Does your desk glorify God? Can you glorify God in your administration? These are the questions we will be addressing in this lecture that deals with the problem of paper or data. Some pastors seem to think that the power of the gospel stops at their office door. I want to show you that there is no area of life we can say to God, “No entry.” Matt Perman of Desiring God gave [an interview] to Christianity Today, and he in that interview argues that administration is part of the good works we do to glorify God. And I agree with him.

The Beauty of Organization⤒🔗

First of all, I want to talk briefly about the beauty of organization. We are used to thinking about mountains or lakes or Apple Macs when we think about beauty, but not about administration. But I believe orderly administration is beautiful because it portrays the image of God (Genesis 1:27), obeys the mandate of God (Genesis 1:28), gives pleasure to God (Genesis 1:31), and it reflects the nature of God (1 Corinthians 14:33, 40). And sin, by way of contrast, is “anomos”—lawlessness, disorder, and chaos. So think first of all of the beauty of organization.

The Benefits of Organization←⤒🔗

Secondly, the benefits of organization. Efficient organization is not only beautiful, it is also beneficial. Available time increases as we spend less and less time looking for things. Matt Perman quotes To Do Doing Done (Snead and Wycoff, 1997) when he says, “Clutter sucks creativity and energy from your brain.” Our peace increases with organization because we are not always worrying if we have missed something. We enjoy our work a lot more. The effectiveness of our witness also increases, because if we fail to answer our correspondence or keep appointments we lose credibility and people’s confidence. You might say that the cultural mandate “rule and be fruitful” begins with our offices and our studies. There is a great series on How to Set Up Your Desk by Matt Perman.

The Barriers to Organization←⤒🔗

Thirdly, the barriers to organization. That is what we would expect in this fallen world. Anything beautiful or beneficial is not going to come easily. There are a number of obstacles to organization, not least of which are our own sinful hearts.

Let’s think about that first of all: our sinful hearts. Some people enjoy portraying themselves as kings of their chaos. The monotonous drudgery of organizing puts some off, while others claim that a clean space would spoil their creativity. We do get attached to our things and resist getting rid of them. “It may be trash, but it is my trash.”

Secondly, the sins of others. Maybe we are married to chaotic people. We cannot get them to cooperate. Perhaps we have been given an impossible workload that prevents us ever doing anything well.

Third barrier: changes. Sometimes we feel that we just get settled in a good routine when the next change comes along, and all the balls we have been juggling fall to the floor again. Whenever we change computers or have to get used to new software, our organizing is going to take a backward step. And any change in study or living location is obviously going to engulf our studies as well.

Fourth barrier: storage. Sometimes our problem is simply that we do not have enough storage space or it is not close enough for us to use it. Others, however, set up such a complex storage system that it just puts them off using it. We also need simple storage solutions for electronic information.

So some barriers to getting organized: our own sinful hearts and tendencies; the sins of others; changes; storage problems.

A Blueprint for Organization←⤒🔗

Let me give you a blueprint for organization. We are going to deal firstly with personal administration and then more briefly with church administration.

Personal Administration←↰⤒🔗

Whenever you come across a piece of paper, you should try Bill Lawrence’s TRASH. Bill Lawrence wrote Effective Pastoring, and he outlines his TRASH system of administration on page 131 and following. His system also works for the computer, which should really be viewed as just like a cluttered and overstuffed filing cabinet with a mailbox. (Transcription of audio file from 06:24 to 06:38 omitted.)

So let’s go through his TRASH system:

T is for throw it away. The first question we should ask when we come across paper or a file is “Can I throw away?” (If so, do I need to shred it?)

R is for re-route it. Does this piece of paper belong on my desk or in my computer? Should someone else have it?

A is for act on it. Options for actions include: Do it (answer an email, make a phone call, order the book); put it on a To Do list (do today, do this week, do eventually); enter it in your diary (and remember to check your diary every day and sync it with your wife and family); or enter in accounts (if it is a monetary or a financial item; I use mint.com for my accounting—it is a free online banking administration system).

S is for save it. If you are not going to throw it away, you are not going to reroute it, and you are not going to act on it, then save it. File it in a place you can retrieve it from. That might be a correspondence tray, it might be a nearby filing cabinet, it might be a reading pile, or it might be electronic filing. I use Evernote for documents (especially PDFs) and scanned images. I use Diigo to order the websites and blogs that I have found helpful. You know the problem: you might want to look for an article on, for example, preaching Christ from the Old Testament, so you go to Google and it produces five million results, and you are just trying to find the article you read six months ago that you know would be a big help to you. What this basically does is: when you come across these helpful articles, you bookmark them in Diigo, and then when you go to search for them you go to the Diigo website. You are under your own username, and you put in “Christ in the Old Testament” and up it will come. Basically it is your own mini Google. It is a way to search for what you have already found useful rather than casting yourself at the mercy of Google. I use Dropbox for backing up my documents. It does it automatically in the background. It saves old versions of your files. All of these you can get for free at a basic level, which is often sufficient for pastors.

H is for halt it. Stop the sender sending it to you. Stop the junk, stop the periodical you never read, stop the email, newsletters you never read. Just stop it filling up your space and your computer. So that is his basic personal admin system: TRASH.

Email. Some of that is applicable to email as well. Let me add a few extra suggestions for efficient use of email, which is one of the biggest distracters and time consumers for pastors.

One: Do not keep your email turned on. In fact, Julie Morgenstern says do not check your email in the morning at all. Get all your big things done first before you turn on your email. But do not keep it turned on either, or you just keep responding to every email that comes in. You can use filters to presort incoming mail. So if you get, for example, a few email newsletters every day, you can use Gmail so that whenever that comes into your inbox it immediately goes into a file. So it just gets out of your inbox, and when you want to read these things you can find the file and go and do it. So use filters to presort incoming mail.

Process every two to three hours. In other words, do not keep it turned on, but turn it on maybe every two to three hours and process it. Matt Perman again argues that the less you check the less you will get. I refer to his article Grasshoppers and Email.

This is quite a common set of words that you will find in most admin books and leadership books dealing with email:

Firstly, do. If you can answer it in under two minutes, do it. So if you get an email and you think, “I can quickly answer that in under two minutes,” then just get it done.

Secondly, delegate. When you get an email and you think somebody else would be best to answer it, send it on, forward it, delegate it.

Thirdly, defer. Decide to deal with it later. Later in the week or just when you have the time. Actually, the longer you delay, the less email you will get and the lower people’s expectations will be. If with every single email that comes in, no matter big or small or demanding, you just keep on replying, then that is what people get to expect. And that just puts you under huge pressure eventually to always be at that level of performance. Obviously you do not want to delay it and delay it so that people get annoyed, but there is an element of deferral which is vital to managing email. You might have a folder in your email system that is called, “Answer later” or “Answer in one week.” It just gets things out of your inbox into these files, and you get a system for either every day doing the more than two minutes answers or every week doing the more substantial answers.

(Transcription of audio file from 13:00 to 13:09 omitted.)

Fourthly, delete. Do not just keep things for the sake of it.

Fifthly, file. It is much better, I think, to use a tag system rather than a file system.

Set yourself time targets when dealing with email. Say, for example, “I am going to take no more than 30 minutes to do this.” Get a stopwatch there, get it started, get going and really force yourself right at it. “It does not matter how many I answer,” you say to yourself, “I am doing this for no more than 30 minutes.” And it is amazing how much you can get through when you are really focused.

Learn how to type fast and keep your answers to a minimum. People do not expect long epistles, lots of greetings and best wishes etc. in an email. Keep answers to a minimum—short, one sentence replies if possible. If you are asking questions and getting people to do things, then number your points. That really does improve your chances of getting direct answers to questions or direct action on requests. And just take the time to do a spell check before you send. It takes about five seconds and can greatly help your credibility.

So do not keep your email turned on. Use filters to presort incoming mail. Process every two to three hours. In that processing you: Do it, delegate it, defer it, delete it or file it. Set yourself time targets. Learn how to type fast. Keep your answers to a minimum. Number your points. Spell check.

When I was pastoring, I used to also carry with me five small index cards.

Firstly, people to visit. If I was at church I heard somebody was sick, then I would add their name to the list. If I was out visiting and somebody said so-and-so was not well or so-and-so needs a visit, I would add their name to that card so that I did not have to rely on my memory.

The second card was questions to ask, delegated tasks, follow-ups, door conversations. For example, I am going to church and I think, “I have to remember to ask that deacon about sending that cheque” or, “I have to make sure if that elder did actually visit that home.” I also kept that card with me at the church door when I was greeting people. People will drop things in conversations, and I would then have a card to make a note of that. So that would be my second card. It was a sort of gathering card for questions I had to ask, tasks I had to delegate, following up on things I have asked to be done, door conversations, checking out how people were.

My third card was intimations and announcements, or notices, so that when I go into church I have in one place all the notices I have to give.

My fourth card was actually a card with sermon ideas on it, so that wherever I was when a sermon idea would come into my mind, I would have a card to put that on.

My fifth card was a To Do list. I usually had on one side of that card my daily To Dos and on the other side weekly To Dos. If you check my blog at headhearthand.org and look up “My ‘I’m never going to get to it’ list,” that article really emphasizes the importance of not just having a To Do list of saying what you will do, but when you will do it and where you will do it. So that you do not just have intentions, but actions, so that you are not just getting this pile and this long list of things to do, but you are actually scheduling it. You have a much higher chance of getting your To Dos done if you actually say, “I am going to do it here” and “I am going to do it then.”

Church Administration←↰⤒🔗

Let me briefly deal with church administration. I would recommend the Leadership Handbook of Management and Administration—you will get a lot more material than this. And in many ways, if you are having to deal with church administration as a pastor there is a problem, because that is what deacons were provided for. I hope you will all end up at churches with good deacons who have all the administration up and running smoothly. But it is possible that you will plant a church and enter a setup with little or any organization and very little by way of diaconal support. In these situations, unfortunately, you really have to start from scratch. Let me run over some areas to focus on in church administration:

Firstly, purchases. Who can purchase what and how is that done? When something is purchased, it should be filled out in an order book and a copy given to the treasurer together with invoices and receipts. You should designate the payees in the cheque and credit card, and also have limits and levels for approval. For example, you might say to your church officer or your janitor, “Feel free to spend up to $50 bucks, but anything above that, bring it to the deacons.” So get the purchases organized so that it is not just everyone spending the money and there is no real accountability.

Secondly, buildings. You should have a protocol for your church buildings. Who can use them? How do you book them? If you are renting them out, what do you charge for them? How do different groups in the church arrange for the use buildings? And so on.

Thirdly, the church computer. Most churches will have their own office computer containing membership records and mailing lists, etc. Make sure you are complying with any data protection laws there. Do you have people’s permission if that is required in order to have computer records about them? Accounting procedures: your church computer will have some kind of financial software on it. Keep a record of income and expenditure and bills. Correspondence: Who is responsible for dealing with or delegating any letters that come into the church? Publications: Which do you receive and who pays for them? Security of your church computer: Make sure you use passwords, that you have antivirus and firewall software, especially if you are keeping personal details of people. Do you have a backup? Who runs the website? Who manages the blog? Who deals with the message board if you have one?

Fourthly, library. Most churches have a library. Who decides which books to stock? Who decides lending procedures and opening hours?

Fifthly, the vestibule—the porch/entrance of the church. Who vets the literature and resources that are there? Who secures the building before, during and after services?

These are just some things to begin to think about in church administration. I really hope that that won’t be required, but you may have deacons that may need a bit of training in some of these things as well.

(Transcription of audio file from 22:06 to 22:22 omitted.)

The Balance of Organization←⤒🔗

Let’s finish with the balance of organization. My father used to say to me, “Show me a clean desk and I will show you someone who is getting nothing done.” There is such a thing as clean desk syndrome, where the aim becomes a clean desk but little to nothing ever gets done on it. A degree of mess is required for any kind of productivity. There is a proverb about that: Where there is no ass the stall is clean. So we must not get obsessional about this. I like to think of three stages of organization:

There is day-to-day. Every day I am aiming to have my study about 50 percent tidy. It is not perfect, but neither is it a mess. I am hoping for somewhere halfway in between at the end of each working day.

But then from week-to-week I am aiming for a 90 percent tidy. In other words, once a week (it was usually for me a Saturday evening after I had prepared my sermons) I tidy up most of what was left over of the end of each week’s working day. I would try to get my office back to about 90 percent tidy, though it is not going to be perfect.

I would also aim for a monthly purge, and there I am aiming for a 100 percent tidy. Once a month I would return my office to its pristine condition.

Just in case you think I have a bad case of obsessive compulsive disorder over this, here is a Daily Stat email on Messy Desks from the Harvard Business Review:

A recent study interviewed HR managers at a number of different companies, asking them how neatness of an employee’s desk affects their perception of that person’s professionalism. 65 percent said it “somewhat affects it,” while 18 percent said it “greatly affects it,” with only 17 percent saying it has no effect. It isn’t exactly fair, but it’s something to think about when you’re staring at your tornado of an office: you might want to tidy it up, if only to improve your reputation with your superiors.