The development of management skills for effective church management in pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe

The paper focuses on the development of management skills for effective church management in pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe, and underscores the need for the use of secular principles and practices in church management. It identifies the management challenges faced by the pastors, explores the extent to which management skills are being developed in pastoral preparation programs, and looks into alternative management practices which could be adopted into the Church for ministry effectiveness. The research instruments used were selfadministered questionnaires distributed to a sample of fifty-three Evangelical and Pentecostal Pastors in Harare whose churches are registered with the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) and/or the Zimbabwe Council of Evangelical Pentecostal Churches (ZCEPC); and six face-to-face interviews held with three seminary deans and three senior pastors for churches which do in-house training. The study found that pastors are currently facing management challenges because the course content of the pastoral preparation programs is more skewed towards the spiritual aspects of ministry. Recommendations were thus made to the effect that pastoral preparation programs should consider collaborating with business schools and business persons to assist in the amendment of their course content to ensure that proper management skills are developed in the pastors by the introduction of management studies alongside theological studies. Some of the suggested management aspects are strategic planning and implementation, financial management and internal control systems, and organizational development and design. As such, the researcher attempts theoretical generalization by proposing that the theory applied in business skills of management, can be generalized in church circumstances.


INTRODUCTION
The church is both an organization and spiritual entity (Andrews and Roller, 2011), thus for church leaders to be effective in running it, they need to understand both elements of this identity and master a set of tools related *Corresponding author. E-mail: fchatira@yahool.co.uk.
Authors agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License to the leadership and management of both these elements.
The church as an organization is exposed to insufficient education in management principles and skills through formal education that, in turn, results in leaders that often struggle to perform the basic managerial tasks expected of them (Cohall and Cooper, 2010;Irwin and Roller, 2000;Oosthuizen, 2015).
Consequently, the lack of basic management principles and skills negatively affect the efficiency and effectiveness of the church in pursue of its vision (Antony and Esterp, 2005;Smith and Wright, 2011;Welch, 2011). According to Lewis et al. (2007), an effective way of developing managerial skills is to follow a general learning model which involves conceptual knowledge, behavioural guidelines, skills development exercises, feedback and frequent practice.
The purpose of this study was to explore whether pastoral preparation programs make management learning explicit through course offerings, in a bid to demonstrate that management skills development in pastors can lead to effective church management which translates to ministry effectiveness. The reason being that, for a ministry to be effective, it depends on the management and leadership skills of the pastors (Parker and Stone, 2003).
The study also determined the extent that pastoral preparation programs offer management courses to enable pastors to effectively manage the church"s resources which ultimately contributes to ministry effectiveness. Management aspects that can be incorporated into the course offerings of pastoral preparation programs to enable effective church management are identified and this was achieved by finding applicable management principles and practices from the secular system which church leaders could adopt for ministry effectiveness.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Reported literature asserts that most pastors are adequately trained with regards the spiritual aspects of ministry but they are not adequately trained in terms of the management aspects (Dobson, 2002;Hoge and Wenger, 2005;Irwin and Roller, 2000;Kegin, 1991). This lack of management skills development in the pastors leaves them exposed to many management challenges. It also leads to the ineffective management of the church"s tangible and intangible resources which then results in issues like embezzlement, stagnation of the church, mass migration of congregates, removal of pastors from office over issues of mismanagement than doctrine and abuse of church resources (Barna, 1993;Holmes, 2014;Purcell, 2001 andWhitesel, 2015). Due to the fact that a ministry or church can be considered to be an organization (Cone and Downing, 1998;Lotich, 2014;Oosthuizen, 2015), this paper will occasionally use the term organizational effectiveness to refer to ministry effectiveness and manager to refer to the pastor.

Application of management
All organizations (including churches) are purposive entities and achieve their objectives with limited resources. Management thus integrates these scarce resources in a productive relationship so as to achieve the organizational objectives with optimum efficiency and effectiveness (Agarwal, 2007). As such management theories and principles have universal application in all kinds of organized and purposive activity even though the application differs from organization to organization (Daft and Marcic, 2009;Drucker, 2009;Lewis et al., 2007). This implies that church leaders need to be educated on management issues and apply these principles in church management so as to achieve ministry effectiveness. Antony and Esterp (2005) say management is important to the church in three aspects. First, it calls church leaders to commit to organizing the institution to achieve its vision, focusing on the proper utilization of resources. Lotich (2014) underscores the same view. Second, church leaders do not provide ministry in a vacuum but within the context of people, as such ministry is all about people and not programs. However, individuals have strengths, weaknesses, gifts and desires which require the church leader to have some management skills to allow him serve the people more efficiently. This view point is also supported by Welch (2011). Third, the church has a vision and mission which they cannot accomplish apart from coordinated effort. Support lines need to be established and defended, materials need to be acquired and people need to be selected and trained. This is echoed by Oluwasegun (2016). All these activities are at the heart of sound management (Dubin, 2012;Kotter, 1999;Lussier, 2015) and they require the application of management functions which are critical for ministry operation otherwise the church is compromised and negated (Markham and Warder, 2016;Schoonover, 2013).

METHODOLOGY
Pragmatism argues that the most important determinant of epistemology, ontology and axiology to be adopted is the research question as one maybe more appropriate than the other for answering particular questions (Saunders et al., 2009). This philosophy using the abductive approach, is appropriate because it focuses attention on the research problem and uses pluralistic approaches to derive knowledge about the problem (Morgan, 2007;Patton, 2002;Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2003), enabling the researcher to emphasize the research problem and use all approaches available to understand the problem (Creswell, 2014).
Pragmatism opened the door to multiple methods, different worldviews and assumptions, as well as different forms of data collection and analysis that best met the researcher"s needs and purposes so as to best understand the research questions (Feilzer, 2010). The abductive approach was suitable after taking into consideration the research questions and the purpose of the research where the researcher based knowledge claims on pragmatic grounds which are problem centered, consequence oriented and pluralistic (Creswell, 2014;Feilzer, 2010).
A multiple case study strategy was selected based on the basis that the researcher was attempting to extend the domain to which the management process school theory has been applied in one set of circumstances (business) by proposing that theory can be generalized to another (the church). The case study was appropriate because as it provided an in-depth account of events, relationships, experiences or processes occurring in the Church settings regarding the application of management aspects in ministry and the development of management skills in pastors.

Sampling and data collection
The target population for this research consisted of three parts: the pastors for Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, the seminary deans and the senior pastors from the churches which do in-house training of pastors. Purposive sampling was adopted based on their leadership positions and their close involvement in church management. Data were collected using interviews and semi structured questionnaires. Three seminaries, three in-house training churches and fifty-three pastors from Pentecostal and Evangelical churches were selected for this study. Information was gathered from the course offerings of six pastoral preparation programs and how they incorporated management concepts in their training content. The researcher also gathered information from pastors from different Evangelical and Pentecostal churches concerning management skills development so as to determine the impact this has on ministry effectiveness. Pseudonyms S1, S2 and S3 for identification purposes of the seminaries and C1, C2 and C3 for identification of churches which do in-house training were used namely, C1 stands for Church 1, C2 for Church 2, C3 for Church 3, S1 for Seminary 1, S2 for Seminary 2, and S3 for Seminary 3.

Data analysis
The type of data to be analyzed was numeric information gathered on scales of instruments and text information which recorded and reported the voice of the participants, as such there was across database interpretation of statistical results and themes or patterns that emerged from the data (Saunders et al., 2009). There was inductive analysis and content analysis. There was also within-case and cross case analysis. Data analysis was determined by the research objectives and research questions. Presentation of data was done using tables and figures including bar charts and pie charts generated after entering the data in excel. Tables were used because they are simpler to comprehend and comparisons between classes can be prepared easily using tables.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
What management challenges are faced by pastors? Figure 1 shows that 35 pastors (66% of the respondents) indicated that they faced challenges when it came to Chatira and Mwenje 105 fundraising for the ministry, and a further 21 pastors (39.6% of the respondents) highlighted that they had difficulty when it came to managing the church"s budget and leadership development. The pastors have been facing fundraising challenges and the challenge related with maintaining the church"s budget the most. This could be due to the fact that the two challenges somewhat dependent on each other, in that, if a pastor cannot fundraise for the ministry then that means they will not have enough financial resources to remain operational, and the expenses of the ministry will always outweigh the income. This would make it difficult for the pastor to effectively allocate the financial resources or manage them because the demand for cash will overshadow the scarce financial resources (Citrin, 2006). In other words, if a pastor fails to fundraise for the ministry, they have less income which makes it difficult to stick to the budget because the pastor would need to prioritize some things over others ( Figure 1).
The number of pastors who selected time management as a challenge was 11 (20.8% of the respondents). Only 7 pastors (13.2% of the respondents) highlighted other challenges which included issues of team work, commitment of members to church activities, church growth strategies, retention of members, personnel management and resource management, which can all be classified as church management and administration issues. These findings indicate that pastors are facing more management challenges than spiritual challenges. Such was the case in a study by Irwin and Roller (2000) which saw the top five listed challenges by the pastors in that study being those which dealt with the organizational aspect of ministry.
Interesting to note in the study by Irwin and Roller (2000) is the fact that the pastors felt they faced these management challenges due to lack of proper management skills development during their pastoral training. The researcher thus did a further analysis of the challenges faced by pastors in relation to their ministerial qualifications, so as to ascertain whether management skills were being developed in the pastoral preparation programs and whether those with fewer qualifications experienced more management challenges than those with higher qualifications (Table 1).
Results shown in Table 1 indicate that, of the diploma holders, 73.3% seemed to face fundraising challenges, while 33.3% had challenges with managing the church"s budget and leadership development. 52.9% of the degree holders faced fundraising challenges, while 47.1% indicated that they faced challenges managing the church"s budget and leadership development. 66.7% of the certificate holders had challenges with fundraising and 33.3% struggled with managing the church"s budget and leadership development. 66.7% of the respondents who had other ministerial qualifications, faced all the challenges except for time management.
The results showed that the level of qualification a pastor had did not exempt them from facing management  challenges. The fact that even those with high ministerial qualifications are also facing the same problems faced by those with fewer qualifications makes one question the extent to which management skills are being developed in pastoral preparation programs. This then implies that the pastoral preparation programs are not adequately developing proper management skills in pastors to assist them to tackle the management challenges they face in ministry, especially those to do with financial resources management and leadership development.
To what extent do pastoral preparation programs offer management courses to prepare students for effective church management in Zimbabwe?
The Seminary Deans and Senior Pastors were asked about the extent to which their programs explicitly taught management aspects to prepare their pastors in training for effective management of church resources. They responded by highlighting some of the management aspects which they covered in their course content. The consolidated results of the management aspects taught per program are indicated in Table 2. The aspects clearly covered by all the programs are Strategic planning and implementation; Church management and administration; and Conflict resolution and communication, which implies that these subjects have great weight and have been recognized as being imperative by the pastoral preparation programs ( Table 2). Some of the interesting approaches to the development of management skills in the pastoral preparation programs included a course in life management offered by S1, which encourages the students to have strategic plans both for ministry and their personal lives, as a way of making sure their training was not only spiritual but also practical to the extent that the pastors could apply the knowledge they learnt even in the secular world. S3 have a practical approach to some of the management aspects, as they challenge their students to start and maintain a business as part of their financial wisdom diploma.
The senior pastor for C1 has actually designed a church leadership development program which answers Own findings from course content analysis (2017). most of the management and administration issues that pastors face and he has been invited to a couple of seminaries as an external facilitator to implement this program on a part time basis. The senior pastor for C1 mentioned that as an in-house training program they have actually looked at the gaps that seminaries lack. They then address such organizational issues during their pastoral preparation to create that needed balance in their pastors, by utilizing the universal leadership and management principles of business in addition to the basic biblical training which addresses the spiritual aspects.
The seminary deans and senior pastors also gave a copy of their course outlines to the researcher who examined them using content analysis by semantically focusing on the vocabulary in the course outlines to confirm that the pastoral preparation programs were indeed covering the management aspects they had highlighted. The results of the interviews and the content analysis assisted the researcher to deduce the extent to which management aspects were being explicitly taught in the sample pastoral preparation programs, and the results are highlighted in Figure 2. Figure 2 illustrates that church 1 (C1) has management content which covers 70% of the training manual, indicating that they place more value on management skills development of their pastors. The same can be said for seminary 1 (S1) and church 3 (C3) which both had about 60%, of their content concentrating more on the organizational aspects of ministry than the spiritual aspect.
Seminary 3 (S3) and church 2 (C2) were neither here nor there, with 50% of their content addressing management issues and the other 50% addressing spiritual issues, as such it can be said they had created a balance between both aspects. Seminary 2 (S2) had the least management content covered in their curriculum at 25%, meaning they valued developing spiritual skills more than the management skills. Overall, the findings show that all of the pastoral preparation programs the researcher studied have management courses specifically designed to cater for the organizational aspects of a ministry and those designed for the spiritual aspects, though the overall course content for Seminaries was slightly skewed towards the spiritual aspect of ministry. As such, more balance needs to be created in Seminaries, so as to achieve ministry effectiveness as proffered by Oluwasegun (2016).
In order to further determine the overall extent to which pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe explicitly teach management aspects, the researcher also asked the pastors to indicate the management aspects they had been taught during their pastoral preparation from a list given to them. The responses are recorded in Figure 3.
The respondents indicated in Figure 3 above, that the management aspect covered the most during the pastoral training had been Conflict resolution and communication skills with 92.5% of the respondents stating they had been taught this aspect during their pastoral preparation. A total percentage of 90.6% of the respondents had also covered Church management/administration.
Those who had covered strategic planning and implementation were 73.6%. This went hand in hand with the information extracted from the face-to face interviews with the Deans and Senior Pastors in Table 2, which showed that all the pastoral preparation programs which participated in the study taught these three management aspects. Overall most of the management aspects recorded above 50% meaning the pastors had covered the said aspects during their pastoral preparation. This contradicts the point raised by Cohall and Cooper (2010), Irwin and Roller (2000) and Oosthuizen (2015) who were of the understanding that the church is exposed to insufficient education in management principles and skills through formal education offered in seminaries.
There were some exceptions however, which did not get more than half of the respondents mentioning that they had been taught as indicated in Figure 3. These were organizational development and design which registered 54.7% of the respondents who stated they had not learnt this particular management aspect during their training, making it the least taught management aspect; Fundraising and budgeting was the other aspect which recorded 49.1% of the respondents who said they did not learn the aspects; and Financial management and use of financial control systems was another aspect which recorded 43.4% of the respondents who mentioned same.
However, the overall trend in Figure 3 shows that most pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe teach management aspects though at varied levels with churches which do in-house training covering management aspects more explicitly than the seminaries. This is supported by the data collected from the interviews, and the content analysis of the course outlines which clearly showed similarities between the management aspects highlighted by the seminary deans and senior pastors in Table 2, the management aspects identified from the course outlines, and the management aspects indicated in Figure 3, as having been taught to more than half of the respondents.
Even though the combined results indicate that preparation programs in Zimbabwe are putting an effort into developing management skills in pastors, it is important to note that the idea is not just to develop any management skills, but it is to develop the ones that lead  to ministry effectiveness. The seminary deans and senior pastors all agree with this view as they felt that proper management skills development in pastors has a great impact on ministry effectiveness especially on effective decision making and allocation of church resources. This is the same stance taken by Griffin (2015) who maintains that the right management skills development in pastors lead to effectiveness. Smith and Wright (2011) also share the same sentiments by mentioning that the development of management skills in pastors would lead to an improvement in decision making, as pastors will now be thinking and planning in the long term and not on short term basis.

Do evangelical and Pentecostal pastors perceive that they have been adequately trained and prepared for effective church management?
The researcher sought to find out the respondents" levels of perception with regards their preparation for effective church management. The statements in Table 3 were measured using a 5-level Likert scale where, 1=strongly agree (SA); 2=agree (A); 3=neutral (N); 4=disagree (D); 5=strongly disagree (SD).
The findings in Table 3, suggest that pastors have vacillating feelings about their level of preparation for church management, with more than a fifth of them failing to state their perceptions for all questions which were associated with management issues, which substantiates a study by Irwin and Roller (2000) who also noticed the same ambivalent feelings in the pastors in their study.
When combining the "strongly agree" and "agree" categories a greater part of the sample of 84.9% seemed satisfied with their spiritual training received prior to entering ministry. 56.6% of the respondents seemed satisfied with their management training received prior to entering ministry if the "strongly agree", and "agree" categories were combined, however a sizeable 39.6% were not sure if they received adequate management training. This indicated that pastoral preparation programs concentrated more on the spiritual aspects.
In fact, the same proportion of 56.6% agreed with the statement that "church leadership training concentrates more on the spiritual aspects than the organizational aspects", with 28.3% not sure whether to agree or disagree with the statement. However this did not translate to mean that the content taught is not balanced enough to prepare the pastors to handle both the spiritual and management aspects of the ministry.
Despite a sample of 52.9% feeling they had not received adequate training and wishing they had been given better training in management issues prior to becoming a pastor, a more modest majority of 62.3% of the sample seemed to feel successful when it came to managing their churches if the "strongly agree" and "agree" categories were combined. Though a solid majority of 73.6% seemed satisfied with their level of management skills for ministry, 66% felt that their ministries would be more effective if they had better management skills, meaning there are some skills that some of the pastors who fell in the 73.6% felt they lacked and could further develop if the "strongly agree", and "agree" categories were combined.
Overall, the pastors of the study group seemed very satisfied with their spiritual training which was in agreement with conclusions made by Weese (1993) who mentioned that pastoral preparation programs teach spiritual aspects better, thus supporting the statement that said "church leadership training concentrates more on the spiritual aspects than the organizational aspects". Literature review indicated pastoral students who seemed dissatisfied with their training in management issues (Warford, 2007), and others who were somewhat satisfied, with about half of the sample in a study by Conway in 1991 indicating they were satisfied with their preparation (Chaves and Miller, 1999).  The respondents in this particular research study seemed moderately satisfied with their training for effective church. This could be attributed to the fact that the respondents understood the importance of management skills for ministry effectiveness, as such they were able to identify the weaknesses of their training. Figure 4 depicts the pastor"s responses when asked to rate the importance of the different eight management skills. 92.4 to 100% of the respondents felt the skills were important in attaining ministry effectiveness (after combining the "very important" and "important" categories).
Another reason why the respondents might have felt their preparation for effective management was moderate, could be explained by the fact that almost the entire sample at 98.1% understood that a church is not only a spiritual entity but it is also an organization which means that as a pastor they are responsible for leading both aspects of the ministry. However, to do this they would need to have more management skills developed in them if they are to attain ministry effectiveness.
Furthermore, 92.4% were actually of the conviction that to be a good pastor one needs to be a good manager, and a larger proportion at 94.3% acknowledged that pastors need good management skills to effectively manage the church resources. Failure to do this would lead to ministry inefficiency as mentioned by Boersma (1988) cited in Woodruff (2004) and (Griffin 2015) who posit that pastors need to develop good management skills, as these management skills lead to ministry effectiveness. These responses are summarised in Table  4, and were measured on a 5-level Likert scale: 1=strongly agree (SA); 2=agree (A); 3=neutral (N); 4=disagree (D); 5=strongly disagree (SD). All these reasons could explain why the pastors felt their management training was moderate and thus were inclined to advocate for more management training, as shown by their keen interest to attend short management courses if given the opportunity, with 91% of the respondents indicating such interest as shown in Figure  5. Both in-house trained pastors and those trained in seminaries actually felt that their training programs lacked the ability to train them for some unforeseen future management challenges due to globalization and the dynamism of the world.
So this called for continuous learning on their part for personal development so as to gain knowledge, avoid limitation of scope, enhance their effectiveness, to be relevant and to keep abreast of new management and leadership concepts, and so that they can relate with their congregates on both the spiritual level and their secular world businesswise, thus making them more relevant in their congregates lives overall. Such were the views of the Seminary Deans and Senior Pastors when they were interviewed. These same respondents felt that it is imperative for pastors to upgrade themselves periodically to keep up with the demands of ministry because a lot of damage was being caused by pastors who refused to be trained.
Some pastors mentioned that they would attend management courses as a refresher course because some management aspects are constantly evolving, thus there is need for continuous development since the world and ministry are both dynamic, so pastors need to understand that they need management skills just as much as they need spiritual understanding, hence management skills are a "need" not a "want", making them a basic necessity for every pastor if they are to attain ministry effectiveness. This is supported by Dubin (2012), Drucker (2009) and Schor et al. (1995), who all maintain that it is imperative for all leaders to obtain management skills if the organization they are leading is to attain optimal efficiency and effectiveness. Some pastors felt that the ministry training of yesteryear did not prepare them enough for current turns of events, technology and the way organizations are being run nowadays, as such constant reading and learning would assist them to acquire the required skills and knowledge because for a pastor to continue leading, they must continue learning. According to these pastors "a leader is a reader and a reader continues to be effective in leading".

What management aspects can be incorporated into the course offerings of pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe to enable effective church management?
In response to this research question, the respondents gave diverse answers. The researcher asked the Seminary Deans and the Senior Pastors to suggest the management aspects they felt would be most beneficial to the pastors if they were incorporated into the course outline of the pastoral preparation programs. The suggested management aspects are listed in Table 5, together with the associated contribution that the aspect would make towards effective church management.
The management aspects listed in Table 5 corresponded to those mentioned in studies done by Andrews and Roller (2011) and (Weese, 1993). However, these studies only listed the alternative aspects and did not elaborate on the contribution that the particular management aspect would bring towards the attainment of effective church management in ministries and also how these aspects would assist the pastors in general 91% 9% Yes No

Management course which would be most beneficial if assimilated Suggested contribution towards effective church management
Total life management If one can manage their own life then they can manage other things. The interviewee then quoted from Luke 16:10 "Whoever is faithful with very little will also be faithful with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much" Church governance It would deal with issues of pastors not abusing church resources and how to ethically manage the church resources

Leadership development
It would assist in keeping pastors relevant in all aspects with regards how they interact and relate with their members. The pastors will also be able to identify people"s potentials and thus harness this talent, develop it further for the synergistic effect which would result in ministry effectiveness

Management and administration
The pastors would be knowledgeable on the importance of putting proper systems in place for effective management and administration of church resources

Financial Management
Pastors can be taught how to budget, fundraise and keep proper records on the church"s income and expenditure for better accountability. Financial prudence brings about integrity as the pastor will be able to account fully for the church"s financial resources. The scandals on embezzlement due to pastor"s ignorance of basic financial management principles would also be reduced because the pastor will have a feel and background of financial issues

Organisational development and design
Understanding the dynamics in an organization will assist pastors to improve on what is already there and to be proactive instead of reactive since the environment they operate in is constantly changing

Resource Management
It would assist with correcting a lot of error in Christian gospel which stems from a desperation to get resources or to hide resources leading to the downfall of a church. Pastors will be able to set budgets and invest the church finances for project management in the future

Strategic planning
The backbone of ministry requires a non-spiritual heavy aspect that requires resources, planning and leadership. So strategic planning would bring about sustainability of the churches due to long term planning and the provision for succession. Effectiveness is also brought about in that the churches expenses will be met on time and the church will not have to operate in debt Human resource management Would cater to the needs of the church staff and the pastor to make sure that they are covered when they retire, or in case they get ill or any of their family members is ill or even dies. This would give the staff job security

Information technology
It would also make the management of finances, humans and assets much easier. It would assist with project management as some churches do different projects, examples being building projects and running orphanages, which need proper monitoring and budgeting of resources Source: Own findings from face to face interviews (2017).
which is the gap this research has addressed. The dean for S1 and the senior pastor for C2 suggested that ministries would be more effective if the pastors embraced information technology and used this for management and administration issues. Smith and Wright (2011) support this idea by stating that churches should use church management software (CMS) because it would assist them by doing all the management activities without bias and legally especially the financial control systems, thus reducing issues of embezzlement and bringing in matters of financial prudence and integrity.
The senior pastor for C3 concurred with the idea of embracing information technology, and gave an example of the system that his church was using named Melivo Church Dynamics, which is an i-cloud based management application designed to simplify the church management and administration process encompassing people management, church program control, church database management, and financial management into one seamless administration process. The system covers organizational development and design issues, automates all communication, has discipleship processes to assist pastors with their human resources management, has an accounting package which addresses financial issues and provides for resources management through the asset management module. It also addresses events management and project management thus looking into strategic planning and implementation issues, managerial issues and the leadership issues of the church.
Seminary deans and senior pastors were also asked how practical it was to incorporate these management aspects into their course outlines. They each explicitly stated that it was more than practical to do so because to run and sustain a church successfully requires management skills. In their opinion management issues have a direct impact on ministry effectiveness, and would assist churches to stop being reactional to situations but to become more proactive. It would also remove the notion that the application of proper management practices for effectiveness is secular and should not be accommodated within the church organization.
In fact the senior pastor for C2 and the dean for S3 advocated for the course outline to tilt more towards the development of management skills so as not to produce leaders who are unable to function in important organizational aspects of the church which include resource management. The dean for S2 mentioned that management concepts were necessary and must be added to the curriculum because failure to manage the church resources by pastors would result in a negative impact on ministry effectiveness regardless of the pastor being a "powerful and gifted" preacher, as a result there is a need to balance the spiritual and the management issues of a ministry. The dean for S3 and the senior pastor for C3 also argued along those same lines as they mentioned that most of the work of a pastor is not done on the pulpit but it"s done as soon as the preacher steps off the podium after delivering the Sunday sermon.
To further respond to the aforementioned research question 4, the researcher also asked the pastors to indicate three short management courses they would attend if given the opportunity to further develop their management skills. This allowed the researcher to triangulate the data and come up with proper recommendations, which catered for both the pastoral preparation programs and the pastoral students, regarding the amalgamation of biblical studies with business studies. This information is thus very helpful in determining which management aspects pastoral preparation programs should focus on when amending their curriculum to include management skills development for effective church management. Figure 6 shows the overall results for all the courses as highlighted by the respondents. Figure 6 shows that the number of pastors who indicated their interest in attending a short course in strategic planning and implementation was 25 pastors (47.2% of the respondents) which was the highest

Management course
Management aspects pastors interested in attending frequency, same as that for the short course in Organizational development and design. The number of pastors who showed interest in financial management and use of financial control systems was 22 pastors (41.5% of the respondents). The top three courses selected were strategic planning and implementation, organizational development and design; financial management and use of financial control systems.
It is however interesting to note that even though 91% of the respondents as shown in Figure 5 highlighted their interest to attend management courses, none of the management aspects registered more than 27 pastors (50% of the respondents or more) as shown in Figure 6. It is also interesting to note that the number of pastors facing a particular challenge did not correspond with the number of pastors who would attend a management course addressing that challenge.
Of the 66% of pastors facing fundraising challenges in Figure 1 only 32% indicated that they would attend a course in fundraising and budgeting in Figure 6, and of the 39.6% of pastors facing challenges in managing the church"s budget only 24.5% would attend a course in church management/administration. The number of pastors who selected time management as a challenge was only 11 (20.8% of the respondents) which explains why less pastors were interested in attending a course on time management with only 9 pastors (17% of the respondents) registering their interest.
Of the respondents, 13 pastors (24.5%) were each interested in attending conflict resolution and church management/administration which would assist with those problems stated as "other challenges faced by pastors", and 11 pastors (20.8% of the respondents) were willing to attend a course in coordinating church events which could assist in getting members interested in participating more.
Five pastors (9.4% of the respondents), highlighted that they would not attend any short courses on management because they had tight schedules, however they were in full support of the idea that pastoral preparation programs should offer the courses as part of continuing education. This idea was also recommended by Andrews andRoller (2011), Dobson (2002) and Hendriks (2004) who stated that pastoral preparation programs should offer practical continuing education to pastors by teaching them the current management skills they need in today"s culture.
Another pastor commented that they would not attend the courses because even though the programs could be good for church administration, more energy must be exerted to soul winning because it is more important for a pastor to "meet with God and be led by the Holy Spirit than any seminary education because the great commission emphasizes on the saving of souls more than church administration." This pastor felt that if God has called a person to ministry to lead others, then God will send that individual with enough attributes and skills to do the job.
Conversely, those pastors who indicated that they would attend the management courses felt that in as much as a pastor receives a calling from God and it is the Holy Spirit who gives the gifts to function through them, one still needs to acquire knowledge, through studying the Bible and other courses which deal with how to manage a church as an organization not only as a spiritual centre. These same respondents said churches needed to stop spiritualizing and basing everything on faith as this has affected effectiveness and efficiency of pastors in varying ways and resulted in poor management of church resources which has led to poor retention of church members and most church splits. Deans and Senior Pastors concurred with these sentiments in the interviews.
According to the same respondents, churches should instead have a holistic approach to everything and invest in developing management skills in their pastors as they are imperative considering that ministry is 20% spiritual and 80% administration. So pastors accordingly need to be relevant in all aspects and they can only do this by understanding that the church is both a spiritual and organizational entity which is complex and challenging to lead, as such ministry effectiveness can only be attained through a multi-faceted ministerial training.
Which could explain why when the respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement that "some management lessons can be drawn from business publications for ministry efficiency and effectiveness", 49% "strongly agreed" and 47.2% "agreed", thus totaling 96.2% of the respondents who could be said to support the adoption of management principles for ministry effectiveness as indicated in Table 4. These respondents therefore felt that the amalgamation of management aspects with biblical studies would positively contribute towards attaining ministry effectiveness.
Some of the aspects which were suggested were strategic planning and implementation, organizational development and design, leadership development, fundraising, financial management and accounting, management information systems, conflict management and human resources management, as most pastors indicated they were facing many challenges with regards some of these management aspects. This is in agreement with studies done by Andrews and Roller (2011) and Weese (1993) who identified with most of the management aspects suggested earlier as the pastors in their own studies had also highlighted the same subjects and more; and some researches highlighted by Burns and Hunt (1995) and Smith and Wright (2011). Stevens et al. (1996) also identified the same management aspects above as being necessary for assimilation into the pastoral preparation programs course content so as to balance out the spiritual aspect and the organization aspect of ministry.
Overall, it is apparent that the courses selected by the respondents and suggested by the Deans and Senior Pastors would change much of how pastoral preparation programs train pastors for effective church management. They may also suggest that pastoral preparation programs do a better job at providing resources for pastors to develop management skills. Over the years various disciplines have been added to the curriculum to expand the range of theological education more into pastoral practice in America, with many of their Seminaries having engaged in some type of curriculum revision or refinement over the past decade (Callahan, 2013). Today a number of Seminaries in America have gone beyond the traditional church leadership training to offer more courses in church administration and management (ibid). England actually has a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) course specifically designed for church management offered in the Seminary (Protherough and Pick, 2002). Pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe could incorporate more management courses in their course outlines as well.

Ministry challenges faced by pastors
Pastors met management related challenges more than they met spiritually related challenges, which implied that pastors during their training were prepared to deal with the spiritually related challenges more than they were prepared to deal with the management related challenges. This was in agreement with a study done by Cole (2008) which saw pastors indicating that the basic preparation they had received did not prepare them for the transition from being a student to being a full time minister as they were overwhelmed with dealing with the non-spiritual aspects of running a ministry. The most common challenges the respondents in this study experienced as indicated in Figure 2 were fundraising, managing the church"s budget and leadership development. This is in agreement with a study by Andrews and Roller (2011) who also had pastors in their study indicate the above challenges amongst many other challenges.
The challenges faced in this particular study appeared to be the same regardless of the years of pastoral experience, size of the congregation, or the ministerial qualifications of the pastors. More than half of the respondents indicated that they faced fundraising challenges and just below half of the respondents indicated that they faced challenges when it came to managing the church"s budget and leadership development. This could be because not many pastoral preparation programs teach the management aspect of fundraising and budgeting as indicated in Table 2. This was also proven in Table 1 which highlighted that more Chatira and Mwenje 115 than half of the respondents per ministerial qualification indicated that they faced fundraising problems and slightly more than a third per ministerial qualification indicated that they had challenges in managing the church"s budget and leadership development.
The other challenges which the pastors faced were time management, commitment of members to church activities, church growth strategies, retention of members, personnel management and resource management. All these challenges can be said to deal with the organizational aspect of ministry. This would explain why a sizeable amount of pastors felt their ministries would be more effective if they had better management skills as indicated in Table 3. These were also the same sentiments of the pastors in a study by Irwin and Roller (2000) who also highlighted most of these challenges and felt the pastoral preparation programs needed to concentrate more on the organizational aspect of ministry in order to develop the much needed management skills in pastors prior to their becoming ministers.

Extent to which management courses are offered during pastoral training
The course content offered in pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe is more skewed towards the spiritual aspect of ministry than the organizational aspect which suggests that more balance needs to be created if ministry effectiveness is going to be attained, as alluded to by Oluwasegun (2016).
This research saw almost the entire sample in Table 4 indicating that they felt "the church is not only a spiritual entity but is also an organization" and that it is the pastor who is responsible for leading both the spiritual and organizational aspects, which indicated that there is a need to balance the two aspects when preparing the pastors. This is in agreement with findings from previous researches and literature reviewed which highlighted the imbalance in the course content of pastoral preparation programs (Cole, 2008;Hoge and Wenger, 2005;Irwin and Roller, 2000;Rush, 2003;Weese, 1993;Woodruff, 2004;Woodyard, 1994).
As such, upon a semantic study of the course outlines and leadership training modules it was obvious that pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe have put an effort into including management aspects into their teaching material in an effort to cater for the organizational aspect of a ministry thus attempting to create the required balance between the spiritual aspect and the organizational aspect. This is shown in Table 2 and Figure 3, which indicate that all pastoral preparation programs in the study teach the management aspects of strategic planning and implementation, conflict resolution and communication skills, coordinating church events, church management and administration, financial management and time management. This could imply that most pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe cover the above mentioned management aspects. This is commendable because in as much as pastoral preparation programs should continue to focus on developing the spiritual aspects they should do so while providing opportunity to the pastors to learn basic management skills. The reason being that most church activities are at the heart of sound management and require the application of management functions which are critical for ministry operation (Markham and Warder, 2016;Schoonover, 2013). It is also because once a pastor graduates from the pastoral preparation program and enters into the pastorate, their initial need is to know how to manage the ministry rather than to know the content of ministry. Once they understand the basics of management, then the theological foundation becomes their strongest need even as they continue to develop their ministerial skills.
It can be deduced from the research that the pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe have to a moderate extent addressed the issue of management skills development in pastors by trying to be innovative with some adopting successful management principles from business and incorporating them with their studies, and others even forming strategic alliances between Seminaries and business facilitators to address the organizational aspects not covered in the curriculum. The reason for this innovativeness can be explained by the fact that the Seminary Deans and Senior Pastors all recognize that the impact of management skills development in pastors would be great and very positive towards achieving ministry effectiveness as highlighted by previous research findings which have made it almost unquestionable that if any organization wants to be effective they must have competent skillful leaders (Drucker, 2009;Dubin, 2012;Schor et al., 1995). As such pastoral preparation programs in Zimbabwe see the need to modify their course content.

Perception of the pastors regarding their preparation for church management
The pastors who attended the preparation programs in Zimbabwe were not entirely satisfied with their preparation for effective church management. The results indicate that better management skills development is necessary in pastoral preparation programs if the pastors are going to achieve effective church management of resources after graduation.
Even though a huge proportion of the sample felt the training was beneficial and had prepared them to tackle ministry challenges, when it came to preparation for church management, most of the pastors felt that their training was more skewed towards the spiritual aspect than the organizational aspect, as the majority felt their spiritual training was adequate but their management training was not as shown in Table 3. These findings are supported by literature from previous studies which indicated that pastors in different studies had also displayed their discontent with regards their management preparation (Chaves and Miller, 1999;Dobson, 2002;Scholl, 2009;Warford, 2007).
Even though a small number of the pastors were unsure of how they felt about their management preparation during pastoral training, it was clear that of those who were certain of their feelings, most of them felt ill equipped to deal with church management issues, and wished that they had received better management training before they became pastors.
This was evidenced by the fact that a vast majority of the pastors felt that their ministries would be more effective if they had better management skills as indicated in Table 3. This was in total agreement with previous studies by Irwin and Roller (2000), Rush (2003) and Warford (2007).
This also indicates that the pastors acknowledge the important role that management skills play in effective church management as shown in Table 4 where a solid majority of the pastors agreed that "pastors need good skills to effectively manage church resources". This was also highlighted in Figure 4, where almost the entire sample agreed on the importance of management skills towards attaining ministry effectiveness.
As such it can be deduced that there is a cry from the pastors to be assisted to gain the necessary skills they need for effective church management. This is seen in Figure 5 where almost the entire sample indicated that they would attend short courses in management if they were offered. This indicated that the current pastors would benefit by Seminaries offering courses relating to specific management skills needed by pastors especially relating to the management challenges they are facing in ministry. This was however, in contradiction with a research done by Conway in 1991 which saw the pastors indicating that they would not attend any management courses even if they were on offer in by Seminaries (Chaves and Miller, 1999).
Since the study noted that, pastors clearly place high importance on the development of management skills towards ministry effectiveness, as evidenced by the fact that almost the entire sample was more than willing to attend short courses in management if given the opportunity. It is therefore recommended that pastoral preparation programs introduce continual education. The seminaries should introduce continual education seminars where they will teach the current management skills that pastors need for effective church management.
The continuing education can be used to present and refine specific management skills not addressed by the formal education. The seminaries should also offer bridging courses for management skills development, to cater for those who did their management training yesteryear. These bridging courses would be focusing on the connections between the formal education received and the management issues faced in ministry. This move will make ministries more effective because Pastors will be able to tie the education they receive to their current experience.
In light with the research finding that indicated that more than half of the pastors wished they had better management training, it is also recommended that Seminaries utilize business persons as resources in developing the management skills in Pastors either directly or indirectly. Management courses should be facilitated by practicing business persons or successful yet enterprising pastors who run a successful business or more. This creates a platform for the introduction of interdisciplinary programs which combine pastoral ministry and business content for quality pastoral training. This will also enable the seminaries to tap into the knowledge base of business persons and would assist the pastors with receiving information for current management problems and through structured mentorship.
Senior pastors for in-house training programs should explore the possibility of collaborating with business schools or persons to create effective training programs that include management skills development of their Pastors. This is a valuable learning experience that will enhance the pastors" management knowledge and skills. This investment in their leadership development in management skills will definitely return many times over through more effective and efficient management of church resources by the pastors.

Incorporation of management aspects into the course outlines of pastoral preparation programs
Pastoral preparation programs are lacking in their delivery of management skills development in pastors, and therefore need to consider incorporating more management aspects like Strategic planning and implementation, Financial management and the use of internal control systems, and Organisational development and design into their course outlines in order to prepare the pastors for effective church management of resources. This is in agreement with a study by Hoge and Wenger (2005) which recommended an improvement in management preparation in Seminaries and literature review from Austin-Roberson (2009), Brown (2005), Callahan (2013), Dobson (2002) and Turner (2011) which strongly supports that pastors need to be taught the importance and effectiveness of applying those three management aspects in their churches.
The seminary deans and senior pastors in this study all seem to agree with the idea to incorporate more management aspects into their course outlines because when they were asked to suggest management aspects they felt would be beneficial to the pastors if incorporated Chatira and Mwenje 117 into the course content of pastoral preparation programs, they were more than happy to provide a list of suggestions which were recorded in Table 5. The other indicator was again when they were asked whose responsibility it was to develop management skills in pastors, they all leaned towards the overall responsibility being that of pastoral preparation programs. This however, was not in agreement with the research findings by Conway in his 1991 study, which showed that Seminary leaders were not uniformly supportive of the idea of taking the responsibility (Chaves and Miller, 1999) but felt that it was the responsibility of the pastors as individual"s to develop the necessary management skills for effective church management. However, the fact that the seminary deans and senior pastors in this study felt it was their responsibility to develop management skills in the pastors implies that they realize that pastors have the potential to be more effective if pastoral preparation programs take up the responsibility to develop the needed management skills in them, instead of leaving the responsibility to the pastors to educate themselves as has been the case. This led the researcher to insinuate that this could be the reason why the pastors in Zimbabwe felt they had been prepared more with regards the spiritual aspect than the management aspect as shown in Table 3.
With a greater part of the pastors agreeing that to be a good pastor one needs to be a good manager as shown in Table 4, it translates to mean that pastors require good management skills and these management skills can be attained in many different ways. One such way is to have them taught to the pastors during their pastoral preparation process as suggested by Allen (2002), Carlopio and Andrewartha (2012) and Parker and Stone (2003). Table 2 showed that all the pastoral preparation programs in this study had integrated some aspects of management in their course outlines.
The other way for pastors to develop management skills is by adopting management principles from the secular world and this idea was supported by almost the entire sample as indicated in Table 4, when they agreed with the statement that "some management lessons can be drawn from business publications for ministry efficiency and effectiveness." The Seminary Deans and Senior Pastors also agreed with this idea, as a few of them had already started incorporating some business principles in their preparation of the pastors for effective church management. This move is supported by Andrews andRoller (2011) andHendriks (2004). Burger (2004) further states that, it is already apparent that increasing numbers of pastors are influenced by business publications because the lessons taken from these publications are being incorporated in their ministries.
After all management principles have a universal application in every organization according to Drucker (2009) andFayol (1949). So if a church is an organization (Barnard, 1948) then it is correct to propose that management principles apply to the church as an organization. If again the application of good management skills leads to organizational effectiveness, and good management skills can be developed through learning of management concepts, then it follows that management skills development leads to organizational effectiveness which was highlighted by Sweeney and McFarlin (2001). This would then imply that for the pastors to effectively manage the ministry they need to have their management skills developed during their foundational years of learning (Schor et al., 1995).
So when the pastors were asked to indicate which three management aspects they would like to learn; and when the seminary deans and senior pastors were asked for suggestions of management courses that would benefit the pastors if incorporated into their course outlines they all explicitly identified strategic planning and implementation, organizational development and design and finance management and use of control systems as indicated in Figure 6 and Table 5, which according to previous literature can lead to ministry effectiveness Austin-Roberson (2009), Brown (2005), Callahan (2013), Dobson (2002) and Turner (2011).
Though all of the pastoral preparation programs in this study seemed to be offering Strategic planning and implementation it seemed some of the other programs which were not included in the content analysis might not, hence the indication by a moderate number of the respondents to be interested in learning more about it. The pastoral preparation programs should thus consider adding these management aspects to their course outlines and leadership training manuals, as all the seminary deans and senior pastors were very confident, that this is very practical and can be done because they were already implementing it. However, their implementation can be improved to a larger extent given that, not many pastors were satisfied with their management training.
So in addition to preparing pastors in the theological disciplines, it is therefore recommended that pastoral preparation programs offer management courses in strategic planning and implementation; financial management and the use of financial control systems; and organizational development and design. The development of these management skills in pastors can lead to ministry effectiveness and would assist pastors to reduce issues of embezzlement, stagnation of the church, mass migration of congregates, removal of pastors from office over issues of mismanagement and abuse of church resources.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ON STUDY
Further studies covering a larger cross-section of churches could provide a better basis for generalizations of the results provided herein. Additional questions could be added to provide a more in-depth analysis of the impact of management skills in effective church management. A longitudinal research which follows the development of management skills in pastoral preparation programs over different timelines can be done so as to trace a trend. More research is also needed to determine which management theories are applicable to church leadership and to develop new theories on effective church management. It is hoped that this study will encourage further research to confirm that the goal of every seminary should be to prepare pastors with regards to both spiritual and organizational aspects of a ministry for effective church management, bearing in mind the fact that society is always changing and churches need to move with the times. Regardless, these results indicate that with proper course outline and leadership training manual considerations, management skills in pastors can be developed resulting in pastors achieving ministry effectiveness much the same way as business firms.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
The management theory applied in business can be generalized to extend to the church as well. The adoption of some secular management principles and practices into the church systems can lead to ministry effectiveness.
Furthermore, management skills development in pastoral preparation programs can lead to effective church management.