We are getting a new pastor and, in line with that, rethinking how email flows through an admin assistant and/or directly to him. I’d love to hear how churches handle email and admin assistants. Does all email go to admin and they forward to pastor? Does the pastor’s email get published? What if people are generally routed through admin, but then the pastor emails from his personal email?
I hope this makes sense. Thanks for any insights. If anyone has this documented, that would be a great resource as well.
We have a srpastor@ email account which is seen by both the pastor and his admin but is primarily managed by the admin. While the majority of staff have a first initial last name address, his personal address is slightly different so only those “in the know” can email him directly. He’s pretty good about protecting that by using the srpastor account but obviously over time the number of people “in the know” will increase. We also have his standard first initial last name address set up as an alias to the srpastor account.
We do something similar in that our Senior Pastor has a unique email address that is unlisted, but the “obvious” email address is reviewed by his assistant and forwarded on to the Senior Pastor.
We also have the obvious email be his primary Calendar, so his assistant can easily add things to his calendar.
Flexibility is what is key. Different pastors want to handle this in different ways. Most are not up on technology, nor have they thought through the implications of the model they have in mind. I see it as my job as helping them think through the ramifications and marrying the technology to the model. Our previous lead pastor had Parkinson’s for over 20 years before he retired. He lost the ability to write along the way, but could type (slowly). This necessitated a solution where both pastor and admin could receive and send email from his account. Our current lead pastor choose a solution where the admin can shadow the lead pastor’s email activity. We do this with an automated form of forwarding. She is authorized to respond to certain types of requests as the executive admin on behalf of the pastor. We have an executive pastor who prefers to manage his email on his own. He’ll then forward or copy his admin if he wants her involved.