The 21st Century Pastor

If you are one of those pastors feeling the strain, no need to worry, help is at hand. With the emergence of Virtual Assistants in recent times, Pastors, especially of smaller up and coming churches can now smile, relax and focus on their core mandate of helping build the faith of their congregants.

You may be wondering, what work does a Pastor actually have to do that could keep them so busy all year round?

The pastor's role has become very similar to a business manager or even CEO. They regularly acquire tons of tasks on their desks daily. Pastors need to research extensively to be able to preach impactful messages; they must keep an eye on the welfare of their church members and also manage their calendars by scheduling meetings and events.

Today, Pastors also need to manage their social media pages by posting the right content and engaging their audience appropriately. In addition to this, they need to keep an eye on their inbox which keeps growing by the day. And these are just to name but a few. Furthermore, these tasks must not take the focus of the Pastor from their core mandate, the faith and welfare of members.

I think you will agree with me then, that Pastors have a lot on their hands which, when not managed well can lead to numerous issues and challenges.

In this blog, we are going to address ways in which Virtual Assistants can help to relieve Pastors from tedious administrative tasks to create more room for Pastors to enjoy their God given ministries.

Research

Any pastor reading this will know that the time spent on researching a topic, theme or sermon can take a considerable amount of time. And although a VA cannot write your whole sermon for you, they can cut down a lot of the time taken in doing the basic research for you by finding the best Bible quotes for what you want to say, and even create a PowerPoint presentation for you.

VAs can search for some quality content for pastors as and when needed. With Virtual Ministry Assistants, it’s even better as they are Christians. They can filter the information as you would want and present the details exactly as you would need. They can help research on Biblical topics, and even Biblical characters and biographies. You as the pastor or church minister will know that you are safe in the knowledge that this assistant does have an understanding of the Biblical context that this research is coming from and is also likely to know the background and have a deeper meaning of the research that they are doing, not to mention the impact on the lives of those who will be hearing it.

Calendar Management

Your Virtual Assistant can also take on the role of your personal assistant where he or she can have the priority role of managing your calendar. VAs are gifted when it comes to calendar management as they have the skills and the knowledge of the right calendar management software to handle the scheduling of all meetings and events. They can even go a step further to help plan key events and coordinate with stakeholders. And all these can be done from a remote location. Impressive right?

Social Media Management

Wondering what Pastors probably do on social media? Well, social media is not just for the youth or for general businesses. It is a perfect avenue for pastors to relate and engage people. Pastors sometimes share details of their church activities and encourage people on their social media pages through Christian inspired content. But this can be quite time consuming and often quite distracting for pastors. Instead, Pastors can share whatever content they want on social media with their VAs and it will be posted accordingly. VAs can even engage people on social media and publicize church activities on behalf of the pastor.

Mailbox Management

Last but certainly, not the least, is mailbox management. VAs are experts in mailbox management. They can manage the inbox of pastors and create systems where they can for example, put your emails into categories and subcategories making use of color coding to make it easy for anyone who logs in. VAs can also respond to emails on behalf of pastors, draft emails for pastors and also manage all correspondence for the pastor. This undoubtedly relieves pastors and gives them more time to focus on their core mandate.

At this point, we can all agree that VAs have a lot to offer for Pastors/ministers. In fact, the role of the VA can be classified as a ministry helper and is not undermined in anyway. If you are a pastor reading this blog, and you and don’t have a VA yet, it’s not too late to get one. Perhaps, you have a small church and desperately need some extra hands to help with the administrative work, or you may even have a large church where you just need to outsource one or two aspects of your work to ease the load of your inhouse administrator. Whatever your situation, why not reach out to a virtual assistant to see how they can help.

If you are not a pastor but love your pastor, you can recommend a VA to him/her. Together, let’s all help to build the church of God!