In this day and age, most ministries understand the importance of a media/communications team. Whereas this sort of staff was a luxury just ten years ago, I’d say that that you would be hard pressed today to find a growing church that doesn’t take this sort of role seriously.
Although many churches have continued to expand their staffs in this arena, I’ve observed a tendency to ignore one critical role on these teams: Project Manager. Maybe it’s just because most ministry-staffers are used to pulling double duty, but it seems as if project management falls by the wayside in the name of rushing to get things done quickly.
Although it may not be the first “critical-to-staff” position that comes to mind, project managers can be a valuable asset for three specific reasons:
- Someone “owns” the project. Rather than being passed around to different leadership teams with little accountability, one person can “own” the project and be responsible for organizing its progress and seeing things through to completion.
- Someone is mindful of and enforcing deadlines. Without project ownership, it can be all too easy to miss a deadline or leave out critical components simply because one hand isn’t talking to the other. The project manager has a bird’s eye view of progress/looming deadlines, and can remind specific areas of their requirements for a project.
- Other resources can be freed up to do what they were hired to do. For many creatives, planning meetings and flow charts are akin to back-to-back root canals. Project managers can take a lot of the administrative pressure off of your creative folks and enable your team to focus on the tasks God built them to do.
I realize not every staff has the luxury or capacity for specific project managers, but even assigning these tasks to a solid member of your current team will make a huge difference in the success of your next big project. It’s too important of a role to be overlooked.
How do things look at your church or ministry staff? Do you feel like your team has the members it needs?
The role of project manager can help volunteer ministry teams as well. A few years ago one of the most important members of my church’s volunteer web team was someone who didn’t have any technical skills, but excelled at tracking down information and approvals, enforcing deadlines and researching problems. Having such a person not only keeps projects moving, but often adds a new perspective that might be missing from a team made up of all technical or creative members.