Position Descriptions By Design

You are not going to get sufficient, effective, and practical business training at most seminaries. That's why you are probably not going to be prepared for all of the work required just to keep your church going. Seasoned pastors know what kind of problems they encountered when they were first starting out with their small church. They know that their training in hermeneutics, homiletics, theology, and basic Bible knowledge did not prepare them sufficiently for dealing with building programs, finances, legal matters, accounting statements, and required personnel supervision. Basic management of the church can be taught in Church Business 101, but it's the more advanced 900-level courses and higher that are usually not taught formally, and the required advanced learning is mostly through experience and expert advice. This is why even the small church pastor must be prepared to hire some of the best staff available to help him grow his church to what God has called it to be.

An important part of every church is the administrative function. Without proper administration of the annual budget, finances, human resources, and other related functions, no organization can function properly. This significant part of every church has a number of vitally responsible jobs to perform, including having someone to pay the bills, someone to keep up with tithing records, a person to ensure the computers are running properly, another person to answer the phones during office hours, someone to pay the staff, and then someone to shepherd the staff. These functions are quite often handled by the senior pastor simply because the church is not large enough to support a multitude of positions that fulfill these roles. However, as the church grows it must have the capability to hire a sufficient number of staff members who will either do these functions exclusively or share them with others.

Just as in any organization, there is much to be done in a church. Unless each and every position in the church has been fully defined and described, including who does what, what is expected of everyone, and how all the pieces fit together, the church cannot function effectively. The dysfunctional staff provides for an atmosphere in which any conflict expressed between individuals and/or groups may result in the staff not being pleased with their working environment. And, this does not allow for effective ministry reaching the people seeking a relationship with Christ. This calls for the need for carefully crafted and thought-out formal descriptions of the duties and responsibilities of every person on the staff.

Many organizations and churches do not have carefully, cautiously, and congruently crafted position descriptions. There are many church leaders who honestly believe that ministries can be defined by how the ministry "just pans out." There are those that believe that the Holy Spirit will guide everyone in what they need to know to perform their work. It has been known that ministries can also become so bogged down in the work of ministry, and the accompanying required administration, that the leaders cannot think through the organizational map to know how to use the people's time, abilities, gifts, and talents in the most effective manner.

Position descriptions help employees of the church or ministry gain a better sense of their responsibilities, what is expected of them, and the various standards by which they will be evaluated and rewarded. They can also help the church develop effective recruiting materials, develop orientation and associated training programs, and ensure consistency and equity among positions. A position description that has been carefully crafted, designed, and written provides an organized summary of the duties, tasks, responsibilities, qualifications, and accountabilities inherent in a ministry personnel position.

We've provided you and your staff a number of helps through Position Descriptions By Design, a major component of Ministry By Design: The Series. You will find background information about the need for position descriptions, as well as help for your church staff to understand the purposes of position descriptions. Guidelines are then given for using some of the best practices in developing effective position descriptions for your staff. The biggest part of this book is the section that provides a number of position descriptions to help jump start your development of position descriptions specific to your staff needs. In addition to the more than 100 descriptions printed in this book, there are more than 900 position descriptions available through the ministry.

The position descriptions in this book have been developed from many years of experience in secular and ministry employ. The formats contained within are examples of what can be used in any ministry situation, yet are simple enough to be integrated into a position description manual or handbook which you may already have in place. Granted, there is not a very likely scenario in which you will have staff members in all of these positions in your church; there are enough of the position descriptions, however, that you will be able to search through them for the ones that you can easily and quickly adapt to your particular needs. Additional descriptions will be added to future editions of this volume as it is warranted.