From Resourceful Workarounds to Faithful Stewardship

Small Christian schools are remarkably good at making things work.

A spreadsheet becomes an enrollment system. A Google Form becomes an application. The principal knows which families have special tuition arrangements. The secretary knows where the important paperwork is. Someone has a notebook with all the passwords. When a parent calls with a question, somebody on staff usually knows the answer.

And for a long time, this approach works just fine.

In fact, I would argue that this kind of resourcefulness is one of the strengths of a small Christian school. We learn to accomplish a great deal with limited staff, limited budgets, and people wearing multiple hats.

The problem comes when the school begins to depend on people who remember how everything works. At that point, resourcefulness becomes organizational risk.

Resourcefulness is a strength

I have a great deal of sympathy for the spreadsheet. As the principal of a small church-based Christian school, I understand why we build our own solutions. When only a few dozen students are enrolled, software designed for large institutions can feel unnecessarily complicated and prohibitively expensive. So we improvise.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. A well-built spreadsheet may be exactly the right tool for a particular job. A simple process that everyone understands can be far better than an elaborate system nobody wants to use.

Small schools also tend to be relational: we know our families, we know their circumstances, and we are often able to extend grace and flexibility in ways that would be difficult in a much larger institution with less flexible systems.

Those are strengths worth protecting. But there is a difference between a simple system and a fragile one.

When the person becomes the system

The warning sign is not that a school is using spreadsheets. In fact, I can’t imagine ever abandoning such a useful tool. The real warning sign is that important information exists primarily in someone’s memory or is accessible to only one person.

Imagine that the administrator who handles enrollment is unexpectedly out for two weeks. Can someone else tell which applications are complete? If the person responsible for tuition billing left tomorrow, would another employee understand every family’s arrangement? If the secretary who has been there for fifteen years retired, how much institutional knowledge would walk out the door with this person? Could someone new step into your processes and easily understand what needs to happen next?

A faithful employee should strengthen an institution, not unintentionally become a single point of failure for it.

Those questions can be uncomfortable in a small school because so much often depends on a few deeply committed people. Most likely, the person keeping everything together is doing an extraordinary job.

But protecting that person’s work is precisely why we should build processes that do not depend on any individual person’s continued availability. A faithful employee should strengthen an institution, not unintentionally become a single point of failure for it.

Order is an act of care

For Christian schools, this care for systems and processes is ultimately a question of stewardship.

We sometimes recoil from words like “systems” or “documentation” because they can sound impersonal, like something warm is being traded for something mechanical. Ministry is about people, and we’re right to guard against anything that makes our work feel less personal.

But good administration isn’t the opposite of ministry. Done well, it protects the relationships we care about most. A confused process doesn’t keep things warm; it actually puts families, records, and trust at risk. Order is not inherently worldly. Trusting God and faithful stewardship are not competing ideas.

Paul wrote, “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). The immediate context of this verse is the orderly function of the church, not school administration, but the principle is worth considering.

Resourcefulness helps a school get started, but good stewardship ensures that the work continues.

Families entrust Christian schools primarily with their children, but also with academic records, financial information, communication, and countless other accompanying responsibilities. Handling these things carefully is part of handling our ministry carefully.

The goal is not complexity. The goal is clarity and accuracy.

A good administrative process should make it easier to answer simple questions: What has happened? What still needs to happen? Who is responsible? Where is the information? What happens next? If only one person can answer those questions, the process probably needs attention.

Audit the process before you buy a product

When administrative problems become painful, the temptation is to immediately go shopping for software. Sometimes software is the right answer. Sometimes it is not.

Before changing technology, start by examining the process itself. Pick one important area of your school—admissions, billing, attendance, student records, or parent communication. Then ask—

1. Where does the information live?

Is there one reliable place to find it, or is it scattered among spreadsheets, emails, paper forms, and someone’s memory?

• Who knows how this system works?

If the answer is one person, what would happen if that person were unavailable tomorrow?

• Could someone else take over?

Not eventually, not after several weeks of explanation. Could a competent staff member step in and reasonably determine what to do next, today?

• Are we entering the same information repeatedly?

If a parent’s name, address, student information, or payment data is being copied from one system into another over and over, every additional handoff creates more work and another opportunity for error.

• What happens when something is forgotten?

Does the process itself expose the missing step, or do we simply discover the problem when a parent calls?

Those questions reveal much more than asking, “Do we need new software?”

Sometimes the answer will be a better spreadsheet. Sometimes it will be a written checklist. Sometimes responsibilities simply need to be clarified. And sometimes a school has genuinely reached the point where a more integrated system would reduce unnecessary work and risk. Technology should serve a good process, not disguise a bad one.

Build a school that can outlast you

Many of our schools have survived because faithful people carried extraordinary loads for a very long time. We should be grateful for them. But one way we honor their work is by turning what they know into something the next person can understand and continue.

Strengthening these administrative processes does not require becoming a large institution. It does not require replacing every spreadsheet. And it certainly does not require sacrificing the personal relationships that make small Christian schools special.

In this case, administrative faithfulness simply means asking whether our practices are as faithful and durable as the mission they are meant to support.

Resourcefulness helps a school get started, but good stewardship ensures that the work continues.