Author: Leighton Carr

Leadership Impossibilities

No one whose senses have been exercised to know good or evil can but grieve over the sight of zealous souls seeking to be filled with the holy spirit while they are living in a state of moral carelessness and borderline sin.

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Whoever would be indwelt by the spirit must judge his or her life for any hidden iniquities.

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[They] must expel from [their] heart everything that is out of accord with the character of God as revealed by the Holy Scriptures …

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There can be no tolerance of evil, no laughing off the things that God hates.

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A W Tozer

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Sunday Welcome

On Sundays the people of St Jude’s are very, very friendly. They chat. Open faced. All those expressions associated with acceptance, raised eyebrows, big grins, relaxed body language.\r\n\r\nThe problem is this.\r\n\r\nWhen Jack, who has been coming on Sundays, wanders into the church for a midweek meeting, he is met by a strange and what he believes is an uncharacteristic coolness (compared to the church he knows on Sunday). The same people that grinned and relaxed with him on Sunday just glanced over in his direction, and carried on in their own conversation.\r\n\r\nIn fact, the group of five or six people talking seemed to be huddled together. They hadn’t linked arms or anything like that. They just seemed to be closer than usual. On more careful inspection it was clear that although they were perhaps standing marginally closer physically they were remarkably closer socially. It was something about the focus on their faces. Jack had seen it on faces in the canteen at work. There was an aura that said, “Not you. Not now.”\r\n\r\nIt was clear to Jack that this was another group altogether. Same people, different group. Jack did what most slightly self concious outsiders do in church, the ones that don’t have the balls to just walk out in case they upset someone, as if …\r\n\r\nJack started to read notices, pick up books on the book stall, study Sunday School pictures on the wall, examine the Lady Chapel, and gradually drift towards the door.\r\n\r\nHe was unnecessarily self concious. No-one noticed.\r\n\r\nHe thought, “where was that Sunday Welcome?”\r\n\r\nand\r\n\r\n”What was that Sunday Welcome?”

American Prints

I’ve come to realise relatively recently (or rather I had forgotten from a long time ago) that a beautiful image gives me a great, uplifting, bursting joy somewhere in my chest. It happened for the first time in years in February whilst staring for fifteen minutes at Canellettos ‘Grand Canal’ in the National Gallery. It happened again watching Ben Johnson actually painting his magnificently detailed and huge paintings of London in his studio set up in a room also in the National.\r\n\r\nMost recently I felt it while exploring the exquisite, elegant and intricate prints in the American Museum in Bath. Rooms of often small prints whose size can obscure the quite breathtaking levels of details the artists managed to achieve by bringing metal spikes into contact with old trees. And yet, with such technical skill one expects of a surgeon or a royal seamstress these men and (more often than expected) women created whole worlds in ink.\r\n\r\n

Whole Church Time Management 2 – the calculations

By the way, the time log for the previous blog went something like this:

  1. Clergy: 2No @ 55 hrs p/w (110)
  2. Clergy: 2No @ 30 hrs p/w (60)
  3. Wardens: 2No @ 20 hrs/p/w (40)
  4. Office Staff: 3No @ 50 hrs/p/w (avg) (150)
  5. Treasurers: 2No @ 3 hrs/p/w (6)
  6. Lay Ministers: 4No sermons and services at w/e: 4No @ 7 hrs p/w (28)
  7. PCC: 6 No Mtgs/12 people pro rata hrs/p/w 4.5 (4.5)
  8. Leadership Team: 6No Mtgs/10 people pro rata hrs/p/w 3 (3)
  9. Leadership Sub Groups: 6No groups/8 people/6 mtgs pro rata hrs/p/w 8.5 (8.5)
  10. Social Secretary: 2 evenings a week/2hrs p/eve (4)
  11. Organist: 1No 6hrs
  12. Small Choir: 6No @4hrs/p/w (24)
  13. Large Choir: 45No @ 2hrs/p/w (90)
  14. Band: 7No @ 6xp/yr+rehearse pro rata hrs (4)
  15. Sidespersons: 4No @ 3hrs/p/w (12)
  16. Coffee Rota: 4No @ 2 hrs/p.w (8)
  17. Old Peoples Lunch: 4No 2hrs/p/w (8)
  18. Youth Team: 2No @ 3.5hrs/p/w (7)

525 hours administration, management and preparation per week.

For how much worship?

  1. Old Peoples Lunch: 25No 2hrs/p/w (50)
  2. Sunday 8.00 HC: 5 No @ 1 hrs/p/w (5)
  3. Sunday 11.00: 70No @ 2 hrs/p/w (140)
  4. Sunday 18.00: 16No @1.25 hrs/p/w (20)
  5. Monday 19.30 Hs Gp:  12 @ 2hrs/p/w (24)
  6. Monday 19.30 Recorder Group: 8No @ 1.5 hrs/p/w (12)
  7. Wednesday 10.00 HC: 12 @ 0.75hrs (9)
  8. Wednesday 19.30 training: 8No @ 2 hrs/p/w (16)
  9. Friday 19.00 Youth Gp: 12No@ 2hrs/p/w (24)

300 hours of public events per week

Whole Church Time Management

St Jude’s used to be a big church. Several hundred adults used to meet every week and several hundred children came to Sunday School in the afternoons. More recently it had fallen on hard times (somewhat of its own making) and as people had aged without new people being introduced the congregation was, to put it inelegantly, dying off.

There was no doubt about it, St Jude’s was still a busy church. There was lots to do, and although only around 70 people came regularly to the morning service there were probably around 90 people who met across the parish for various activities throughout the week. This included children.

The problem at St Jude’s was that like a frog in a saucepan of water on the ring of a gas stove, it hadn’t noticed that it’s days were numbered. The only area that hadn’t declined was their organisational structure. They still had all the structures in place to run a church of at least four times the size, and each post was filled, praise God, which meant that each person involved was very busy, very tense, very combative or very put upon depending on their personality, and very tired. They had some sense that things were not right at St Jude’s (who was of course the Patron Saint of Lost Causes) but they did what had to be done to keep the show on the road.

When each person’s contribution was added up it came to 525 person-hours of administration, management and preparation each week (the time it takes to make 21 cars). This time was spent to support 300 person-hours of shared public worship and activity by 90 adults and children. This incredibly inefficient ratio of time invested in management to time expended in worship (525/300=1.75) represents the church on a knife edge. It means that on average every person (including every child) is investing an average 1 hour 45 minutes for every 1 hour of public worship experienced.

Once the time spent/time gained ratio goes above 1.00 the alarm bells should ring.