3 Things Every Elder Should Know About Office Administrators
If I've learned anything between my time spent as a Church Helper and a church staff member, it's that most ministry positions are misunderstood. I've said throughout this series that working at a church is a unique mix of worldview, employment and lifestyle that is hard to describe unless you've done it. I've spent a few episodes talking about different ministry positions in churches, but there is no more mysterious position in the church than the office administrators.
While people can make assumptions about Sr. Leaders or Children's Ministry Leaders based on their exposure, rarely is the average congregation member, or elder, regularly exposed to the church administrator. So today, we're going to talk about three things your elders need to know about church administrators that will help you all work better together. I hope that's a good enough tease because, honestly, this might be our most exciting episode yet. So hang on because the Church Helper Podcast starts right now.
INTRO
Hey there, and welcome to another edition of the Church Helper Podcast. Our mission here at church helper is to help churches make every decision on purpose. My name is Mike, and I'm excited to help your church staff and elders team get on the same page today with the fourth episode of our series, "getting to know your staff." And today's a fun one because we're focusing on Office Administrators.
And as always, if you're a church staff member, now is the time to connect an elder with this content and sign up for our weekly emails because it will help build your team even stronger.
And if you're an elder, make sure you forward this to the rest of your team so you're all speaking the same language. And just so we're all speaking the same language, every church calls this role something different. It could be an administrator, an assistant, a secretary, an office coordinator, or something else. For the sake of today's podcast, we're going to call the role Office Administrator. So with that, let's get rolling.
Three Things EVERY Elder should know about Office Administrators
#1) THEIR DAY IS ONE OF CONSTANT INTERRUPTION
Now, I know that many people live in a world where they get interrupted doing their jobs, but it's just a little different when it happens at a church.
Why is that? Well, because when your work primarily centers around caring for people, and someone needs to be cared for, it often shoots to the top of the list, even if the list is a mile long.
In some office environments, you can put a sign on the door that says "do not disturb," or you can interrupt someone mid-sentence and say, "I don't have time to hear this story right now. But in a church office, that's rarely something that is done. And church office interruptions aren't usually short bursts of time; they're often emotional moments that require a little bit of time to come down from after.
Let's look at this. In a hypothetical situation, a church member is upset about something and needs to get a hold of someone on staff to talk it out. After getting up the courage and practicing what they'll say, the church member calls into the church office, and the office administrator picks the phone up. After a friendly hello and three or four sentences of small talk, the church member asks to be forwarded to the staff member they need to speak with, but alas, that staff member isn't in the office right now.
And I like to be interactive, so let's play a game called "what happens next?"
Upon finding out the person that the church member called to talk to isn't there, they say:
"no problem, I'll call back in a bit. When will they be here?"
"can you forward me to their voicemail? I'll just leave a short message" OR
Well, I was calling because…" and then they proceed to tell the office administrator the entire nature of their call, most of the backstory, and why they're so upset.
Well, if you picked C, then you're going to be right about 80% of the time. And why is this? Well, pretty simple because when someone is upset and calls the church, they need someone to talk to. And if the Office Administrator is who answers the phone, then that's who's going to hear the story.
And because it's a church and the office administrator knows it's important, they're not going to rush anyone off the phone. So, now our office administrator has spent 20 minutes listening politely, trying to help this church member through their issue, even though they aren't the person who can solve the problem.
And eventually, in will walk the staff member they need. So, the administrator says, "oh, you know they just walked in – hold on a minute," and they can pass on the call.
Finally, off the phone, the Office Administrator looks back at their computer, takes a couple of minutes to decompress, and then tries to remember what it was they were doing.
About forty-five minutes go by, and the staff member required for the phone call wonders into the office and says out of genuine concern: "I'm sorry you had to hear that whole story. Are you alright?"
The Office Administrator says "yes" and mentions one short moment of the call. At this point, usually, the staff member says, "yea, it was a bit of a problem, you see what happened was…" and they begin to share details the administrator is hearing now for the second time. But, knowing this staff member likely needs to decompress verbally for a minute in a safe place, the administrator allows the staff member to get it all out and is an excellent encourager along the way.
About 20 minutes later, the staff member leaves, the office administrator takes a deep breath, takes a couple of minutes to decompress, and turns back to their computer to once again try to remember what they were doing.
Of course, now, with both sides of the story, they're also unintentionally replaying both conversations in their head, trying to develop a solution. And just as they start to get on a roll, the phone rings again, or someone else wonders in – and very quickly, about a couple hours of "office productivity" goes entirely out the window.
Field even two or three of those calls a week, and now your office administrator is behind because whoever wrote the church administrator job description forgot to include three-four hours a week for "church member concerns and staff related verbal processing."
So, as an elder, how can you help?
First, you can know that no matter what safeguards get put in place, this will happen. Some churches are better at directing to voicemail than others, but sometimes people on the phone or staff members just need to get something out, and the office administrator will be the one who hears it.
And once we decide, on purpose, that this is part of the job, the next thing you can do is build it into the job. If it's going to happen, and it's expected, it should be planned for when considering the number of hours and workload. A good Office Administrator can always claim those hours back if they aren't used, but putting aside a couple of hours each week so they have time to get interrupted might relieve a lot of stress. This is a bit of an out-of-the-box idea, but I would challenge you to talk to your administrator and elders team about it. Ask them how often it happens and what you can do to help mitigate the stress and lost production that goes along with it.
#2 THEY GET STRANGE REQUESTS
When brainstorming and researching this episode, most things that I considered focusing on were things I've witnessed or been a part of as a church staff member. For example, in the story I've just told, I've been a staff member a few times in that story.
But "Strange Requests" wasn't something that I had considered until I spoke with a few church administrators. It turns out church administrators get many strange requests – and here's what I mean by that.
When someone calls into the church, they're usually looking for a specific piece of information; they have something to drop off or need to get a hold of a staff member. Some admins also cover rentals, which means taking on requests for rooms and ensuring setups are good to go.
But then people call about other things like:
where to donate all the used clothing that they just clean out of the basement
how to get a hold of a local organization or blood bank, or
if the church administrator can decorate their rental space for them if stuff gets dropped at the door.
One administrator told me, "Sometimes when I answer the phone, I think there must be a hidden camera somewhere watching my reaction because it feels like I'm getting pranked."
It seems that sometimes people treat the church phone line as a 411 type of situation. Maybe it's because they don't know where to look or who to call. Or perhaps it's because they know someone will answer, and they just need some time to talk to.
Whatever the reason, as an elder, there isn't really anything "to do" about it other than be aware of it, and make sure your church administrator has time to handle these types of requests. Ask your church administrator if there's information they need to navigate these conversations with more clarity and confidence.
#3 OFFICE ADMINISTRATORS ARE ON CALL TOO
We often think about someone on pastoral staff being on call, but when we think about a church administrator, we often default to the idea that their job reflects a 9-5 type of gig.
If a person calls a pastor at 8 pm on a Saturday, it's usually because they are going through a personal crisis or need something else urgent. It could be a death in the family. It could be bad news about a job. It could even be a worship leader or someone else having trouble with something for the next day's service. When you're a Sr. Leader, you expect off-time calls to happen with frequency. It's part of the job, and everyone knows it because the elders, staff and congregation members are the ones doing the calling.
But often, when people look at a church administrator, they assume it's an "office hours, answer the phones and send emails" type of job. Now, we've already established there's more to it than that in this episode, but there's one more thing that most people don't consider. Office Administrators are usually on call too.
Nobody talks about them being on call because it's not a part of their job description. But when a church staff member gets into a pinch while working on something in the middle of the evening, or a church member really needs to drop that one thing off on Saturday morning, it's often the church administrator that ends up getting the call or taking the drive over to unlock the doors.
And, before I go on, I want to stress one thing here: Being on call isn't bad.
When your job is to care for people, it will happen outside "office hours," and everyone who signs up at a church understands that. What's not good is that church administrators often don't clock this time.
In the Sr. Leader episode, I said: if you're doing something you're expected to do, then it's a part of your job – whether that happens at 10 am or 10 pm.
So, because church admin roles aren't often looked at as ones with an "on-call" aspect, all their hours get booked as "office hour" time. For example, if you have a church administrator that works 30 hours a week, I would bet that your church's office hours match that time. But, what that doesn't account for is the time your office administrator spends working outside of "open church office" hours. And it means that any other time they work isn't accounted for, even though it's expected.
Here's one more example of this – rentals. If your office administrator is the one expected to open up and lock up for rentals, but their hours and the church's "open office" hours are the same, then what you're asking them to do is work those rentals for free. And when you ask someone to work for free, you're not honouring them, their family, or their skills and abilities.
So what can you do?
Well, I would challenge you to re-think how you book your office hours. Have a conversation with your office administrator and ask them how many hours outside of "normal hours" they spend working. Once you know that, it might be time to adjust the expectations of their hours. Maybe his means the church is closed an extra few hours a week to make way for the flexibility needed to do the role well - because when your office administrator is feeling supported, then they can do their job well.
OUTTRO
And that's it. Three things every elder should know about their Sr. Leader.
Hopefully, today's podcast helped you better understand your sr leader and some of the things they're going through every week. Make sure you like and subscribe to the podcast or our youtube channel, and if you think someone needs to hear this content today but aren't a person of the internet, you can go to our website, churchhelper.ca/podcast, to print out a full transcript of today's episode.
Make sure you go back and check out our last episode on getting to know your sr leader, and stay tuned for more ways to build better relationships between your staff and elders teams.
If you've ever got any questions, please reach out to us through email at hello@churchhelper.ca or go to the Get Help Today tab of our website.
Thanks for taking a few minutes to help your church make every decision on purpose today. I'm Mike, and I'll talk to you again real soon.
