Sustainable Church pt. 2: Ministry Structures
What if basketball teams tried to structure themselves like football teams?
Imagine all the players dashing off the court after a basket was made in order to switch to their defensive line.
Or what if baseball teams tried acting like hockey teams and had their players coming off the field for a shift change every 45 seconds?
Or maybe basketball could be more like baseball and only have one shooter on the court, while facing 9 defencemen?
The reason why sports teams don’t structure themselves like other sports teams is simple: they’re playing a different game.
This is a lesson that some organizations never figure out.
How is it that businesses, non-profits, churches, and even armies can have such different missions but all be structured so similarly? The church is playing a totally different game, yet structuring their teams the same.
Have you ever wondered why your organization has the staffing and leadership structure that it has?
Have you ever wondered why your church has a Lead Pastor, an Associate Pastor, a Youth Pastor, a Children’s Pastor, etc.?
I’ll give you a hint: It’s not because Jesus told them to (in fact, General Motors probably influenced our church structures more than anybody else, at this point).
The fact that our current church structures are not found in the Bible does not make them wrong, but it does make them optional.
It means we have freedom to evaluate them and change them in order to be more effective.
Sustainable Church
Welcome to part II of a series where we’re looking at a few reasons why so many ministries are operating unsustainably. Rather than blaming our problems on unhealthy or ineffective leaders, I believe we trip up often because we neglect the underlying issues of systems and structures.
Rather than blaming the dancer for twisting their ankle, we need to fix the broken dance floor.
In part I, I identified six systems that need to be built and maintained in sustainable ministries (go ahead and read that sometime).
In this post, I want to introduce you to a leadership tool that is missing in many ministry leaders’ toolboxes (it was missing in mine for the first 8 years of being a pastor).
That tool is called structure.
Structure is all about how we organize people to accomplish tasks. It’s how we designate responsibilities, divide up roles, determine authority, and coordinate our work.
If you’ve ever seen an organizational chart, you’re somewhat familiar with the concept of structure. You’re also aware that most org charts spend their lives hidden away in the deep recesses of your file structure, never to be consulted, updated, or referenced.
In short, organizational charts and structures sound like a super boring thing to write an article about (are you still here?).
Why Structure isn’t Boring
But structure isn’t boring.
Structure is personal.
It’s about solving our most pressing and frustrating type of problem: people problems.
When we don’t get structure right:
- People get stuck in jobs that set them up for failure
- Our staff are unmotivated because they aren’t sure how their work fits into the bigger picture
- Teams get isolated and never coordinate with one another
- Innovation and creativity get stifled
- Quality and excellence become harder to achieve
- Creating meaningful change becomes even harder than it is already
- Communication is difficult and people are often out of the loop
In other words, many problems that we would like to blame on individuals may actually be connected to structure.
It’s why firing and re-hiring often don’t fix our issues.
The Core Components of Structure
If you’re ready to dive in and address the structural problems in your organization, there are a few key elements that you need to be considering.
If structure is a tool, think of these as dials on that tool that you can turn to fine-tune the settings to get the results you want.
Job Design
One of the first things to wrestle through is simply how to divide up all the work that needs to be done. Without this step, your team will look like a preschooler’s soccer match – everyone huddles together and chases the ball around the field in one big pack. You need to create positions.
Four of the main methods here are to organize by product (or program), market (or demographic), function, or process.
1. Product-based
The “products” that churches create are programs or services, which can each become the basis for creating staff positions and teams. Examples include a coordinator for weekend worship services, a team created to pull off a special event (for us, our annual Canada Day Children’s Carnival for the city fits in here), or perhaps specialized programming for your community such as a school or community centre.
2. Market-based
Similar to the last one, this is more focused on a particular age group or demographic, and is very common in church world. Children’s ministries, teen ministries, marriage groups, parenting courses, young adults, men’s ministries, moms’ mornings, seniors’ Bible studies, etc. Many churches choose to organize their structure so that there are teams and staff members specifically devoted to each of these target groups.
An advantage of both product and market-based structures is their ability to focus and specialize. For instance, a junior high program can be custom tailored to what a 13 year-old needs, without having to pay attention to what any other programs are doing around them.
This is also its disadvantage, as these departments can very quickly become autonomous “silos” that don’t integrate well into the larger vision of the church.
3. Function-based
If you were to take the last category and ask, “What’s the same in each of these ministries,” you would end up with a list of “functions.” This would include things like worship, teaching, prayer, leader recruitment and development, audio/video tech, event planning, financial management, marketing and promotion, facility design and usage, and more.
The advantage of function-based structures is alignment across ministries. This is a powerful method for breaking down program-based silos and creating consistency throughout the church.
Also, because staffing roles don’t match the end product, there is a much greater freedom to innovate and make changes to your overall programming strategy (in a product-based structure, suggesting that a program is no longer needed is going to feel very threatening and likely met with resistance).
The main disadvantage is that no one will feel the same type of ownership over any one particular program, possibly leading to a lower level of quality. They are functional specialists, but program generalists. And, of course, silos can be built around functions as well.
Read about how we switched our NextGen ministries to a functional model here.
4. Process-based
These structures are more common in manufacturing businesses than they are churches, but the principles still apply. These structures are organized around the natural progressions that flow through our ministries and the processes that we lead people through. Examples include:
- Spiritual growth processes (unbeliever – new believer – maturing believer)
- Planning processes (vision – strategy – operations), community integration processes (outside – newcomer – member, or Northpoint’s model of “guest – friend – family”)
- Volunteer processes (recruitment – onboarding – development)
- Programming processes (research and development – event planning – execution).
Each stage in a process is owned by a different staff person or team. When a church forms a hospitality or “first impressions” team to help newcomers feel welcome on a Sunday, this is an example of organizing by process.
The advantage of process-based structures in manufacturing is efficiency (e.g. factories produced 10x the product once assembly lines were introduced). This could be the case for churches as well, though ministries are very unlike assembly lines.
The big advantage here is its ability to tie staff members together and increase their collaboration. One person’s job flows out of another’s, and one thing can’t be completed until the previous step has been done.
This connectedness is also a disadvantage, as the weakest link in the chain will slow down the entire process (e.g. if an assembly line shuts down, everyone’s job is affected). This also has real downsides for all people-related processes like spiritual growth or leader development, as someone could be passed from one person to the next with no continuity of relationship.
When it comes to people and relationships, efficiency is not always our friend.
Apart from these large-scale divisions, consultants Bolman and Deal also recommend balancing these three tensions when designing jobs:
Gap vs. Overlap. Are there tasks that aren’t assigned to anyone and falling through the cracks? Or, is there so much overlap in people’s job descriptions that every decision requires multiple approvals and unnecessary double-checking?
Underuse vs. Overload. Are your staff actually able to do their jobs well in the time allotted to them or is overtime a basic requirement? Most church staff seem to fall on this half of the equation, though sometimes jobs are created because we think we need them, or a full-time position is hired when only a half-time would have been enough.
Lack of Clarity vs. Lack of Creativity. Does everyone have enough clarity in their role that they know what they should be doing? A lack of clarity (coupled with underuse) leads to pet projects that aren’t mission-critical. Alternatively, too much rigidity in roles can lead to people constantly saying, “That’s not my job.” Everyone needs to feel a sense of ownership over those things which are bigger than their individual roles.
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"Rethink Staff Structure"Authority relationships
How much authority does each member of the team have to make decisions and solve problems?
In highly centralized structures, authority is clearly situated at the top and all decisions need to flow through a “chain of command” in order to be approved. This is one way that organizations maintain quality standards and enforce stricter codes of conduct.
In more decentralized, or organic, structures, those on the front lines are empowered to troubleshoot and solve the problems that they’re facing on their own, without authorization and red tape.
There are a variety of different reasons and scenarios in which both a higher and lower level of authority could be the right move. Check out the following table for an overview.
Generally, the greater the skill, knowledge, and training of those doing the work, the more autonomy and decision making power can be given.
In other words, don’t go crazy with empowerment and let that new volunteer, who hasn’t been well-trained and doesn’t know the vision and values of the ministry, do whatever they want. But don’t handcuff them and make them feel like their role is insignificant either. It’s a tension.
Span of Control
How many people and how much responsibility does any one person oversee?
The simplest way to understand span of control is to look at how many direct reports each person has, but this term includes more than just people and should take into account overall responsibility as well. It’s not uncommon in churches for a staff member to have a large area of responsibility but very few team members.
Narrow spans generally allow for greater oversight and coaching opportunities, while wider spans are associated with higher levels of autonomy and creativity.
On the other side, narrow spans create “tall” hierarchies with multiple levels, which can make communication from top to bottom more difficult. Wide spans create “flat” hierarchies, which can cause supervisors to feel overloaded and employees to feel under-supported.
This is, of course, a huge oversimplification and both scenarios can be appropriate in the right setting.
In order to see how some of these different elements are connected, let’s attempt to bring the two concepts of authority and span of control together to get a better understanding of why you might play with these dials when adjusting structure. See the matrix below for how I think these two elements could affect each other.
Coordination
“How do people communicate and collaborate?”
The division side of the equation seems to happen whether you like it or not; people naturally just start doing their own thing and focusing on their own work. This is not the case with coordination.
How well teams and departments communicate and collaborate with each other is connected to workplace culture and management style, but can also be encouraged from a structural approach.
This is less about moving boxes around on your Org chart and more about the level of “formalization” that exists in your structure (I.e. how rigid the rules and hierarchical relationships are).
In more rigid structures, with the authority at the top, everyone needs to go through their manager before speaking to any other departments or any other managers. In less rigid situations, there are dotted lines connecting many of the boxes on your chart and everyone has the authority to talk to whomever they need to talk to.
Too low on coordination = too much independence and disconnection.
Too high on coordination = too much interdependence and no one can do anything on their own.
Some of the ways to encourage coordination among different teams include:
- Meetings. Simple, right? Well run, focused meetings that occur at the right intervals are powerful coordination tools. If you want people to be on the same page, get them around the same table on a regular basis (even if that table is a digital video call).
- Shared tasks. Create intentional overlap in key spots in their job descriptions. For us, weekly emails to small group leaders and parents is a shared task.
- Cross-functional teams. Larger than just a shared task, form ad-hoc teams from different departments to work on larger projects and goals together.
- Collaboration tech. Options such as cloud-based file sharing, project management software (Asana, Basecamp, etc.), digital communication tools (e.g. Slack), and more. For more ideas, check out Nick Blevins’ suggestions for ministry apps.
- Formal communication methods. E.g. I ask my team to send out a weekly tactical report from their ministry areas to keep the rest of us in the loop.
- Informal communication methods. It’s amazing how important conversations in the downtime are for staying on the same page. Create opportunities for your team to interact outside of meetings and emails. Rearranging office spaces, creating a culture where people take breaks and get up from their desks regularly, or even hanging out beyond work hours can all accomplish this.
This list just scratches the surface of all the ways you can increase coordination on your team. For a more in-depth look, check out “14 Ways to Get Your Team Working Together.”
Ready to start?
Structure can be an intimidating tool to use. Like any other power tool, you can make a mess with it if you don’t know how to use it. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practise and learn to become more skillful with it.
Begin your practising on paper. Talk to your team and chart out numerous different scenarios, playing around with each of the different levers. What does each new scenario potentially solve? What new problems would arise in each?
Once you’re ready to make changes and have the proper buy-in from all affected leaders and individuals, start small. Focus on one team. Test and re-evaluate as you go.
If you’re making large scale changes to structure, don’t expect it to feel like a huge success in the short term. Restructuring can be messy and it takes a while to settle in and learn new habits and rhythms as a team. Be patient.
What’s your take?
What would you add to the conversation? Have you been through a restructuring process in your church recently that went really well (or really poorly)? Share your story in the comments below.
If you have questions and are wondering what this could look like in your context, leave a comment below or reach out to me directly at dan@dandoerksen.me.
Thanks for being here,
Dan
*Update: Still have questions? Check out the Q&A video that Kenny Conley and I put together to answer questions that you submitted.
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