Churchgoers place a lot of faith in their church leaders. They expect pastors to be good, spiritual people who lead with grace and understanding. Unfortunately, they’re often disappointed when they discover that their pastors are human beings just like the rest of us—and don’t always do a great job managing the church’s staff, the church’s finances, or the church itself.
It’s a sad fact that while many pastors are good spiritual leaders, many are also really bad managers. Why is that?
How Church Leaders Manage Poorly
Leading a church is like leading a business or any other organization. The leader of the organization must manage staff, finances, communication, facilities, and more, just like any other business.
In smaller churches, all of these functions may be managed by the lead pastor alone. In larger churches, there are likely separate departments for each of these functions, or for different types of activities (youth ministry, women’s ministry, music, etc.); still, it’s the lead pastor who’s responsible for managing the entire organization.
Whether leading a small or a large church, pastors have to deal with all these business functions, even though they likely received little to no business training while in seminar. This often results in poor management behavior and a multitude of bad business decisions.
Through no fault of their own, church leaders often exhibit the following bad business behaviors:
- Poor communication. While any given pastor might be a great orator, he or she might not necessarily be an equally great communicator, either one-to-one to individual staff members or to key groups within the church. If the church leader doesn’t tell people what’s doing on or they need to do, chaos can result.
- Poor coordination. Similarly, many church leaders are lousy coordinators. When information and instructions are not clearly communicated to relevant individuals and groups, people and departments will often work at cross purposes, inadvertently getting in each other’s way. A good manager needs to facilitate coordination amongst the staff; poor managers often get in the way of this coordination or actively undermine it.
- Absent management. Some church leaders deal with the stress of management by walking away from their duties. It’s more fulfilling to focus on preaching and tending to the flock, so they shy away from the more difficult management tasks inherent in the job. It’s as if they think if they ignore the hard stuff, it will either go away or get done by someone else. Neither of those things are likely to happen, resulting in an organization bereft of direction and leadership.
- Micromanagement. In contrast, some church leaders, especially in smaller churches, like to micromanage their staff. Because they’re incapable of delegating even the simplest of tasks, they end up doing their employees’ jobs for them and undermining the efforts of their staff. This can be demoralizing for staff members as it stifles creativity and growth.
- Top-down direction. In many instances, heavy-handed church leaders end up creating a staff-heavy structure that devalues the contribution of the congregation. This type of church tends to do what the staff wants and ignores the needs and efforts of church members, especially volunteers. Where churches should be driven by their members, this top-down approach treats the congregation as observers rather than participants in the worship experience.
- Lack of toughness. Many church leaders also have trouble being tough with their employees. Clergy are reluctant to challenge poorly performing staff, tending towards grace rather than confrontation. The result is that poor performers remain poor performance, demoralizing better-performing colleagues and dragging down the entire operation.
Any one of these situations can create a toxic environment for both church staff and members of the congregation. When poor management results in unnecessary bureaucracy, politics, and favoritism, the result is likely to be high staff turnover and dissatisfied members leaving the church.
Here’s an example. There is a church with which I’m familiar that that suffers from a lack of leadership and communication, as well as a staff-heavy focus. In this church, the lead pastor is mostly absent from day-to-day operations and does not clearly or frequently communicate with his staff. As a result, the various staff members and their departments are left pretty much to their own devices, often getting in each other’s way and working at cross purposes. Even worse, because these staff members also have no management training, they end up making extremely bad decisions that affect employee retention, volunteer participation, and the congregational experience. This church quickly became a bad place to work and an increasingly disappointing place to worship—problems that could all be solved by better leadership and management.
Why Many Church Leaders Are Bad Managers
The example I just wrote about is not an isolated one. Many, many churches, both large and small, suffer the effects of bad management. In most cases the bad management is not intentional or malicious, but it happens despite the best intentions of pastors and other church leaders.
Why, then, is bad management endemic among religious organizations? I’ve found that there are two primary causes—temperament and training.
First, realize that the type of person who enters the clergy is often quite different from the type that gravitates towards the world of business. Religious leaders are typically warmhearted, empathetic, and have a desire to help others. Business leaders, in contrast, are typically more driven and opportunistic. While both clergy and businesspeople can exhibit strong leadership traits, church leaders tend to be more nurturing and understanding than the typical businessperson. In short, people who enter the clergy are likely not to share the same personality traits and inherent tactical thinking as those who gravitate towards the world of business. Managing people and business functions are not things that church people like or want to do; they’d rather spend the time on more spiritual activities.
The second, equally important, factor in bad church management is that the vast majority of individuals who become church leaders have little to no business training. Seminaries teach about religion, not about how to run a business. A church leader-in-training is likely to have no exposure to key business concepts such as management, marketing, and finance. A pastor is essentially thrown into a business environment (because a church is a business, after all) with no training or prior experience. It’s sink or swim when it comes to managing a church organization, and far too many pastors don’t float.
The result of unsuited and untrained church leaders are churches that are poorly managed, organizations that don’t operate efficiently or effectively, and a work environment that is less than ideal if not totally toxic. A well-managed church will have happy and motivated staff that best serve the needs of their congregation; a poorly-managed church will have trouble attracting and retaining staff and will have increasingly dissatisfied church members.
How Church Leaders Can Become Better Managers
The solution to poor church management is simple. Given that the ministry is not likely to attract born businesspeople, pastors and other church leaders need to learn important management and business skills. It’s not that pastors need to get a four-year business degree, but they should have some training in core business skills, especially managerial skills.
How can a church provide business training for its leaders? Sending a pastor or senior staff member to a management training course or seminar is a good first start. Reading a few basic business management books can also have significant and often immediate results. Churches with larger budgets may also benefit from bringing in a consultant or business coach to help advise church leaders and senior staff on important business matters.
Most important, church leaders must start thinking of their churches as businesses. This goes against their nature, I know; to many clergy and religious people, “managing,” “marketing,” and “finance” are all bad words. Still, to successfully manage a church or other religious organization, it’s important for leaders to have an awareness of important business skills and at least some level of competence in those skills.
Bottom line, if you want your church to run as smoothly as possible, you need encourage the development of business skills, especially managerial skills. An individual who is a great pastor but a poor manager will eventually fail; teach that same person to be a better manager and he or she will be more effective and an even better leader to their flock.
