Church Administration Series

Online For Alumni For Church Staff For Clergy

If you’re a pastor who feels more comfortable preaching a sermon on Leviticus than crafting a budget, you may have found yourself saying “No one ever taught me how to run a church.” If you’re a lay leader wondering how to apply your management experience to the ministry team you’re leading, you may have found yourself saying something similar: “No one ever taught me how to run a church.”

Whatever you emphasize when you muse about your lack of preparation for the church administration responsibilities you now hold, this specialization is for you.

In this course, you’ll learn how to engage the work of leading management theorists and business leaders on strategic management, finance, HR, and other foundational topics while—crucially—maintaining a theological focus that situates these practices within the church’s mission of discipleship, worship, and witness.

You’ll also develop practical skills, including how to steward your time more effectively, cultivate a clear sense of vision and mission, conduct performance reviews, and implement sound finance practices. And if (as we strongly recommend) you complete this specialization together with other key leaders in your church, you’ll also build invaluable shared understandings and convictions about the management of your church that will set the table for effective collaboration for years to come.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this certification, you will be able to:

Foster church team-building and conviction on theology and practice of church administration;
Address major practices (topics) of church administration theologically and managerially;
Offer a theological approach to church administration (drawing on Duke focus and strength in theology) by pursuing theological goals through management tools;
Draw on management excellence and know-how as resources to be theologically deployed for church administration;
Offer principles and know-hows on key concrete practices of church administration.

Courses in This Series

View the Courses

Theology & Time Management

This online course explains the importance of a theological approach to church administration and why viewing it as a church practice with theological goals of discipleship, formation, witness, and worship matters.

Strategic Management for Churches

In this second course in the Duke Divinity+ Church Administration series for church pastors and lay leaders, you will learn how to approach strategic management theologically as strategic stewardship for your church.

Human Resource Management for Churches

This third course in the Duke Divinity+ Church Administration series is designed to enable clergy and lay leaders to develop healthy frameworks and practices for human resource management.

Financial Management for Churches

This four-week course is designed to help pastors and ministry staff to identify important management considerations in order to be faithful stewards of the resources entrusted to them.

By the end of this series, you will be able to:

Explain what is (or ought to be) distinctive about church leadership and administration.
Draw upon management excellence and know-how in a theologically appropriate way.
Develop a plan to steward your time more effectively.
Implement key practices of strategic management in your church.
Execute basic staff stewardship practices, including hiring processes and performance reviews.
Establish financial policies and procedures that enable your church to use financial resources wisely.
If completing the specialization as a team, develop shared understandings and convictions about some of the core operational issues faced by churches

Instructors

Rae Cho

Rae Cho earned Th.D. and M.Div. from Duke Divinity School, and an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He teaches classes on theology and practice of Christian leadership and administration and Asian American theology. He served as the church administration head at an Asian American church in Silicon Valley while working at a management consulting firm and then a high-tech startup, and he has provided consultation to churches on church administration. He also holds M.S. and B.S. degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Russ Elmayan

Russell Elmayan earned his M.B.A. from Duke University, his D.Min. from Duke Divinity School, and a Master of Pastoral Studies from Loyola University. In additional to serving as a course instructor and member of the Board of Visitors for Duke Divinity School, he serves as the chief financial officer/chief operating officer at the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, N.C. He has for-profit and nonprofit executive-level experience. He has extensive experience presenting to senior management and boards, banking relationships, pension and retirement funds, employee benefits and health insurance, financial planning and analysis, corporate real estate, property and casualty insurance, and coordination of legal counsel. In addition, he has provided oversight for finance, human resources, institutional advancement, property and construction, legal counsel, and charitable outreach.

Church Administration Series