ABSTRACT
Churches can organize in many ways and most of them can be made to work. Sometimes they are built around the personalities and capabilities of people available to take on various responsibilities. This is a valid consideration. But apart from such influences, the tendency is to keep doing things the way they have always been done, leaving well enough alone, and avoiding changes that may disrupt established patterns. This may foster the retention of cumbersome and ineffective organization structures which, though workable, may not provide the optimum utilization of people and resources. As part of the ministries management process, organization structure should also be subject to a critical review. Although innumerable variations are possible concerning the organization of church ministries, just two fundamental concepts are pertinent: functional integration and age integration. All of the possible variations represent some combination of these two basic concepts, which are illustrated conceptually in Exhibit 9.1. The different ministries or groups of related ministries of the church are represented by the numerical designations listed on the left-hand side of each matrix. Only three numbers are listed to display the concept. Obviously, many more programs or functional families would actually exist. The vertical columns of the matrices represent different age categories. Each of the various ministries fits into one or more of these age categories.
