Christian Life Assembly is more than a church. Through our campuses and schools, we are an outreach centre, an organization that embraces both the discipleship of followers of Jesus as well as a place of leadership development. There are 65 staff in our campuses, Sunbeam Preschool / Daycare, and our English Language school. Just over 50% of our total income goes to the support of part time and full-time workers. Our mandate is vast and the organization often complex. One way we support our staff in learning and effectiveness is by partnering with an organization called The Best Christian Workplace, a North American network working with churches, Christian schools, Christian hospitals, and organizations with teams over 50 on staff. They help us by assessing our staff in eight key areas. In June, after a thorough examination, our team was given a “flourishing” score, the highest on their scale. This is a big accomplishment! We are certified as one of the Best Christian Workplaces in North America! This was particularly important with all our staff transition over the past year. The new team is working together in sync and appreciating the spiritual gifts being brought to the table. The results are affirming, but we also get a picture of where we can improve. The SLT (CLA’s Senior Leadership Team) met with the BCW coach last week, she gave us a big congratulations on the “flourishing” score indicating that CLA has strong and growing engagement of staff towards the important markers. Most improved areas for our team over the past two years (since the last survey) were:
Promotion of highly capable staff (+0.43)
Leaders model humility (+0.37)
CLA has changed for the better (+0.33)
Preference to stay even with higher pay elsewhere (+0.33)
Accountability for doing what people say (+0.32)
As mentioned, we have some work to do with our teams to improve and seek to be better. We need to continue to train supervisors, take care of our staff’s needs and empower decision making. A few scores dropped from two years ago, not many but here are a few:
Someone talked to me about my progress (–0.30)
Supervisor helps solve work problems (–0.25)
Supervisor cares about me as a person (–0.15)
Decision-making authority (–0.14)
Not all eight areas are equally important towards building a flourishing team. For example, the three most important factors are; Inspirational Leadership, Life-Giving Work, and Healthy Communication. We scored very well on Inspirational Leadership, it was our highest mark. Then our next top three were Sustainable Strategy, Healthy Communication and Fantastic Teams. Rewarding Compensation was our lowest (but it is also the smallest of all areas leading towards flourishing). Working within a church context in the economic realities of the Lower Mainland is certainly a challenge. CLA is very well managed. We do our best to be competitive in the church environment with salaries and benefits. Your tithes assist us with that. Overall, the team is healthy and have responded well to all the change. There is strong confidence in leadership, the coach was affirming.
