It’s not unusual for us to pray for those involved with spiritual leadership in the church but I wonder how often we pray for those involved in the administration jobs within our fellowships?
There are a number of jobs in the church which I would include in this category including:
- Treasurer
- Church Administrator / Church Office Secretary
- PCC Secretary
- GDPR Officer
- Safeguarding Officer
- Electoral Roll Officer
All of these are very important roles of service within the church and require the right people with particular giftings and abilities to undertake them. Just as some are called to spiritual leadership, others are called to these roles of administration. We all have different gifts that God has given us and we need to encourage those with the gift of administration to serve faithfully in this area.
Your church may have the best preacher or most gifted worship leader in the whole world, however if the treasurer does not pay the bills your fellowship will be in serious trouble! Additionally, if your treasurer does not advise the leadership that the expenditure is exceeding income then potential financial disaster awaits your church. Therefore as you can imagine, a good treasurer is critical to the running of a church.
The running of the church office is very important. For people outside of your church the Church Administrator / Church Office Secretary may well be the first contact they have with a member of your congregation. That is quite a big responsibility and requires the right person in the role. Just as some directors in big organisations cannot function without their secretary I expect that some church leaders would also struggle without a gifted person in this role in their office!
Within the Anglican Church the PCC Secretary has important duties. These include advising PCC members of meetings, keeping minutes of meetings and preparing reports for meetings. Their role ensures the smooth running of the PCC. This role requires someone with good organisational skills and the wrong person doing this could cause chaos!
In May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect which meant more administration tasks for our churches. At my church we have somebody who is responsible for seeing that we abide by the regulations. This requires someone who can understand the legislation and draw up an appropriate church policy.
The Safeguarding Officer is also fulfilling an extremely important role too. Sadly there have been some awful things that have occurred in churches in the past. Churches need to have a strict safeguarding policy and the appropriate trained officers in place to ensure that everyone is protected and safe.
In the Anglican Church the Electoral Roll Officer is responsible each year for ensuring that the Church Electoral Roll is accurate and revised correctly. Every sixth year they have to prepare a completely new one. This is an important role because the roll is used to determine those who can participate at the APCM and stand for election to the PCC. If mistakes are made with the Electoral Roll then ineligible people could get elected which will obviously cause problems.
As the above examples show there are many important and essential administrative functions that are required in our churches. Are these job holders appreciated by the rest of the church? Do we realise their full value to the church? Let us not forget to pray for those who do these roles and support them as they use their gifts of administration to serve both the Lord and His church.
Still Learning 