About Me

So who am I, and why am I so interested in risk management and the church?

Let's start with me: I'm a recent MBA graduate from Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS. I'm also a lifelong churchgoer, having been raised in a Presbyterian church before moving over to the United Church for a few years; I also have Anglican, Roman Catholic and Evangelical experience. I've sat on a variety of committees and councils within those denominations and done everything from singing in choirs to leading entire services. I genuinely like church, for a variety of reasons: in addition to the spiritual nourishment and great fellowship every week, I'm a complete sucker for a traditional hymn played on an organ and can't help but be amazed when inside a large cathedral with gorgeous stained-glass windows.

It was this interest in church that led me to do an independent study as part of my MBA, focusing on church management and consulting, and investigating the ways that business practices can be implemented in religious institutions. Working with a local church in Halifax, I analyzed its operations and finances to determine ways that it could increase revenues, lower expenses and run more efficiently; most of this focused on the church using its excess space for rental income, as well as cutting unnecessary expenditures from the budget. When I was finished, I submitted a hearty report to the church's council and stayed around to help with some outstanding budget work.

The next semester I signed up for a class in Enterprise Risk Management, where I was required to write a journal-worthy paper for a final assignment. My professor--a tough, demanding genius in the field of risk--knew of my interest in church management and encouraged me to write about risk in the church. I thought it was a great idea, so I took to the internet to find other journal articles on the subject, only to find that there weren't any.

Despite the prevalence of churches and the clear need for risk management in any sort of institution, there has been an incredibly minuscule amount of writing done on the two. A search of online journals and databases yields nothing; journals that focus on risk management have no interest in the church, and vice versa. Having read published papers on ridiculously-detailed topics ("Feminist-structured group leadership in a post-modern world: An equatorial supply-side economic developing nation case study," for example), this came as a large surprise for me.

So I wrote a 2000-word paper of my own, giving an overview of risk management and how it would apply to churches, and submitted it to my professor. He loved it, gave it a good mark, and told me to get it published.

That brings me to where I am now: having reworked the paper several times for different publications, I have a handful of articles set to be printed in national magazines and journals in the next few months. I plan to write several more, with a greater focus on particular areas of church risk management. But the conversation can't stop there, which is why I've created this blog. It's time that we really started thinking about how we manage risk in the church. And in the next entry, I'll explain just why it's so important.

And that's me: I love church, I love risk, and I love the idea of throwing them together and seeing what happens.

The Church at Risk

There are thousands--maybe even millions--of blogs devoted to churches. A quick search can bring you to blogs on church growth, church marketing, church planting, and churches that focus on a particular niche or demographic. Then there's blogs on church and culture, church and state, church and business, and even church and other churches. Plus, there are countless personal sites from church leaders, church members and church adherents alike, with plenty of inspiration and opinion to share. Regardless of the topic, if it relates to the church, someone's bound to be talking about it.

Except, it seems, when it comes to risk.

It's not that people fail to mention risk in context of the church. It's hardly a challenge to find someone discussing the risk of the church becoming irrelevant, or losing members, or even falling from God's graces over some doctrine or theology. In this case, though, risk is synonymous with the chance or likelihood of a negative event occurring, and is almost always used in relation to a solitary event or action. What the church is missing out on is risk as uncertainty: despite the overwhelming prevalence, it's difficult to find anyone talking about, let alone planning for, the numerous uncertainties churches face every single day.

And yet, considering that these uncertainties can make or break a church's activities and functions, it's time that leaders and members started having a conversation about them. Ignoring risk isn't going to make it go away--if anything, it can make things much, much worse. But when churches open up about the challenges and uncertainties they face, there is incredible potential for growth, security and better everyday operations.

That's what this blog is about: identifying the risks churches face and bringing them into the light. In doing so, the writings here may incorporate some of the topics listed above; membership and demographics, the relationships churches have with other entities, and the personal opinions of clergy and members all contribute to the uncertainty surrounding a church's activities. But risk management goes deeper than that. Risk management takes a critical viewpoint, asks difficult questions and isn't afraid of what it may find. Risk management leaves no stone unturned.

Thus, JeRISKo, the product of a recent MBA grad with a passion for the church and its mission, as well as a strong interest in risk management, will cover, from the ground up, what risk is, how it affects the church, and what the church can do in response. Most importantly, it will do this in a fun, easy-to-understand and interactive way. Because anyone involved with a church needs to be aware of its uncertainties and how to deal with them, and anyone, be they clergy or member, business executive or construction worker, can play an important role in risk management.

Isn't that at least a bit more useful than reading one more blog about how churches can be hip?