The effective pastor: An introduction

Management guru Peter Drucker’s book The Effective Executive is one of the best, brief guides on its topic. In it Drucker offers five practices that he considers essential to an executive being able to get the right things done.

An executive “by virtue of his position or knowledge … is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results.” (p. 5)

By this definition, a pastor is an executive.

Drucker sees four facts that make it difficult for executives of all kinds to get the right things done. See if any of these apply to you or your pastor.

• The executive’s time belongs to everyone else.
• The executive becomes captive of the flow of events and demands of the moment.
• The executive works with and through other people.
• The executive often cannot see outside his or her own organization.

Even if we agree that this describes in some ways the things that make it difficult for pastors to “get the right things done,” not everyone would agree that failure to be effective is a problem.

Adopting “effectiveness” as our measure of clergy is anathema to the thinking of some. It is adopting the standards of the culture and bowing down to the idols of the consumer marketplace.

Such arguments are needed. But I am going to set them to the side for the moment. My interest is in listening to Drucker’s counsel and determining how his advice would look if fitted to the situation of pastors.

Once I have tried to understand Drucker fully, I will consider whether his advice is suited for pastors.

In a series of posts, I will explain each of Drucker’s five practices and discuss how it might apply to pastors. The five practices are:

• Know Thy Time
• Ask: What Can I Contribute?
• Make Strength Productive
• Do First Things First
• Make Effective Decisions