How good church administration works - five principles

The church's mission consists of the familiar triad of proclaiming the faith, providing pastoral care and celebrating the faith in diverse forms of worship. As with all organisations, these core activities trigger an administrative burden.

However, an increasing administrative burden is at the expense of core activities and increasingly limits their scope and impact. As a result, less and less space can be given to the essential and meaningful fulfilment of the church's mission. This shows how necessary changes are in order to be able to concentrate again on the fulfilment of the church's mission. In addition to the restructuring of the pastoral areas, the reorganisation of the administrative organisation is of central importance for a holistic approach. Pastoral care stands for versatility, differentiation, habitat orientation and individuality. Administrative structures, on the other hand, are characterised by order, harmonisation, economy and standardisation.

The following five principles of good church administration support sustainable and effective change and create space for the church's mission:

1. Basic understanding

Administration is to be understood as a support function that ensures the smooth running of the organisation. It indirectly serves the execution of the church's mission and is to be constantly reviewed for its usefulness.

2 Organisation and processes

The administrative organisation is defined by the administrative processes and the organisational structure. Harmonised and standardised processes simplify administration and support mutual representation. Automated processes and digitalisation are mutually dependent. The greatest potential for sustainable use of funds lies in the processes. The allocation of responsibility for individual process steps is then the basis for determining the organisational structure.

3. Functions

Administration includes all processes that are necessary to support the church's mission. This includes processes from the support functions of finance including controlling, church taxes, grants, donations, securities, taxes as well as personnel, IT, purchasing and real estate.

4. Scope

The consideration of change should start with the central administrative office (diocese or regional church) and then include all legal entities in the church's administrative area, such as parishes and church associations.

5. Specialisation

The same administrative activities at different administrative offices can often be bundled. Bundling in one place enables a high quality of administrative action and promotes specialisation of the staff. This specialisation is in turn supported by targeted training and further education.