by John Scott, Scott-Long Construction
Staff, volunteer, hired professional? Who is the best person to coordinate your church project?
Church’s often agonize over who should be the person to coordinate a church project. Many building teams feel like they are under qualified or must spend substantially on paid consultants to run the project. Both thoughts are are not true!
The best person to coordinate the church’s project has three qualities:
1) The time to understand.
2) The ability to listen to the professionals and make recommendations.
3) The ability to communicate to church leadership.
The time to understand…there is lots and lots of information that flows during the planning and construction of a project. Understanding the ministry priorities from the church, understanding the church’s ability to pay for services, understanding the design teams recommendations, understanding the contractor’s day to day issues, understanding how the building should operate. Being able to understand the project issues is a foundational component of the church’s project coordinator.
The ability to listen to the professionals and make recommendations is more than understanding recommendations. This involves challenging assumptions, questioning ideas, and providing feedback to the professionals. Often this is an iterative process and knowing when an issue is “cooked” is a positive thing. This leads to the next quality of a church’s project coordinator.
The ability to communicate to church leadership and developing buy-in with leadership is critical. Often leadership has not been a part of the meetings, emails and discussions. Being able to present issues in a concise and complete manner is a talent. Too much information will bog a project down. Too little information will encourage back tracking and lead to delays. Effective communication is a critical quality of a church’s project coordinator.
So, who are the best leaders to coordinate the project? We have seen many retired men and women with no background in development be highly effective. We have seen some executive pastors succeed in this role. We have seen paid construction managers succeed too. “Who” doesn’t really matter – the individual must have the qualities mentioned above: the time to understand, the ability to listen and make recommendations, and the ability to communicate to leadership.