Budgets, Fund-Raising and Meetings: A Priest Says 60% of Clergy Time Goes on Administration

• Nembhard said about 60 per cent of clergy work is administrative
• Budgets, fund-raising and meetings crowd out pastoral care, he argued
• He said ordination vows place little emphasis on administration
• He proposed handing business functions to lay administrators, as with the first deacons

Falling church attendance is not proof that people have stopped believing in God, Anglican priest Dr Raulston Nembhard argued in the second part of a Jamaica Observer column on the subject. But he also pointed to a problem inside the churches themselves: their leaders are drowning in paperwork.

Nembhard, who has spent nearly 50 years in ministry, wrote that “People do not love God any less because they do not attend church, neither are they atheists because they do not believe in organised religion.” What many are looking for, he said, is “a church unusual instead of a church as usual”: warmer, less judgmental fellowships closer to the early Christian model.

He then turned to how clergy spend their time. “60 per cent of the work that is done by clergy/pastors is administrative,” he wrote, listing budgets, fund-raising and meetings among the tasks. Church synods, he said, are dominated by reports, resolutions and administrative matters rather than discussion of mission, and many pastors end up burnt out.

His answer draws on the Book of Acts, where the apostles appointed deacons to handle practical matters so they could concentrate on preaching. Nembhard argued that churches should separate business functions from pastoral work and give administrative responsibility to qualified lay people.

Much of that administrative load is property management. Jamaican congregations own sanctuaries, halls, schools, rectories and land that need budgets, insurance, repairs, titles and tax filings. When those jobs fall to a pastor with no training in estates or finance, maintenance is deferred, paperwork lapses and assets lose value.

Nembhard’s proposal has a practical side for any congregation. Appointing trained lay administrators, or bringing in members who work in property, accounting and law, can protect the value of church buildings and land while freeing clergy for ministry. For returning residents and diaspora members with professional skills, offering that expertise to a home church may be as valuable as a cash gift.

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