Episode 002: Pastors are CEOs — Here’s Why!

Key Takeaways:

• A CEO is:

  • The highest ranking person in an organization.

  • Responsible for the overall success of an organization.

  • The ultimate authority in making final decisions.

• The CEO reports to and is directly accountable to the board of the organization.

• A CEO’s responsibilities are:

  • Making major decisions.

  • Managing overall operations and resources.

  • Being the main point of communication.

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Transcript

Hi, church leaders! Welcome to the CEO Pastor podcast. My name is Cindy and I am your host for today's episode. My goal is to provide the management expertise every church leader needs to produce the ministry experience every church leader wants. We'll skip the jargon and cliches and focus on ideas that will help you accomplish the church's mission in your unique ministry context. Ready? Let's go!

On today's episode, we are going to discuss what a CEO is and what their responsibilities are, and explain why a pastor's a CEO. So first we'll discuss what a CEO is.

What is a CEO?

So the definition of a CEO is that they're the highest ranking person in an organization and an organization is just -- it doesn't even have to be more than one person -- it's one or more people that come together for a common purpose. So a CEO is the highest ranking person in that organization. They're responsible for the overall success of the organization, and they're the ultimate authority in making final decisions for the organization. Now, if you're in a more formal organization, you also report to and are directly accountable to the board as a CEO.

So just from that definition, pastors and church leaders who are listening should be fairly familiar with, yeah, the pastor is the highest ranking person, responsible for the overall success, the ultimate authority in final decisions, and they do have a board, usually a board of elders or a board of deacons or a board of trustees or somebody like that that they report to and have discussions with... with... regarding the direction of the church or the organization.

As I was saying, you don't have to have more than one person to have an organization. Technically, I am the CEO of my household. I'm the one that makes all the decisions. I'm the ultimate authority because I'm the only one and I don't have a board that I report to but I'm quite sure that, if I was doing something wrong, the government would come after me for doing those things. If I decided not to pay my mortgage, the bank would be quickly on my door or making a phone call. So I have people that I report to even though I technically don't have a board. A CEO position can be a very broad definition. It doesn't have to be just a business or corporation in the traditional sense.

A CEO’s Responsibilities: Making High Level Decisions

Now, we'll move on to what the responsibilities of a CEO are. So the first major responsibility of a CEO is to make high level decisions for the organization. So, for example, deciding what the vision for the organization is, the mission of the organization, the strategy of the organization, and the goals of the organization. Those are big, overarching ideas that the person in the CEO position has to take into consideration when they're thinking about what they... what they're trying to do when they're directing the organization in a particular orientation, a particular direction.

The CEO also has to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and the opportunities and threats to the organization from outside forces. When you're aware of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can make better decisions looking towards the future. You know, like, for example, let's say you see that there's a new subdivision going up close to your church. Well, that's an opportunity because you can say, "Oh, there's going to be a whole lot of people that we can reach as a church or as an organization." And then you can take steps to prepare so that, when that subdivision finally is built and people start to live in the houses in that subdivision, then you are prepared to go and start reaching those people.

And another example is if you see our finances are going to be a little tight. We're in the middle of a pandemic right now. I'm sure everyone's tired of hearing that. But finances may... finances may be a little tight because we're in the middle of a pandemic. So if you realize that that's a weakness that you have right at this moment (hopefully temporary), you can do things to help mitigate that weakness. You can cut out some of the more unneeded aspects of what you're doing right now just temporarily and, then when things come back to normal with your finances, then you can go ahead and start doing those things that you temporarily cut out.

A CEO’s Responsibilities: Managing Overall Operations and Resources

The second responsibility of a CEO is to manage the overall operations and resources of an organization. So the operations is just how things work day to day, how people do their jobs, how they work together and make sure that the everyday things get done in the organization.

And managing resources... when I say the word "resources", I don't want you to just hear "money". There's a lot more to an organization's resources than just money. You probably have access to a building or a location that you use when you're doing your organization's ministries. You probably have access to people who are volunteering or working within your organization. And those people have knowledge. It's called knowledge capital. So you're trying to manage the knowledge and skills that those people have and deploy them for the best use of the organization. And another resource would be some of the connections that you have within your organization. Let's say that you have someone in your organization who has close ties with the business community or close ties with the local government or... or the school or anywhere that you would like to do ministry. So these are the resources that you need to manage overall. So when you're managing those resources in specific, the CEO evaluates the work of the staff and volunteers of the organization.

They're also looking at social responsibility. You don't want to be seen as the organization that's doing shady things with your money, or that... or has a building or a location that's an eyesore. You want to be known as a place that cares about the community and that wants to put out a good image of what we're trying to do here. We're trying to be helpful. We're not trying to be harmful or something that's degrading the area that we're in. We're trying to be helpful and be a blessing to the community.

And the third thing is looking at the risk assessment when you're looking at the overall operations and resources. There's a lot of risk when you're running an organization. You could have a key volunteer or a key employee leave suddenly because they are ill. And you need to have things in place that, if that does happen, then you can have somebody or multiple people step into that role and take over that role until they get well.

You need to look at, well, we have a building here. We need to insure this building. What is the proper level of insurance for the assets that we have? We should be looking at what the legal ramifications are for our board. If we make a decision that affects people negatively, are there issues with that board where we need insurance for the board?

Also, if you're... if you're paying employees in your organization, you need to be aware of the employment standards and the legal requirements for the organization for paying people properly and remitting taxes or pensions and all kinds of things like that. There's a lot of different risks that come that you need to be aware of and try to mitigate those risks by looking forward and seeing, okay, what happens if we... if something out of the ordinary happens and how serious of an impact will that thing have if that takes place? And try to figure out ways to either get around that or to plow through it as best you can with the least impact to the organization that's possible.

A CEO’s Responsibilities: Being the Main Point of Communication

The third responsibility of a CEO is to be the main point of communication, both internally in the organization and externally to the organization. The CEO is the main point of internal communications. If you're the CEO or a pastor or a church leader, you know that everybody comes to you and it's a lot easier for you to spread the word to everybody else because you probably have an email list or access to a phone list or whatever way you decide to communicate. You have all of this information and then you can quickly disseminate it to all of the people in your organization. So people will come to you and bring all the information to you and you get to filter it and then send it out as necessary.

But another thing is, if you are the CEO, you are also the public face of the organization. So, for example, if there's a natural disaster or some other kind of crisis in your community and, for one reason or another, your organization is involved -- hopefully, as a church, you want to be involved and try to help in those situations -- people don't want to hear from me. They want to hear from the pastor of the church when there's a crisis. They want to hear from the person who they see as the face of the organization. They don't want to hear from just random congregant or random volunteer. They want to hear from the person that they know is in charge, can make decisions, has the authority to pursue particular avenues of either helping or mitigating the issues that are going on. They want to hear from you.

A CEO’s Focus

All of those responsibilities are very heavy when you're talking about being a CEO and trying to perform your job properly. And the problem is, if you are focused on too much of the detail of the day to day, you're not giving yourself enough time to be able to fulfill those responsibilities properly. You don't have enough bandwidth in your mind to be able to think about strategy, to be thinking about the future. You're too focused on what's going on right now and all the problems and issues.

And that's where delegation comes in. You want to have people that you have the confidence and the trust and you've trained, if needed, to be able to take on some of those more detailed jobs. So you can kind of step above -- not that you're better than someone but, like, be above from a... more of a high level view of what's going on -- and see what's coming in the future or see how one aspect of the organization is affecting other aspects of the organization instead of being so focused on one aspect that you don't see the forest for the trees. You want to be able to see the overall organization, how it all works together in order to accomplish the mission, the vision, the purpose of why the organization exists.

And you also want to be able to even step out of the organization and look around and see what's going on and see what trends are happening in your own community or in the larger region or your country or the world as a whole and say, "Oh, I see what's happening over there. I think that our organization can help over in that area." But if you're not able to do that, then you can't set that new orientation towards that new opportunity or you can't mitigate that risk that's coming down the road that you can see if you have a chance to kind of step back and say, "Uh-oh, I see that could be a problem. There's things changing over there and we need to change as well."

So I hope you can see that being a CEO is not necessarily to be the boss of everyone. It's to be the person who is able to step back in the organization, look at it overall, and look to the future and make decisions to best help the continued growth and health of the organization moving forward. That is a very heavy responsibility when you're running any kind of organization and it is especially a heavy responsibility when you're dealing with a church organization, a church family that's supposed to be carrying out the mission of Jesus to the world.

Next Steps

So with that being said, what did you think about that information? When you heard all of those responsibilities and what a CEO is, did you say, "Oh, I'm not doing as bad as I might have thought I was. I've got all that stuff pretty much down. I'm doing a great job"? Well, share with us what's working on social media!

If you said yourself, "Well, I'm doing okay in some aspects, but not that great in others and I'd like to improve" or you're... even if you're saying to yourself, "Uh-oh, I don't have any of this" or "I don't have a clue what you're talking about", no worries! Keep listening and we'll explain more. And if you have any specific questions, send them in to our email address, podcast (at) ceopastor.com, and we'll take a look at them and answer them as best we can. And also, if there's people on... on social media saying all the things that are working for them and... as they're fulfilling their responsibilities as the CEO of their organization, you can go on social and see that and have interactions with them and... and perhaps get some ideas.

On Our Next Episode

So on our next episode, I'm going to sit down with the management team of our company, our oyster company, and talk to them about the best advice that they have for leaders of organizations. All of us are under the age of 40 and that might be interesting for you if you're looking for some advice from a younger generation or even your own generation. So if that's something that's interesting to you, I invite you to join us on our next episode.

Thank you for joining me for today's episode of CEO Pastor podcast. I hope you discovered an idea that you can apply in your unique ministry context. Head over to ceopastor.com for more resources and meet up with me and other church leaders on social media for further discussion. Any questions or suggestions? Email me at podcast (at) ceopastor.com. And don't forget to share, rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast to help spread the word that managing ministry better makes ministry better.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai