn’t feel much like the vibrant ministry we are all supposed to be spending our time on.

Cleaning the church isn’t easy because we have a lot of feelings about the past. As we sort through paperwork, we remember people who have gone, and glory days that are long past. We discover wasted materials, long-since gone dry and crumbly, and we wish we had used them. We find things that used to be useful when some dead or dying ministry was active, and we wish we still needed them. The temptation arises to keep that stuff around “just in case.” Pretty soon it feels like we would have been better off leaving the closets in peace.

Cleaning matters. It makes room for the present and future. It helps us to let go of the past and turn our gaze forward. It even gives us the chance to sort treasures from garbage, and to display the treasures lovingly. A beautiful old photograph, or a hand-drawn Sunday school project from ages past can make for a celebration of memory. Check stubs from 1971 and crumpled props from long-ago Christmas pageants belong in the trash or the shredder.

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I’m a big fan of out-of-the-box thinking, but a new way of doing Sunday School at our church has me thankful for in-the-box preparation.

Our congregation is program-size, with an average Sunday attendance of 200. But we’re not quite at the program-size staffing level; we have two full-time staff members (the rector and administrator) supported by a handful of part-time folks. One frequent challenge for churches of this size (and frankly, any size) is offering a robust Christian formation program. The priest can't be the only teacher or leader.

In our congregation, participation in Sunday School has been erratic. But the church hired a Christian education director at about quarter time (or less), and in the first two months, I already can see a huge difference. I’m sure that we’ll see an increase in participation as people talk up the additional offerings, and ultimately we will have a more engaged, more spiritually vital congregation as people seek to learn and stretch their relationship with scripture and God. 

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Yet, in many of our congregations, agreeing to chair a fundraiser or organize an outreach project all too often becomes a lifelong appointment. For people other than Mother Theresa, this inescapable clause eventually engenders bitterness and resentfulness. 

We all know that this isn’t a healthy or sustainable practice. But how can we move from “lifelong appointment” to sharing the opportunities for leadership and ministry?

There are lots of reasons people don’t volunteer or step up to chair a project. Solving that problem is a critical topic but for another day. Let’s focus here on how to make space at the top so that new people can engage and take ownership. Sometimes the lifelong appointee doesn’t really want to leave. Maybe they can’t imagine truly giving up the position, even if they sometimes play the martyr. In other situations, there’s the person willing to give up the title but not the control, creating an extreme case of this is how we’ve always done and always should do it. (This person might also reload the dishwasher at home after moaning that no one helps in the kitchen).
But I’ll go Pollyanna here for a moment: I think the majority of leaders continue because of their passion for the project, their love for the church, and their deep fear that no one else will come forward.

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