​​Church Administration: Human Resources

As church pastors and leaders, how should you manage Christian church administration? Shouldn’t Christian theology matter in church administration? If so, how? At the same time, how should you utilize management principles and techniques to make your church a more faithful church, rather than turning it into a secular enterprise? In this Duke Divinity+ non-credit course for church pastors and leaders, you will learn the importance of approaching church administration theologically. More specifically, you will engage church admin as church practices whose theological goals are discipleship, formation, witness, and worship. As such, church administration should be a critically important component of pastoral leadership and competence. Given such a theological understanding of church administration, we will draw upon and appropriate management excellence and know-how to serve as tools for these theological goals. As the first course in the Duke Divinity+ Church Administration Specialization series, this course will focus on developing a theology of church administration and then applying it to time management—a huge, ongoing challenge for pastors and church leaders alike–in such a way as to reshape classic time management principles and practices into a robust Christian stewardship of time. If you are a pastor or ministry professional in need of Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits for your professional development, CEU credits are available for this course. Please share your Coursera course certificate and a copy of the course description with your church denomination or employer as recognition of your earned 1.5 CEUs. This course qualifies for 1.5 Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits. Completion of all three courses in the "Church Administration: Human Resources" specialization qualifies for a total of 4.5 CEU credits.

Why is vision theologically important for your church, and how should it be realized? How do church goals, objectives, metrics, core values, and culture play a crucial role in this? What kind of pastoral leadership is needed to bring God’s vision for your church to fruition? In this second course in the Duke Divinity+ Church Administration Specialization series, you will learn how to approach strategic management theologically as strategic stewardship for your church. Secular organizations widely use strategic management (including strategic planning) to define their future strategic direction and how to achieve it. In contrast, what we’re calling strategic stewardship for churches seeks to reappropriate strategic management by discerning God’s direction for the church and pursuing God-centered ways of realizing it. This course will focus on select key elements of strategic management: vision (Week 1), core values and culture (Week 2), goals and objectives (Week 3), and metrics (Week 4). We will first explore how each key element functions as a useful management tool. Then, we will reappropriate the key element for theological ends of our church stewardship to God; hence, our terminology of strategic stewardship. Moreover, we will unpack what pastoral leadership for strategic stewardship should entail. Lastly, we will provide exemplar stories from Duke Divinity School alums, who will share how they each approached and implemented a key element in their church setting. If you are a pastor or ministry professional in need of Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits for your professional development, CEU credits are available for this course. Please share your Coursera course certificate and a copy of the course description with your church denomination or employer as recognition of your earned 1.5 CEUs. This course qualifies for 1.5 Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits. Completion of all three courses in the “Church Administration: Human Resources” Specialization qualifies for a total of 4.5 CEU credits.