Your Questions answered 3… Emails Pt 4 – Time Manage your email activity

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Equipping
I have so far given you 7 tips for writing emails: Have separate email addresses for social and business communication Make the subject line work for you. Think carefully about how you word it Be as brief as possible without losing necessary content Make reading your emails a pleasant experience Proof read the email before sending it Don’t use emails for contentious issues if possible. If it is necessary don’t be hasty – build in a cooling off period Respond to emails containing several topics either by numbering or ‘interlinearly’ Lets now turn to managing them. 8. When do you deal with emails? Managing emails begins with self-discipline. Are you intentional about how you use your time or do you let life and emails come at you? We all have times…
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Your Questions answered 3… Emails Pt 3 – Writing thoughtfully

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Equipping
So far I have given you four tips for writing effective emails: Have separate email addresses for social and business communication Make the subject line work for you. Think carefully about how you word it Be as brief as possible without losing necessary content Make reading your emails a pleasant experience Now, here are three more which will help you be interact thoughtfully with your reader 5. Proof read Badly spellt emales, bad use of punctuation; or the useof abreviations, comunicates something about U. They imply UR a bit slapdash and so make the reader take the email/you unseriously!!!! Checking (proof reading) is important. Make sure the information is accurate and well expressed. Abbreviations may be acceptable but make sure they are clearly understood. For instance, does lol mean ‘laugh out…
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Your Questions answered 3… Emails Pt 2 – Writing to be read

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Equipping
Writing emails Continuing the section on writing emails it is self evident that you are writing them so that they are read. How can you help your reader? 2. Subject line If I receive an email I want to know what it is about; ‘Hi!’ is not a very helpful subject line. Give the topic or, if more than one, list them 1…. 2…. Consider whether you can get the whole message into the subject line eg “Can you give me an update on the schedule you are preparing?” It may not be necessary to put any text in the body of the email and you will (hopefully!) get a quick reply. Tip 2 Make the subject line work for you. Think carefully about how you word it. 3. Less…
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Your Questions answered 3… Emails – Boon or Bane? Pt 1

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Equipping
Continuing my Questions and Answers series I have been asked if I have any comments or advice about emails. A big topic! Boon There is no doubt that emails are a tremendous boon. They make communication quick and keep a record in one place. It is easy to send the same information to several people at the same time, although this can be both an asset and a disadvantage – does everyone really need to know? Bane This takes us to the other side of the email coin - they can also be the bane of our lives. In the days of snail mail how often did you receive 20, 30, 50 or even 100 pieces of mail in one day? Yet for many, such quantities of daily receipts in…
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Videos on Church Administration and other matters

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Biblical Administration, Conference Administration, Discover and Serve, Equipping, Meetings, Planning, Spiritual Gifts, Time Management
Several months ago I was asked to prepare some videos for the Newfrontiers Bible School in Nigeria. I realise I never made these more widely available but think they would be of great help to many people working in church administration. They appear in my YouTube channel Feeding 5000 is no picnic….. There is associated reading with some of the talks, as shown in the side panel. Here are the links: The Gift of Administration Administration in the Bible is a spiritual gift. It is a ministry that not only helps a church to function effectively but also helps liberate leaders and members to serve and realise their potential according to their talents and spiritual gifts Event Management - Jesus style When Jesus fed the 5000 he modeled how to…
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Millennium Development Goals – success or failure?

Development, Poor
Look back, look forward 2015 has ended and with it the final date has passed for the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved. How successful have been the efforts to tackle them? Recently I read a helpful article by Chris Hoy on the Overseas Development Institute’s website which gives some indication of areas of success and failure. This is far from the full story but at least gives some indication. The article is brief but for those of us who have been involved working with churches in some of the relevant areas of the world it is both encouraging and sobering to see what has happened.  There is also a helpful short video from the United Nations Development Programme. What were the MDGs?  In 2000, at a UN Summit, the goals were defined with…
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