Useful tips for meeting objectives in any organization, including the local church:
1. Define purpose and mission.
2. Assess strengths and weaknesses.
3. Write specific and measurable objectives.
4. Work towards general agreement.
5. Maintain a reasonable work load.
6. Develop strategies for using resources.
7. Practice accountability.
8. Design long and short range plans.
9. Be willing to change.
10. Measure progress.
(adapted from Kenneth Gangel, Feeding and Leading)
Ten Commandments for Good Organization:
1. Definite and clean-cut responsibilities should be assigned to each worker.
2. Responsibilities should always be coupled with corresponding authority, so the task can be carried out.
3. No changes to the scope or responsibilities should be made until there is definite understanding on the part of all persons concerned.
4. No one person should be subject to orders from more than one supervisor.
5. Executives should not bypass an immediate supervisor to direct workers.
6. Critiques or criticisms should be made privately whenever possible.
7. No dispute should be considered too trivial to discuss.
8. Promotions, wages changes, and disciplinary action should be approved by an immediate supervisor.
9. No worker should be both an assistant and a critic to someone he/she is assisting.
10. Resources and facilities should be provided, so the worker can inspect and independently check his/her work.
(adapted from M.C. Rorty from the early 1930’s)
Helpful comments from C.S. Lewis on experiencing the “art of worship” within familiar forms:
“Every church service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best– if you like, it ‘works’ best– when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it.
As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling.
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping…
A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question ‘What on earth is he up to now?’ will intrude. It lays one’s devotion to waste.
There is really some excuse for the man who said, ‘I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks.’
Thus my whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put.
But if each form is snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship.”
–C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harvest, 1964), 4-5.