To anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant kitchen, I commend you.
As a cook in the kitchen, once the dinner rush hits, I know it can feel like chaos getting orders in and out quickly and on-time. From the sous chef to the head chef and every cook and chef in between, it takes a lot of work to get hundreds of orders out the window—and each plate is allotted only mere minutes to prepare! Yet, the orders get finished quickly, and it happens over and over again. Phew!
When it comes to choosing the "chefs" in your church website management "kitchen," we know how important it is to select the right people for the right roles in order to ensure a streamlined process.
But how do you determine how many users should be involved in your church website management? What should their roles be?
If you have too many cooks in your kitchen, it could be a chaotic mess with conflicting opinions. But not enough helping hands puts the burden all on one mind.
We're here to help.
Step #1: Find Your Magic Number
The first question you should ask when trying to find your admin "magic number" is this, "How many do we really need?" Hint: The answer to this question is not the number of people that you hope can feel included in the project. Nor is it the number of staff members who are great with computers. Or even the number of leaders on your staff.
As the church communicator, you need to decide how many brains you need to keep your website functional, always up-to-date, and a reflection of your real-life community. This number might be 1 or 10, depending on what you really, truly need. Do you need to create lots of blog posts and page updates for your very young, always-in-the-know members? Or do you simply need a platform to house your church's address, basic mission information, and a calendar?
Once you outline what the "scope" of your website will be, you can tell how much time it will take each week to keep it good looking at that standard. For example, you might determine your ideal church website requires at least 30 hours each week of administrative and creative brain power. From there, you can decide how to split this time up. Do you have one church communicator who will be closely devoted to the website and has this time available each week? Or do you need to choose 3 staff members who will each dedicate 10 hours a week to their role on the website?
When you're making this decision, I urge you to start conservatively. You want to avoid having too many cooks in your kitchen, and you can always decide to add an extra set of hands to your website team. But if you choose 5 administrators right away—and it turns out that you only need 2—it can be difficult and awkward to choose who gets booted off the island.
Step #2: Determine Proper Roles
If you're still reading, you've survived step #1! Congratulations, and welcome to the step where we really start to get nitty gritty. Once you've determined the right number of admins your church website should have, it's important to clearly define the roles of each member.
- Do you want to split all website work evenly across your 3 admins—so each of them contribute to design, member management, updating the calendar, and everyone does everything?
- Or would you prefer a zoned approach, where you have one admin dedicated to design and visual work, one who takes charge of member management, and one who handles all events and calendar work?
Choosing an admin path (or a hybrid that works best for your church staff) is important because the church website world is big. Really big. There's always a "next big thing" or more work to be done—but you don't want to lose sight of your purpose. You can't let your church mission slip through the cracks! And you definitely don't want to cause tension in the staff because of miscommunication in responsibilities or stepping on toes.
Defining the roles that each admin should have is essential to making sure stuff gets done, on-time, in an excellent manner—so that your church mission shines on your website!
Step #3: Find the Staff Members Who Fit Best
There’s this sort of “sad” truth in churches that “everything is decided by committee.” This means 2 things:
1. Lots of intelligent minds, interesting opinions, and passion for our missions. Woo!
2. It can be difficult to come to (or act on) clear decisions in a timely manner.
With so many people being involved in this "committee" mindset, it seems like a lot of people say things, but they’re not really saying anything. There's a lot of discussion for the sake of discussion—which unfortunately slows down and hampers our ability to make a real impact in our communities.
So when you've determined the number of church website admins you need to meet your goals, and the roles each of those admins will take on, look to your staff (or committed volunteers) to see who could rise to the occasion. Who is passionate about these projects? Where do you see potential, talent, curiosity, and a drive to bring the mission online? Who raises their hands (metaphorically or literally) when they see the opportunity to engage your members and potential new members using church website?
