A profit-driven corporation has experienced three consecutive years in which expenditures exceeded receipts. The chief executive officer, the chief operating officer, and the chief financial officer have studied the situation and concluded the time has come to terminate the employment of 37 people. They have agreed on the names of 16. The Board of Directors has approved their recommendation. Who will name the other 21 to be dismissed? That decision is delegated to the head of the Department of Human Resources.

A public elementary school principal is told to reduce proposed expenditures for the coming year by 6 percent. Who will identify the cuts?

In 1983, Calvary Church sold the property where it had been worshiping God for 60 years. The congregation constructed modern facilities on a four-acre site at a better location. By 1993, the average attendance had doubled to 235. When the pastor retired in 2001 after two decades, the worship attendance was about 320 on the typical weekend. The successor turned out to be an "unintentional interim minister" and left in late 2004. Worship attendance has continued to drop and averaged 210 last year.

Who should take the lead in asking those tough diagnostic questions before beginning to design a five-year ministry plan? The "new pastor" who arrived in early 2005? The chair of the elder board? A denominational official? The church treasurer? The half-time semi-retired 69-year-old associate minister who joined the staff back in mid-2004? The chair of a soon-to-be-appointed long-range planning committee?

Five Trends
A quick review of a half dozen recent trends in American Protestantism provides a larger contest for discussing this question.

The first is the rise in the level of competition among the churches in America for future constituents. That is one part of the explanation for that decrease in church attendance at Calvary Church. In 2003, they replaced a long-tenured pastor, who also was a respected community leader as well as an excellent preacher, with a stranger who turned out to be a mismatch. The guiding generalization is the higher the level of competition for future constituents, the more important is a good match between pastor and congregation.

A second is the product of two major changes in the American economy. One is the increase in the number of American households with substantial accumulated wealth. The other is the increase in the level of competition for charitable gifts and the changes in the tax laws that encourage charitable contributions from accumulated wealth. That requires a higher level of skill in designing and implementing a congregation's financial plan.

A third trend is the number of congregations that combine both the ministries and the resources necessary to add a full-time administrator to the paid staff has at least quintupled since the mid-1950s. For that far larger number of smaller congregations, this need often is met by either (a) creating a part-time paid position for a church business administrator or (b) a seven-to-ten hour a week position for a volunteer. Many of these are early retirees from the secular labor force who bring specialized and relevant skills to this role.

A fourth trend is the generations of American churchgoers born after 1960 often bring a larger package of high and varied expectations with them as they search for a new church home. A common consequence is the demands placed on the pastor who could serve as the leader of a church in the 1950s now exceed the time and competence that any one person can bring to that role. A productive solution in larger congregations has been to replace that role of one leader with a troika, often consisting of the Pastor, the Administrator, and the Program (or Ministries) Director.

A fifth trend is in the evolution of responsibilities. In the 1950s, for example, the Sunday School Superintendent or the Director of Christian Education usually was expected to identify, enlist, equip, nurture, support, and place a large number of volunteer teachers. That producer-driven agenda was focused on teaching. Today, the successor, often called the Coordinator of Learning Communities, is expected to create, nurture, oversee, and staff an expanding network of learning communities, many of which are led by peers. This consumer-driven change has evoked (a) strong enthusiastic support from lay persons born after World War II and (b) considerable resistance from traditionalists.

Likewise, the central role of the Church Business Administrator has been transformed. In the 1950s and 1960s, the driving expectation was to answer questions. "Are we fully insured?" "Will we have a budget surplus or deficit at the end of the year?" "I need a room that will accommodate two dozen adults from 7:00 to 9:00 every Tuesday evening for 16 weeks beginning the second Tuesday after Labor Day. What's available?" "I just heard that John, our custodian, has resigned. Do you believe we can find an acceptable replacement for what we've been paying him?"

Today, the No. 1 competence of the Church Business Administrator is to ask the right questions of the appropriate people at the appropriate time. (In many larger congregations, the title has been changed to Executive Minister to reflect these expanded responsibilities.)

High on that list is a consequence of that higher level of competition among Christian congregations to identify, reach, attract, welcome, serve, assimilate, and nurture potential future constituents. Thus, when someone suggests a revision of the weekend schedule or offering a new program or ministry, the administrator may ask, "Could you describe for us more precisely the people you expect that will serve?" Or it could be simply, "How will that make us more competitive?"

A powerful temptation among leaders of many parachurch organizations, as well as denominational policy-makers, is to create or discover one program or ministry or worship design that will be helpful to every congregation.

One consequence is one of the most valuable contributions the administrator can make is based on the conviction that no two congregations closely resemble one another. Thus, the administrator will preface many suggestions and recommendations with the question, "How can we customize what may be a good idea and adapt it to fit our situation?" A common example of that is to learn from visits to other numerically growing congregations and adapt those lessons rather than send lay volunteers and program staff to workshops designed for leaders in congregations that differ greatly in culture, size, role, or identity.

Another example is a consequence of that gradual disappearance of those churchgoers born before 1940 who were comfortable with a unified budget based on (a) a high level of trust in institutions, (b) widespread agreement that the people in charge have an overall view of the needs and therefore know best how to allocate those scarce dollars, and (c) a high level of comfort with the concept of recipient-driven requests for charitable contributions expressed in the unified budget that first became popular in American Christianity in the 1920s. The driving generalization is the younger the members, the more likely that a common assignment for today's administrator, especially in midsize or numerically shrinking congregations, is to replace that old financial reporting system based on a single line of cash flow with a new system that includes 10 to 30 separate income streams.

Another example of a response to change resembles this sentence: "Instead of beginning a search for a successor to our departing associate pastor, would it be better to first consider a revision of our staff configuration? Currently we are organized as a collection of silos. That undermines continuing effective communication. Would this be a good time to create a team of teams before we fill this vacancy?"

In another large congregation, the Executive Minister may suggest, "Staffing should be seen as a means to an end, not as a goal. Perhaps we should wait until our Futures Committee completes their work on designing our new ministry plan before we talk about filling this vacancy?"

Another common example surfaces when the administrator accepts the responsibility to study the changing local context for ministry. "A recent census report revealed in this city of 120,000 residents the number of one-person households has increased from about 1,300 back in 1980 when the population was 85,000 to nearly 4,200 last year. That is more than tripling the number of adults who live alone. Has the time come for us to create a package of new ministries for older adults who live alone?"

Perhaps the most useful and frequently-raised question asked by the administrator can be summarized in 15 words: "What do you anticipate will be the probable outcomes if we do what you suggest?" The follow-up question could be, "What do you anticipate could be the undesirable outcomes or the tradeoffs if your recommendation is approved and implemented?"

In perhaps 10 to 15 percent of those congregations with an administrator on the paid staff, the most valuable question that can be raised parallels this one. "During the past 12 years, our average weekend worship attendance has doubled from about 200 to nearly 500. Has the time come that we stop acting like a midsize congregation and begin to act like one that is among the largest 5 percent of all the churches in American Protestantism?"

These and similar questions illustrate the point that one of the most effective approaches for introducing change into a large and complex institution is to ask questions. They also illustrate why in the years to come that congregation will celebrate the decision to add a Church Business Administrator or Executive Minister to the paid staff!

A popular alternative chosen by many congregations is to resist encouraging anyone to ask the tough questions and to drift aimlessly into the future.

Who has the responsibility to ask the tough questions in your congregations?

For more than four decades, Lyle E. Schaller has served as a parish consultant to hundreds of congregations and scores of denominational agencies. His latest book, From Cooperation to Competition, was published by Abingdon Press in May 2006.

Copyright 2007 by Lyle E. Schaller