Blog - Projects With A Purpose
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Projects With A Purpose
Building Healthy Projects for Churches & Christian Organizations
Copyright 2007 Joshua Wright
February 14th, 2007 at 8:49 am
This book sounds like an excellent idea. In my experience, most of the projects that I have come across can fit into two categories. The first, are projects whose participants have a lot of good knowledge regarding how effective projects are run, but little to no faith or reliance on a higher power. Most often these projects are found in the secular realm. On the other hand, are projects whose participants are very connected with the spiritual side of things, but have little to no knowledge or experience regarding managing effective projects. Most often these projects are found in the non-secular realm. It seems like this book will do a great job of merging these two very important aspects of a truly well managed, effective, and God glorifying project.
February 14th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Posted By Joshua Wright - Author
I guess there also could be another catagory of people who just don’t know how to take a good idea and then execute on that idea. My passion is for the peope in churches who have good ideas to improve, reach out, or impact areas around them and are looking for a framework approach to help them with their idea. The book also can be used for those who are starting a project and want to teach/show team members a frameowork to the project before they start. A lot of project leaders have an idea of how the project should run, but often do not convey this to team members. This book helps teams speak the same language and come up with a single project plan that is better design and executed and ultimately one that is a Project with A Purpose!
February 19th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I took a look through your website - it looks good, and I look forward to seeing the content fill out there. I have a few initial thoughts - sorry they’re not well developed.
- I love that it starts with the glory of God. This is crucial
- It might be helpful to define what you mean by a project. If you’re thinking about churches, then you might get some responses like, “ministry is not about projects, but people.” Even ministry requires good project management - true. Quite likely, many “projects” fail due to lack of formal structure. I think that it would be helpful for you to give examples of projects, and show how using sensible project management techniques does not necessarily imply that you’re not “trusting God in the work” or de-personalizing the work.
- I’d be interested in what you say about measuring projects. One danger, certainly, is over-using quantitative measurements. Churches measuring the number of conversions and baptisms, for example, has led to problems related to false professions, lack of discipling, etc. It’ll be important to help people understand what quantitative measurements are good to borrow from the business world, and which are best to leave out. Example: spiritual growth in a church is very hard to measure, and probably shouldn’t be. Number of volunteers at various commitment levels, frequency of spoken Gospel ministry, etc. can be measured and is probably OK, provided that caveats are given. I feel like there’s a lot of teaching and training to be done in that sense. There’s a danger of people over-using (or mis-using) the suggestions that you make.
- There are some subtle but important differences between projects in churches vs. ministries vs. businesses. So for example, if a church embarks on a “project” - such as members who work together to mobilize lots of people to XYZ ministry. I don’t think that it’s the job of elders to go out of their way to make sure that the project stays alive. If there continue to be members motivated to support the work, and if the Gospel continues to be preached to it, then I’m sure they’d be happy to encourage those involved. However, if all involved members move on to other things and interest drops, I dont’ think they should force the “project” to stay alive. It comes down to the overall mission and vision of an organization. Most centrally, the task of a local church is the building up of Christians who covenant together in a local community, by the preaching of the Word. Other things that are done are (certainly important but) tangential items. Of course, all this doesn’t mean that we just take matters carelessly. So, I think there’s a role for your book and some good teaching that can be done to help people be good stewards of resources and opportunities.
- I think care should be taken in determining roles of people in “projects”. I don’t think that elders should fill the role of project managers, for example. In the survey, I think I paused at the question of “role” in a project, for just this reason. I think… that project management and coordination (for a large number of “projects” in a church) shoudl be the role of deacons and members. I’m getting the separation of roles from Acts 6. I think it’ll be helpful (again) to have your terms defined (esp. “project”) and then to have roles defined within the church.
- A possible group to look into: Christian Management Association (http://www.cmaonline.org/). You might talk to Sebastian - I think he has some relationships with them as well. I don’t know where they stand theologically, and I can’t make any value judgments on their work. I just know that they exist.
Those are my 2 cents. Overall, I’m glad that you’re thinking about how to help people in ministry be responsible about projects, and that you have God’s glory at the core of it all.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Brian
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Josh,
Let’s keep in touch. I’m starting my Ph.D. on something like this next fall - at Duke.
People who are doing management well?
I really like Simply Strategic Stuff by Tim Morgan and Tony Jones at Granger Community Church.
I talk about this book at: http://www.andyrowell.net/andy_rowell/2007/01/spring_2007_pro.html
I also recommend Andy Stanley. See my page with a number of comments about him. You would love 7 practices. Listen to the audio of Practically Speaking or last year’s Drive Conference.
http://www.andyrowell.net/andy_rowell/andy_stanley/index.html
Earl Creps’s new book has a good chapter on evaluating ministry.
http://www.andyrowell.net/andy_rowell/2007/02/book_review_off.html
Also Jim Collins small book on nonprofits. Also well done is the measurement instrument by Randy Frazee called the Christian Life Profile - justified by chapters 5-6 in Connecting Church.
http://www.andyrowell.net/andy_rowell/2007/01/spring_2007_pro.html
You are from GE. I love Jack Welch’s business week podcast.
http://www.andyrowell.net/andy_rowell/2006/10/best_podcasts_f.html
andy
Andy Rowell
Visiting Instructor
Department of Biblical Studies and Christian Educational Ministries
Taylor University
236 W. Reade Avenue
Upland, Indiana 46989-1001
Office: 765.998.4385
Fax: 765.998.4930
Email: anrowell@taylor.edu
Blog: www.andyrowell.net
July 9th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
This is an extremely interesting idea and I’d like to see you get some traction with it. It has the potential to make a big impact on the impact that church’s have on their communities. That in turn could change perceptions about churches and potentially bring a lot of people back to the faith and to religion.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:21 am
Hi Josh,
I am very excited to see this book come to fruition. Churches I have been involved in desparately need to see the purpose of organization and goal setting, otherwise we all spin around in huge unproductive circles and NOT for the glory of God. Why not use stategy empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish great things for the kingdom of God?
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
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