The AP reports today on several new graduate programs being offered by colleges and universities in church management. Masters’ programs have been launched at Duquesne University and Boston College, and Villanova University will start a program this summer.

The programs will cover areas such as management of personnel, finances, and all aspects of church business. Despite the objections of some church people that churches should be run by clergy in cooperation with volunteer member involvement, the number of church scandals have created a need—and a market—for well educated and trained church managers to institute policies and practices to guarantee transparency and accountability in church operations. The story reports that early enrollees are largely clergy, which would seem to counter the fears of those who worry that a “church management” approach might weaken the volunteer, charitable impulse that is supposed to be central to congregational life.

To be sure, failure to operate by good management practices has left many churches wide open to abusive and otherwise unprincipled clergy and staff. Citing the case of a priest who embezzled over a million dollars from his Connecticut parish:

“A private detective hired in 2006 to investigate…the Rev. Michael Jude Fay, found that he had secret bank accounts and flagrantly abused church credit cards.

“Anything he wanted, he charged. And nobody stopped him for years and years and years,” said investigator Vito Colucci Jr. “There was no accountability.”

I’m reminded of the signs that one sees occasionally beside the cash registers of little mom & pop stores: “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.” Perhaps in regard to church transparency and accountability, there could be a similar saw: “In God We Trust, Everyone Else We Supervise Closely.”

I think it’s a good trend. Certainly there will wind up being unprincipled church managers, but hopefully congregations will have learned to supervise the managers who supervise everything else.

Here’s to more transparency and accountability in every place where they are currently lacking.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen