Overview

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Most clergy graduate from seminary or divinity school without coursework, training, or exposure to church administration, church management, or human resource management. Clergy commonly presume most of their time will be spent preaching, presiding at liturgies, forming their congregation in the Christian faith, ensuring the pastoral care of their congregations, and doing good work for those in need in the community. Church leaders are often surprised to find out how much of their time is spent managing staff and volunteers and handling personnel issues. This third course in the Duke Divinity+ Church Administration series is designed to enable clergy and lay leaders serving the church in congregational settings or in other church-related venues to develop healthy frameworks and practices for human resource management. While as church leaders you rely first and foremost upon God to successfully perform your ministries, this work is accomplished through human resources—staff and volunteers. It is your responsibility, as one entrusted to minister in God’s name, to steward those human resources in the best manner possible. In this course, you will connect human resource management to theological principles, and we will provide real-life examples and case studies of what to do and not do as a manager, all while learning the basics of human resource management in a church-related setting. If you are a pastor or ministry professional in need of Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits for your professional development, CEU credits are available for this course. Please share your Coursera course certificate and a copy of the course description with your church denomination or employer as recognition of your earned 1.5 CEUs. This course qualifies for 1.5 Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits. Completion of all three courses in the “Church Administration: Human Resources” Specialization qualifies for a total of 4.5 CEU credits.

Syllabus

Creating a Theology of Human Resource Management

This week, we will discuss how a church setting is a distinctive type of organization that requires sound human resource management. Coursera defines human resource management as “organizing, coordinating, and managing an organization’s current employees to carry out an organization’s mission, vision, and goals. This includes recruiting, hiring, training, compensating, retaining, and motivating employees.” We will explore how established secular principles of human resource management should apply to the church, and how scripture molds best practice into human resource stewardship, a distinctive theology of human resource management.

Finding, Keeping, and Stewarding the Right People

This week will focus on the development of job descriptions for employees and volunteers, as well as the hiring process and background checks.

Managing Employees and Volunteers

This week will focus on performance evaluation, goals and objectives for employees, volunteer management, safe environment training, and misconduct and harassment prevention.

Empathy, Compensation, and Cultural Humility

This week will focus on having difficult conversations with employees, the benefits and detriments of the use of empathy in human resource stewardship in the church, adapting supervisory approaches to employes, and salary and benefit equity and salary compression.