Outsourcing in the Church
A good friend of PS20’s sent an excerpt from Seth Godin’s April 20 blog post that addresses an interesting option facing the church in today’s marketplace:
Prediction: The effort required to outsource a task involving the manipulation of data of any kind will continue to decrease until it will be faster and cheaper to outsource just about anything than it will be to use in-house talent. What will you do today to ensure your prosperity when that happens?
I had the opportunity to hear Seth speak last year at Catalyst ’08, here in Atlanta. While he isn’t a “churchgoer,” he has an amazing ability to present the challenges and trends of sales and marketing in today’s culture in a way that those of us in the church or non-profit world can understand and apply.
Seth’s view of where we are headed when it comes to sales and marketing is exciting to a lot of us and scary to many others. Where do you stand when it comes to the church and outsourcing?
Here is my experience: I worked on staff at a church plant just outside of Pittsburgh, PA, as the director of administration, and experienced first-hand the challenges and time-consuming nature of administrative tasks. There was a daily struggle with wanting, no, needing to do everything with precision when it came to accounting and data tracking while thinking about volunteer teams, relationships with attendees, the guest experience, small groups, spiritual development, staff relationships, and by the way, Sunday is coming! There is a lot going on, to say the least, and all of it seems to carry a huge weight of responsibility.
I’ve talked with many in the same position, and the story is the same. If anything has to take a back seat, most often it’s the administrative tasks, as we are passionate and determined to impact our community for cause. And yet, I’ve talked with a lot of lead pastors who struggle with the idea of outsourcing their administrative positions even though they admittedly don’t know where the church is with weekly giving, monthly expenditures, or if they are operating at or near budget.
I would argue that Seth’s statement is exactly what the church should consider. What are you doing today that you could outsource in an effort to allow the valuable resources of time and money to be directed toward the mission and vision of your organization?