I ran across the following in the notebook we hand out to Committee on Ministry members.
Staffing for growth
1 program professional for every 100 active members [active members defined as average Sunday attendance]
1 support FTE [full time equivalent] for the first program professional; 1/2 FTE for each subsequent professional
Ministerial interns don’t count in the equation“If you staff below maintenance level, I can promise you that you will decline. And if you staff above the staffing for growth level, you will probably decline as well. Not having enough to do leads to low performance levels.”
Unfortunately, the quotation is given without an attribution. Search engines don’t turn up anything with quite this wording. Anyone have any idea where this comes from? I’d love to know, because it’s such an interesting assertion — that your congregation will decline if you have too many program and support staff.
The staffing numbers appear in a UUA document on the Search for RE Leadership:
http://www.uua.org/documents/ellenwoodpat/re_leadershipguide.pdf
See page 40. The author cites a consultant at Alban Institute in a document from 1992. Perhaps the assertion about decline if you overstaff comes from there?
Mary
Mary, thanks for the link! I know both editors listed on the document, so if I can’t find the quote in Alban Institute publications I may just contact one of them.