Category: Administration in the Church

Structure What sort of structure is appropriate within a church? How do elders and trustees relate? What level of ‘hands on' management and direction over a particular ministry is appropriate by trustees? These are some of the questions that need to be addressed as you proceed with registering and managing a separate charity. Let's look at some of the key issues. Charitable Trust or Charitable Company? Currently I prefer the charitable company. Why? First, because this follows a company structure with directors (trustees) and members. The members appoint the directors and this mechanism provides a way of ensuring the church and trust do not get separated. For example, in our church we have only one member of the ‘social' trust and that is a ‘corporate member' in the form of…

What are Objects? Any charity or charitable company (more about that later) needs objects. These define why the charity exists and what it is hoping to achieve. In this respect it differs significantly from the stated objects of the church, which may include such phrases as ‘promoting the Christian gospel through teaching and outreach'. For a social charity we need to emphasise the benefits to those who are poor or disadvantaged. To illustrate, the first object of my local church's trust document states that we are to ‘Advance the Christian faith'. This is not attractive to many secular donors. In contrast, the first object of one of our social charitable trusts is ‘the prevention or relief of poverty'. There is also an object in our church trust document that relates…

Ministry or Project? Is the help and transformation you are trying to bring to people who are disadvantaged defined as a ‘ministry' or a ‘project'? Recently I was with some church leaders in Holland. I asked them what the word ‘project' (suitably translated!) conjured up in their minds. The list included such terms as Time Boundaries, Finance, Project Manager, Process. After about ten words or phrases had been listed I pointed out than none of them reflected the people they were hoping to help thus showing that ‘project' tends to be a very task-associated word. In the church we are talking about people; people within the church and people outside. I suggest that we should not talk about ‘project' but about ‘ministry'. The work in your church with the children…

Would a separate charity ever be helpful? The short answer is ‘yes', but only when the time is right. The trigger for creating a separate charity is probably when a) it interacts closely with the world, particularly in the area of finance or of partnering with a secular agency; b) when the risks of this aspect of the church's ministry appear so significant that it is worth ‘ring fencing' from the core church finances; c) if the ‘ownership' of the ministry does not sit fair and square in the church vision but it is something that some members are keen to do and the church wants to support in part (see ‘Proceed with caution' below). Why? Many secular donors do not like giving to the church; they feel their donations…