It's been a paperwork day. Or a paperwork, phone, email and word-processing day. I've been sweating the keyboard, inbox, and sticking stamps to get things off my desk and away.It's easy to dismiss administration as a chore, something necessary but essentially unrelated to the mission of the church. But Paul tells the Corinthians that administration is ranked among the spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12.28). The word rendered as administration in the NIV is leadership in the NRSV.
Perhaps it's what he means when he tells Titus that he appointed him to put things in order (NRSV) or straighten out what was left unfinished (NIV) in Crete (Titus 1.5). I wonder if Paul was the pioneering initiator and Titus had to set things up sustainably.
We need to re-think adminstration as leadership. Done accurately and effectively, without fuss or show, and the church is enabled and people served well. So let's hear it for the administrators in all walks of life.
