Starting this month, we’ll be initiating the office of Church Administrator.
Until now, the chairmen of deacons have been in charge of church administration but our church’s administrative responsibilities have become too large to be handled by someone with a regular full time job. Many large churches hire a Minister of Administration to handle these duties. Most of them have seminary degrees. But I don’t want someone with a seminary degree to handle our church administration. For one thing, they did not go to a seminary to become a administrator. For another, seminary does not make them particular well trained to be administrators. When our church works with other churches I find that things work much better when the person representing the other church is a lay person rather than someone with a seminary degree.
The idea of appointing a lay person to be in charge of church administration was raised by Rev. Kim Dong Ho, who was once a guest speaker at our church. In one of his sermons he mentioned that he hired as Church Administrator someone who had been an executive for a large company.
The Church Administrator will draw a salary but should consider his position as not just a job but also a ministry. Among the many possible candidates Brother Park Kwang Woo stood out. He was previously a Vice President for Arco Oil, in charge of equipment acquisition for Arco’s North American Division. He handled an annual budget of 700 million dollars.
He has excellent experience not only in secular work but also in our church. He has served as a personal secretary for me for the last 4 years and knows our church’s workings inside out. He is also a very dedicated and hard working man. The only drawback to hiring him I could think of was that he might already be too busy. He currently serves as a Deacon, as a Ministry Team Leader and as a Shepherd Team Leader. With all these responsibilities I thought he may not be able to find time for additional duties.
Regardless of this, I asked him if he would be interested in the Church Administrator position. And to my pleasant surprise he readily accepted the offer. But he wanted to do it purely as ministry and refused to be paid. (To show appreciation, the Board of Deacons insisted that our church buy a new computer and necessary software for his use and that we send him to a conference of his choice once a year, all expenses fully paid by the church.)
His job will not be taking over some of the ministries that our shepherds or various ministry teams are currently doing, but will be complementing them. He will be in charge of things that cannot be done by shepherds or a particular ministry team. For example, he will oversee office workers, hire cleaning services, call repairmen when necessary, and contact pest control or the alarm company. He will also coordinate church-wide events and work with the various ministry teams.
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