This past Sunday I was up in Albany for a short personal retreat.  Normally I’d go to Holy Cross Monastery or some other retreat center, but in this case a friend had an empty house they had on the market, so it saved me a little bit of money and forced silence on me.  And it really was what the doctor ordered!

While I was there I decided to go to the Cathedral of All Saints for holy Eucharist.  It was an early service, so it was perfect for me to nourish my soul and return to my retreat.  Afterwards I had the brief opportunity to speak with the clergy who led the service, and was delighted to find out that he was well-acquainted with my parish here in the city.

In the course of conversation he asked what I did for a living, so I told him about my business and specifically described my work with ministries.  And then I said something that is the title and theme of this post: “As financial work it is important, and regardless of who does it in the ministry, somebody’s got to do it.”

As I sit and write this, there are a ton of things that need to get done.  I’ll do some of them myself.  I’ll also, as I get better at delegating, farm things out to someone else.  Maybe I’ll send those things out because they’re things that would crowd out my schedule and prevent me from doing what is more important.  Or perhaps I’ll send them out because they’re things that someone else is more skilled at doing.  Either way, ultimately somebody will do it.

My point here is this: there are things that need to be done in your ministry.  Certainly financial management is one, but I’m thinking more broadly about daily administration.  Whatever it is, somebody’s got to do it.  You don’t have to do it yourself, you don’t have to do it alone, and someday I’m sure I’ll talk about what I’ve learned through books and experience about recruiting, delegating, and working with paid helpers and volunteer helpers to help us both think through how this looks like.

So my exhortation today is to be mindful of what needs to be done in the ministry and to be thinking about who will do it.  After all, somebody’s got to do it!