In this Blog’s post, we will discuss “Empowering People of God: Setting clear boundaries and encouraging direct communication”. The church is a service-centered organization.
In order to have a good organization in the church functions, there have to be clear settings of boundaries and direct communications have to be encouraged.
Any organization is a social system wherein the achievement of the ultimate goal of the organization is dependent very much on the way the human beings in the organization behave and the actions and interactions among them.
In the case of Christian organizations, there are certain fundamental differences from that of social organizations. Church means serving the needy, by providing social and spiritual needs and counseling, etc.
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Since Church is a non-profit organization, communication is the medium where it creates cohesive settings in order to execute the functionality of the Church.
Therefore, we will look into the importance of complex forces in the setting of clear boundaries and encouraging direct communications in order to avoid confusion, misunderstandings, and a clearer pastor’s role in it.
1. Setting of clear boundaries (Empowering People)
Setting clear out boundaries emphasis the process of starting with the total amount of work to do and dividing it into divisions, departments, jobs, and assignments of responsibilities to people.
Each of the existing organizations in the church has its own structure with divisions of work and means of coordinating, task, and the people in the organization to achieve desired goals.
Any organization has a structure which helps to achieve three main objectives, facilitate the flow of information and decision making to reduce uncertainty, define the positions and units within an organization so that the potential benefits from the division of work can be realized, help to achieve the desired levels of coordination between the positions and the units created.
(a) Departmentalization:
Once responsibilities are divided through work specialization, there is a need to group jobs together so that common tasks can be coordinated.
(b) Chain of control:
The chain of control or command implies that authority and responsibility are arranged often as hierarchically. They flow in a clear unbroken line from the highest level to the lowest member-employee.
This is a well-known traditional form of management that can be replaced by a common decision-making process.
(c) Centralization and decentralization:
The term centralization refers to the degree to which decision making is concentrated at a single point in an organization. If the management makes the key decision with little; or no input from lower levels, the organizations are centralized.
By the way, the contrast, the more the lower level personnel provide input or are actually given the discretion to make decisions, the more the decentralization.
A. Group dynamics:
Activities and interactions are very important in group dynamics. The importance of shared, godly-values, value plays a big role in Christian ministry and in group work.
Only when people convinced that the groups they belong adheres to the values taught by Christ; they will be comfortable and happy to work for their organization and others too.
B. Recognition of roles and role-responsibility:
People in a group have different responsibilities. It is essential to ensure there is no duplication or overlapping of responsibilities. It is not necessary that the role and role responsibilities are made very clear to job holders as well as others in the team.
So that there will be mutual help, support, and coordination which are pre-requisites for an effective team.
C. Transparency and effective communication (Empowering People)
Openness in the group helps to develop trust in the group. Effective communication between the team members is important and assumptions and misunderstandings have to be avoided.
D. Trusting and understanding:
When there is a high degree of trust among the members, it binds people together and the relationship becomes so strong. There is so much diversity in human beings.
One has to be very sensitive to understand the differences and move with others in such a way that there is no threat to anyone’s belief or personality. Sometimes the perception could be deceptive but the element of ‘trust’ could help them overcome the negative effects in the group work.
E. Assertive without being aggressive (Empowering People)
When some members of the group become forceful, dominant, or opinionated sometimes in order to put across their views and ideas, it could create tension amongst others in the group.
If the aggressiveness of one member of the group ignores the need for the needs, wants, opinions, and feelings of others in the group, such selfish behavior could intimidate others into silence.
However, on the other hand, firmness, with due respect to others in the group will enhance the freedom to exchange ideas, opinions, and views paving way for creativity and productivity.
2. Encouraging direct communication (Empowering People)
Organizations can not exist without communication. Communication is the transfer of information from one character to another individual. It’s far away from reaching others by way of transmitting ideas, facts, thoughts, feelings, and values.
Its intention to have the receiver understand the message because it meant. Whilst conversation is powerful, it offers a bridge which means among the 2 people on the way to each percentage what they feel and recognize.