Date: May 15, 2026
“The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.” – Adam Smith
Administration is rarely glamorous. My days are mostly filled with emailing, calendar invites, and clicking buttons on web sites. Breaking these tasks down even further to their components, my job is to take in a request or begin a routine responsibility, compare that task with existing policy and/or practice, and either complete the request if the task complies or send the request back to its originator with an error message.
If this language sounds computer-y, that’s because it is. There is a reason that rank-and-file office administrators were among the first to adopt computers into their workflow. Steve Jobs once described the computer as a “bicycle for our minds.” Bicycles are tools to translate work into motion as efficiently as possible. Computers are tools to turn data into useful results as efficiently as possible. Administrators function as tools to turn institutional resources and data into results as efficiently as possible.
Put another way, an administrator is like an institution’s bicycle. Institutions can go very far with a well-tuned and skilled administrator. On the other hand, institutions can crash pretty quickly if administration is “rusty.”
When you apply the administrator to a mission (profit, diseases cured, widgets produced, etc.), you ideally enhance the efficacy of that mission. I believe something very interesting (and dare I say sacramental) happens when that mission is the building of God’s Kingdom. Every email I send, every problem I solve, and every issue I anticipate is one more bit of friction saved on the part of the requestor. If that requestor is an ordained or lay minister, the lessened friction means they have more energy to spare in building God’s Kingdom through preaching, laying on hands, administering the Sacraments, etc.
The Church needs generalists, especially in a reality where many parishes are lucky to have a part-time priest, let alone an administrator. However, I caution against the lionization of the generalist. Nobody is good at everything, but everybody is great at something. My professional mission is to make the work of the minister/faculty/employer easier so they can do more work for the same amount of energy. I encourage the reader to reflect on their own strengths, and see how they might further the mission of God by specializing.
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 12:12, NRSVue
Dan Coleman, MPA
Housing and Admissions Coordinator
Virginia Theological Seminary