Flexibility.
8-5 hours may still be beneficial in many ministry contexts; however, having some degree of flexibility also matters a lot to ministers.
At New Vintage Church, ministers are more leaders than doers, and thus their “work product” is more the conception and delivery of projects than the doing of the project itself (though it includes some of that, as well). This work style doesn’t require being in an office, which is good for us–since we have had none, until last week.
The best way to hold people accountable for work product is to make sure everyone has some fixed projects that occur every week and workflow is rapid enough.
Also, there should be regular meetings for syncing up and updating progress on projects communally. We had two 2-hour meetings per week (Monday and Thursday), and Sunday, we are all together for roughly four hours. That’s eight hours a week concrete.
Other than that, the rest all happened ad hoc and on the go. There was a lot of twittering, a lot of e-mails, a lot of text messaging. This allowed for a lot of flexibility for staff to do their work at times convenient for them and their families. When the money gets tight, allowing people to keep family life strong through accessibility is huge.
How did the work get done?
In our ultra-flexible days, work product was enforced by forced deadlines (like Sunday at 10 a.m.), communal deadlines (we need that by next Monday), and status updates we call “the rounds” at our twice-a-week meetings. As we’ve gotten larger, we’ve increased our structure a hair. We meet more regularly and have set some basic but lean office hours. We want to stay non-facility focused and keep some freedom and flexibility to our staff culture.
If you think this is crazy, check out EastLake Church. They are a church of over 5,000 that has no church office and no phone number.
If your staff is tech-savvy, intrinsically motivated, and likes each other…flexibility is a great way to pay your staff without using money. It’s also the way the world is heading.
Freedom…well, it’s just right.
Thoughts? Any thoughts or questions on freedom and flexibility?
