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July 11, 2007
Intelligent Church
Since August last year, I have been serving as President of young adult group (www.KHYS.org - if you read Korean!) at a local Korean church (www.kcpc.org). Our group has about 300 registered members, aged between 25 to until they get married.
One thing I realized, this church group is no different from any other organizations (government agencies, private sector companies, etc.). Our congregation has a clear vision and goals to achieve. There are many functional units (outreach, bible studies, new member program, etc.) and those three hundred members are divided into smaller units, each headed by a trained small group leader.
Too bad for some KHYS members to have a president who also happens to be a BI consultant. Why? Because they are measured. I find our group a perfect place to apply BI practice. We have a clear vision and 10 distinctive goals. Each goal is linked to KPI where its progress is quantitatively measured. Each goal has a unique set of action plans where we hold people accountable for the outcome of their actions. Every 3 month, we organize an off-site retreat where all leaders gather for two days to review our organizational progress. Doesn't this sound familiar? This is what a lot of private sector companies do in order to manage their organizations.
At first, people thought this whole thing was a joke but applying these BI concepts to manage our 300-member church group worked well. Only reason people are not complaining about experiencing this new cultural shock at our church is because our group has been steadily growing since last year, when they first started to become KPIed (from 150 members to 300 members over the last year and I know behind the growth scene those systematic approach to manage our organization played a handsome role).
There are many mega churches around the world - one church in Korea has over 800,000 members. Managing such big organization is indeed a mega challenge. Churches must focus on management issues as well as religious issues in order to grow healthier.
Churches, especially those mega ones, could present plenty of lucrative opportunities for BI consultants.
We already see some mega churches employing full-time management consultants who hold MBA degrees.
Not only we will witness more intelligent enterprises through BI in the future, but also more intelligent churches.
Posted by William Cho at July 11, 2007 2:45 PM
