Category Archives: Church admin.

Comparing church fundraisers

It’s always interesting to me to see which fundraisers raise the most money for the least amount of work. Sometimes, the simple easy fundraisers raise more money than the complex difficult fundraisers. For example:

The youth group here at the Palo Alto church is raising money to go to New Orleans for a service project. The ice cream social (ice cream donated by a local merchant) grossed $775 for two hours of work. The New Orleans theme dinner grossed $750, with much higher expenses, and three or four times as much work.

Boundaries in congregations

Over at the blog “Morning Star Rising,” Deb Weiner has an excellent post on setting boundaries and limits in your congregation. Deb begins by asking a couple of questions: “Why, I wonder, do Unitarian Universalists seem to have such difficulty establishing and accepting boundaries and limits?… Do we really believe that affirming the worth and dignity of people means that anything goes?” Deb goes on to give pertinent examples of times when congregations did not set good boundaries, based on her own wide experience in a number of Unitarian Universalist congregations. It’s not just Unitarian Universalists who have this problem, of course: many different kinds of congregations struggle with the same problem. If you’re part of any congregation, it’s worth reading Deb’s well-written post, “Boundaries and Limits.”

I’ll amplify one point in Deb’s post: the same boundaries and limits that apply to members and friends of the congregation also apply to staff and ministers; therefore, it is not OK for someone to yell at your congregation’s DRE or minister, to speak patronizingly to your church’s sexton or custodian, or to treat your congregation’s administrator like a personal servant; people are people, whether they’re on the payroll or not. Thank goodness I’m working in a church where members and friends treat each other, and treat staff and ministers, with courtesy and respect — it makes life pleasant for everyone.

Solving your church’s financial problems

Is your church budget strained? Trying to support a building that’s just too darned big? Stephen Leacock has described how the people of Mariposa, in Missinaba County, in Canada, handled the financial problems of their Church of England congregation, and at the same time supported their rector, Dean Drone. Leacock’s story is immediately below; my commentary appears after Leacock:

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“The fire had broken out late, late at night, and they fought it till the day. The flame of it lit up the town and the bare grey maple trees, and you could see in the light of it the broad sheet of the frozen lake, snow covered still. It kindled such a beacon as it burned that from the other side of the lake the people on the night express from the north could see it twenty miles away. It lit up such a testimony of flame that Mariposa has never seen the like of it before or since. Then when the roof crashed in and the tall steeple tottered and fell, so swift a darkness seemed to come that the grey trees and the frozen lake vanished in a moment as if blotted out of existence.

“When the morning came the great church of Mariposa was nothing but a ragged group of walls with a sodden heap of bricks and blackened wood, still hissing here and there beneath the hose with the sullen anger of a conquered fire. Round the ruins of the fire walked the people of Mariposa next morning, and they pointed out where the wreck of the steeple had fallen, and where the bells of the church lay in a molten heap among the bricks, and they talked of the loss that it was and how many dollars it would take to rebuild the church, and whether it was insured and for how much. And there were at least fourteen people who had seen the fire first, and more than that who had given the first alarm, and ever so many who knew how fires of this sort could be prevented.

“Most noticeable of all you could see the sidesmen and the wardens and Mullins, the chairman of the vestry, talking in little groups about the fire. Later in the day there came from the city the insurance men and the fire appraisers, and they too walked about the ruins, and talked with the wardens and the vestry men. There was such a luxury of excitement in the town that day that it was just as good as a public holiday.

“But the strangest part of it was the unexpected sequel. Continue reading →

Seven statements about democracy

It’s amazing to me how many people these days believe that “democracy” means “I get what I want, and screw you.” — I threw this line out in a comment to an earlier post, and then it occurred to me that many congregations hold annual meetings at this time of year, and so democracy is . Here are six additional brief statements about democracy that elaborate on this bare statement:

I/ Democracy is a form of self-abnegation. Yes, each individual in a democracy should receive some personal benefit. But each person in a democracy also has to contribute time, energy, money, etc., to that democracy. As a rule of thumb, each of us should expect to feel as though we are contributing far more than we receive as individuals; because we humans are more likely to be aware of what we do for others, than we are aware of what others do for us.

II/ A corollary to statement I: Just because you feel you give more time, money, energy, whatever, to the democracy does not mean you should have more influence than the next person. The basic principle of a democracy is that one person gets one vote; and each vote (yes, even your vote) is worth the same as everyone else’s vote (yes, your vote is worth the same as the person you despise and whom you think does not give enough time and money to the congregation). And of course you probably give less to the democracy than you think you do (see statement I).

III/ Participation in a democracy means you have to do more than show up once a year for an annual meeting, or fill out a ballot once a year. Each individual in a democracy is morally required Continue reading →

Shared online documents as a planning tool

I’ve been using online shared spreadsheets (through Google Docs) as a congregational planning and scheduling tool for three years now. I thought I’d share some of what I’ve been doing, in hopes that others will share what they’ve been doing along these lines.

First, take a look at the Palo Alto churches “RE Grid 0910” (religious education planning grid for 2009-2010). This is an example of a moderately complicated planning grid using an online spreadsheet. Congregational planning in a mid-sized church like ours is focused on Sunday events, so moving up and down in the spreadsheet each row is designated with successive Sunday dates (the only exception is Christmas Eve, which gets its own row). Moving from left to right in the spreadsheet, we start off with columns for various Sunday morning time slots, and move into columns for specific programs (i.e., Children’s Choir, teacher training, youth programs, etc.). The religious education committee, the leaders of various programs, the church administrator, and I use this RE Grid for more efficient communication and coordination. From my point of view, what I like best is that other people can get answers to scheduling questions without having to ask me; furthermore, when we do planning, everyone is literally on the same (online) page which increases efficiency and reduces confusion.

Screen shot of RE Grid mentioned above

Next, here’s a worship planning grid from a small congregation. In this congregation, the musicians were very part-time, and usually could not meet with me with me to plan worship; I used the worship planning grid to share information about sermon topics, and they used the grid to share with each other the music they were playing so we didn’t get duplication. The lay worship associates used the grid to keep track of when they were scheduled. Staff and volunteers tend to be stretched thin in small congregations, and introducing this online spreadsheet as a planning tool made all our lives easier.

Two downsides to online documents for planning: (1) there’s a strong temptation to include too much information (no good solution for this); (2) there’s a tendency to delete old information without saving a copy for future reference (I export Excel versions of Google Docs spreadsheets for archives).

I’d love to hear how other congregations have used online shared documents for planning. Tell us what you’re doing in the comments, and give us a link if your online document is public.

Finding bright spots

Carol and I are reading Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard, by two brothers, Chip Heath and Dan Heath; we both have jobs that call on us to implement social change, we both know how hard it can be to implement change, so we are both interested in new approaches to making change happen.

Switch starts with some basic human psychology: human beings are governed by both emotions and rational thought; human beings respond to the situations they find themselves in. Therefore, say the brothers Heath, to implement change we have to use both thoughts and feelings, and we have to create situations where change is easier rather than harder.

The second chapter of the book is titled “Find the Bright Spots” — but, they warn, finding bright spots is harder than it might seem. Human beings tend to focus on the negative aspects of life. To demonstrate this, they give a wonderful case study.

A pharmaceuticals company is having difficulty selling a new allergy drug. The company hires a consultant to help them figure out what’s going on. The consultant finds three saleswomen who are selling twenty times as much of the new drug as salespeople elsewhere. The consultant says to himself, “Ah, ha! there’s a bright spot. I’ll investigate that, and maybe I’ll learn how to improve sales elsewhere.” The consultant goes to investigate. He finds that these three saleswomen are teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drug — it has to be administered intravenously, which is very unusual for allergy drugs. So he takes this finding back to the pharmaceutical company, and tells them that if they have their sale force start teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drub, they’ll increase sales. And what does headquarters do? They refuse to believe in the bright spot, and they investigate the three saleswomen to find out why they have an unfair advantage over the other salespeople.

Recently, I discovered a bright spot in our congregational life here in the Palo Alto church. We are an introverted congregation; there are plenty of extroverts here, but the majority of us are introverts. But if I make public this bright spot (as I am, in fact, doing right now), I had better take into account the tendency of human beings to focus on the negative aspects of life. Like this imaginary conversation:

Ordinarily Negative Human Being: “What, we’re an introverted congregation?! That means no one will ever talk to newcomers!” Me: “Actually, that’s not true. We introverts excel at one-on-one conversations. We also do very well in structured social settings such as congregations.” ONHB: “We’re all introverts, no wonder we tend to be quiet in worship services!” Me: “Which means our quiet, mellow worship services well feel welcoming and calming to people whose lives are too crazy busy. Which is most everyone in Silicon Valley.” ONHB: “People will think we’re all geeks!” Me: “Umm, we are in Silicon Valley, half the population is geeks.” ONHB: “Oh yeah. Well, maybe it’s good we’re an introverted church.” Me: “I think so. I like our calm, peaceful church, where people have really interesting conversations, and where our worship style is calm and low-key. I like the fact that there are other geeks like me, including engineer geeks, science geeks, theology geeks, finance geeks, and many other kinds of people who are quietly passionate about things.”

Power outage

When I arrived at the office this morning, the power was out. A plane crashed just after taking off from the Palo Alto airport, killing all three people on board (all were employees of the Tesla electric car company), clipping a power line, and apparently taking out a couple of transformers. It took all day for PG&E and the Palo Alto municipal light plant to get the power back up, but just as it was getting dark this evening the power came back on.

When I first started working in churches in 1994, I had a computer on my desk, but I spent less than a third of my time working at the computer. Now I think I spend about two thirds of my time working at the computer, and I’ve gotten so accustomed to working at the computer I had to stop and think how to work without a computer. I had a curriculum planning meeting in the morning — no going online to look up curriculum resources; no bringing up the database to check enrollment trends — we had to look at actual pieces of paper and books instead of at lighted screens. Once that meeting was over, I had to figure out how to spend my day. No email, the phone system goes down without power, no electronic documents — so I did some filing, cleaned out a storage closet, wrote up next year’s curriculum grid by hand, had another meeting, talked to a couple of people who stopped by the office, took a walk, did some planning.

With no phone, Web, or email all day long, I felt cut off. On the other hand, it was nice not staring into a lighted screen all day, and I realized that I wished my job did not require me to spend quite so much time using a computer.

Direct talk about budgeting in an economic downturn

In an excellent article from Alban Institute, Dan Hotchkiss points out that in an economic downturn, congregations need to face up to the fundamental financial principle that you have to cut consumption in order to match revenue. Hotchkiss suggests a form of zero-based budgeting in which the congregational leadership first sets priorities, and subsequent to that builds a budget from scratch.

Hotchkiss is not a warm, cuddly writer, and some people will find this article annoying. Others of us — those who prefer direct talk about finances, those who are fiscal conservatives, and the like — may appreciate an article that doesn’t sugar-coat what is a pressing issue for many of our congregations. Link to the article.

And thanks to Sean for the tip.

Opinions

According to a review of Stewart Brand’s new book Whole Earth Discipline, Brand says the following in the introduction:

My opinions are strongly stated and loosely held.

I’m probably not going to read Brand’s new book, but I like that one sentence; it nicely sums up an approach that has worked well for me.