When I worked in the corporate world, I worked with the Executive Team, Directors, Plant and Department Managers and Supervisors. Even though each level was working toward achieving the same overall organizational goals, reports were designed to help them in the areas for which they were responsible.

Executives execute organizational strategy and use reporting to gauge how well (or not) the company is moving toward those objectives. As you move further down the organizational structure, the focus narrows. By the time you get to Department Managers, they deal almost exclusively with departmental details, while Plant Managers saw all the departmental and some of the higher level reports.

It’s really no different in the church. The Sr Pastor and XP are the Executive level, the Board or Elders (or Finance Committee) are the Directors. Campus Pastors would be the Plant Manager equivalent. Ministry Heads equate to Department Managers. Finally, Key Ministry Volunteers would be like the Supervisors in my analogy. All need reports designed for their area of responsibility in order to facilitate sound decision making.

There are other audiences as well in the church world. The Congregation itself being the most obvious.

Reports should be designed with the intended audience in mind because the needs of each are different.

In a series of upcoming posts, we’ll take a look at each of these audiences along with what the reports might look like for each “audience”. Take a look at the next post.