Handbooks

n a little bit of friendly harassment with our director of human resources at Point University, I made  an edit suggestion for the employee policy handbook, followed with a parenthetical “and this coming from the guy who hates handbooks.”

She noticed that little friendly harassment and replied, “Don’t bad mouth handbooks – they make great doorstops.” Literally or figuratively, her statement is true. In the complicated, self-protecting world in which we live, we need doorstops.

One of the really interesting books I read this summer was Church Refugees, by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope. Packard is a sociologist who has written a lot in the area of church decline and Hope is working on a doctorate in sociology and has done extensive research in the area of religion. The subtitle for the book, which gives a great clue as to what it is about, says “Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with church but not their faith.” 

One interesting comment from a formerly de-churched person who had come back to church in the form of a very small Protestant congregation gets to the heart of the doorstop issue in church: “At the last church I went to before this one, they just seemed to put up more and more walls and barriers. It got to the point that just to have a simple meal in the church with some friends or a Bible study, we had to go through three committees. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.” (pp. 54, 55)

In response to that comment and others like it, Church Refugees says “They weren’t frustrated by the existence of structure; they were frustrated when they felt the structure actively prevented them from doing the work they felt called to do.” And then, in explanation of why so many church are in decline, “They’re walking away because they’re convinced that the structures and bureaucracy of the church are inhibiting their ability to serve God.” 

Depending on where the doorstop is placed, it can do different things. It can, if placed in a certain position, prevent the door from opening. But if placed in a different location, it can keep the door from banging against the wall when the door is opened. In most cases, the doorstop is functioning well in the second of those options, not the first. Of course there are times you may not want the door open and the first example would be useful – but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Handbooks and bureaucracies are much the same. Especially in life and ministry in church. Of course there are times when the doorstop needs to keep the door shut, but most of the time you just want to make sure the wall isn’t getting banged up when the door opens. 

But according to Church Refugees, and confirmed by my own personal observations, it can be easy to let the doorstop shut the door to ministry, opportunity, service, and kingdom advancement. Or to use their language, doorstops can “inhibit our ability to serve God.”

Without handbooks, manuals, procedural policies, etc. most organizations, including churches, would end up in chaos. But the smart organizations – including churches – will always figure out where to put the doorstop! When that happens, the “DONES” will become fewer and fewer.

That’s a good thing!