Remote Ministry: What if We’re Doing it Wrong?
Post written by Michael St. Pierre, Ed.D., Executive Director
With all of higher education now in online mode, there’s no shortage of workshops and webinars on working from home. Even CCMA has a Remote Work 101 set of slides over at our YouTube channel.
What I worry about is the notion that you can simply replicate what happened on campus with remote work. I heard of a campus minister who had six hours of meetings on Zoom one day. My heart broke for her. It doesn’t have to be that way.
While this may sound obvious, here are some tell-tale signs that your campus is trying to do just this- replicate campus remotely:
You have more than 2 hours of Zoom calls in a day
You have just as many meetings as you did on campus
You have a continual stream of interruptions
Your online chat platform is open all day
No. No. And No.
Remote work is not meant to replicate the modern day workplace. Why would we want to do that anyway? While we value the people we work with and appreciate the fringe benefits of a campus location, it’s obvious that the modern day workplace has serious flaws.
Consider the very real fact that most of us, if we’re honest, can’t get that much work done at work. We sneak in on a Saturday morning or close our door on a Thursday night- just so we can get some quiet time to get our work done. The modern workplace is very broken with constant interruptions and way too many meetings.
For those who say that we need a lot of meetings in order to make decisions, there is another way. Write it down and then have a meeting, once people have weighed in and clarified their thoughts. Then, make a decision. The days of simply putting an idea on the table for people to randomly consider should be over. That’s not how great teams make decisions.
Remote work is built on some core principles: head-down time, fewer meetings, asynchronous communication and focused work. This doesn’t exclude the possibility of a well-run meeting but it surgically removes the crap from your schedule. Both introverts and extroverts can excel at remote work.
We have enough stress due to the Covid-19 quarantine. Let’s not add even more due to poorly run remote work.