FILING FEATURES


JOHN Truscott is currently contributing a number of one-off articles.


So far he has covered ‘Worrying websites’, ‘Global giving’, ‘Changing churches’, ‘Eco-education’, ‘Difficult decisions’, ‘Able Assistants’, ‘Mission metrics’, ‘Staff sessions’ and ‘Handover help’. This time he provides the basis for a possible filing system for church operations.


THE design of a resources filing system, whether for books, hard copy paper, emails or digital files, is an important feature of documentation. The key issue is how you categorise what you have to file. You need a system that makes it easy to locate anything and retrieve it. That is what a filing system is for.


After many years of working in church operations, my filing system categorisation for my subject area and what I write has been tweaked many times but the basic structure has served me well for many years. I use a different system for my professional client work because there I need to categorise under assignments in training and consultancy by name and date and that system is almost wholly digital. What I describe here is a means of analysing church operations, church life and Christian discipleship. This works for the books in my library, articles and blogs I want to keep, and resources I write. This then becomes the way I naturally think about my subject and the resources I write for my website. What I describe may seem rather paper-based because it is based on physical resources, but the idea works just as well for digital too.


If it helps others, not necessarily to be copied but to be used as an example which can be adapted, I will explain how it works. There is already a short illustration of some of this in a long-standing article on my website1 is in rather more detail.


Years ago an Anglican Vicar called Michael Saward devised a pre-digital filing system for clergy which many used. It was, however, very thorough and had categories that most people would never need. In this system I have aimed for something simple. It won’t be right for Ministers but I am hoping it will suit Operations Managers and Church Administrators, and other church staff may find that they can use parts of it. See what you think.


Top level categories


I have two main categories for my work which is where most things are, two others to encompass church life and a fifth one for personal discipleship. The two work ones are:


• Operations – people • Operations – organisation Then my other categories are • Church life • Church issues • Discipleship


, but here it


It is built on a number of principles that I have described elsewhere2 as follows.


but some key features are


1 Each level or layer of categorisation has as few headings as possible. It is then usually obvious which heading anything goes under. The aim is to keep the whole filing system as simple as possible.


2 I have three layers for each category, one top level heading and two levels of sub-heads that allow me to break the top level heading into clear sections.


3 The whole idea is to enable me to find items quickly. So my bookcases work to this system, but I also have an Access database of all my resources so that if I cannot think which category something has been filed under I can quickly find its category on the database.


So my work and faith books, my cuttings, articles and blogs are filed under one of only five categories. The advantage of this is that it is obvious in which of the five something will be filed. The slight disadvantage is that there are occasional items that do not sit neatly in one of these five. Many items have a secondary category because they naturally fit into more than one of these. But the operations categories are always the primary ones.


Second level categories


The next level gives the main groupings that cover all my needs. So, for my two work categories, these are:


Operations - people P1 Leadership


Operations for leaders


P2 Management Operations for managers P3 Structures


Operations for trustees


Operations - organisation O1 Planning


Operations for planners


O2 Communication Operations for communicators


O3 Administration Operations for administrators


14 Continued on page 16


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