Monthly Archive for September, 2010

47. Defining Terms: # 1- Governance and the Role of the Church Board Chair

Published by Dr. Larry Perkins on September 30, 2010 in Board, Board Chair, Board Governance and Board Member. Closed Tags: , .

In books or articles that discuss the role of a church board or a non-profit charity’s board, the term “governance” occurs frequently. It seems that much of what a church board does today is deemed “good governance.” But what does “governance” mean when the word is applied to a church board? What constitutes “bad governance” and why is this so detrimental to church health? Does this word cover everything a church board does or just one part of its work?  What does a church board chair need to know about governance in order to fulfill his or her responsibility? Is “governance” a biblical concept that nestles snugly within the principles of congregational polity?

To paraphrase a definition offered by G. Douglass Lewis (“Governance: What is it?” Theological Education 44.2.2009, page 26), governance within a local church involves  “the processes by which the structures entrusted by a congregation with authority and spiritual care  discern, plan and make decisions for the purpose of fulfilling the congregation’s mission, with due regard for its values, bylaws, resources, reputation and stakeholders.” Good governance will “provide stability” for the congregation and “allow and encourage movement,” so that over time the faith community achieves it desired vocation and vision.

One of the primary “structures” congregations establish are boards (whether the traditional ‘deacons board’ in Baptist circles, or an ‘elders’ board, or some combination of the two). There is no biblical imperative that requires a church to constitute their key spiritual leadership group as a board. However, in the Canadian context, for a church to be a registered, non-profit charity, it must have a duly constituted board. Because most churches find that status beneficial, they shape this leadership group as a board, but integrate it with the spiritual principles and processes that nourish a healthy church, according to the New Testament.

Church boards, then, must understand the concept of governance, given these realities.

Within the concept of governance purpose, process and care (cf. Lewis’ article) emerge as critical elements. A congregation forms a church board in order to enable it to fulfill its mission. Everything that a board does must advance that mission. This is its primary purpose. If over time this does not occur, then the board is failing to live up to the trust the congregation has given to it. To achieve this requires deep commitment and consistent discipline on the part of the individual board member and the collective group. The board only makes progress in achieving the mission if it develops and pays attention to beneficial processes. Sometimes processes are defined in the bylaws (e.g. certain  items need to have congregational approval), sometimes they are defined by external authorities (e.g. certain annual taxation reports), and sometimes the board itself defines how it will work cooperatively and in a principled manner to achieve good decisions (e.g. decisions by consensus or by motion). A church board employs various means to provide the spiritual care necessary for congregational health. These means include prayer, teaching, policy-decisions, strategic planning, hiring key leaders, conserving resources, managing risk, and communication. A congregation gives a church board the authority necessary to exercise such care on its behalf and for its healthy development.

A church board chair must understand the essence of governance as it is expressed in and through the board’s work. Several aspects are particularly critical:

1. assisting the board to keep its focus on mission — agenda preparation, meeting evaluation, decision-making, accountability;

2. assisting the board to understand process — board education, board orientation, mapping decision pathways, alerting the board to inappropriate behaviour or risk, communicating on behalf of the board, knowing the ‘rules’, i.e. bylaws, legalities, and policies, employee review;

3. assisting the board to exercise spiritual care for the congregation in all it does — not abusing its trust, promoting worshipful work, and exercising its authority in ways that contribute to church health.

The better a chair understands governance, the more ably he or she can enable a church board to function well and continually work towards improvement. Much of this leadership depends upon Spirit-guided common sense and wisdom. This is particularly the case when a board is engaged in intense discussion about an issue. The chair has the responsibility, more than any other board member, to keep everything that happens within the bounds of good governance. When things get disordered, he must help the board members recover and re-establish good order. When proper process is not being followed, he must call the board to account. When spiritual wisdom is needed, he must call the board members to prayer. When relationships between two or more board members become strained, he must work to generate reconciliation. In all of this he is the board’s servant.



46. Decision-making in Church Boards. #4: Innovation, Decisions and the Role of the Chair.

Published by Dr. Larry Perkins on September 22, 2010 in Board, Board Chair and Board Governance. Closed Tags: , , .

How important is innovation in ministry to the health and vitality of your church? What happens if no new ideas about ministry are discussed or approved for implementation by your church board? How many innovations can a church board reasonably expect to process within a year? What role does a church board chair play in the innovation cycle? Generating good ideas and turning them into services that can assist the church achieve its mission requires wisdom, foresight, and discipline. How does your church board encourage innovation in ministry?

Congregations generally tend to be conservative groups, preserving traditions. Even church plants soon develop an ethos that characterizes “the way we do things.” This urge to resist change has a logical origin in the need to preserve the Gospel truth. However, preserving God’s truth does not negate the need to be innovative about sharing the truth, expressing this truth in patterns of leadership, or serving people in your community. Think back over the past several months or years. What was the single, most significant innovation your church board approved? Do you regard it as significant because it advance the congregation’s mission or for some other reason? If you cannot identify one innovation, then probably your church is not growing, you may be experiencing leadership change, your current leaders may have become complacent or burned out, or people may have lost confidence in the vision. Lack of innovation may be symptomatic of agency inertia.

When ministry leaders identify problems and seek creative solutions, innovation will be present. If your church board has not wrestled with an innovative idea in the past year, then perhaps as chair you might ask yourself whether the ministry leadership in the church has lost some momentum, focused on keeping the church machinery going, but no longer aggressively tackling key issues that hinder or advance church health. In your monthly session with the lead pastor you might carefully explore what key issues he is identifying within the congregation and possible solutions he is considering. If you receive a muted response, then perhaps this suggests something more significant is happening in his life.

Who’s accountable for innovation within a congregation? What’s the pathway by which new ideas can be championed, evaluated, and if deemed appropriate, implemented in your church? What role does the church board play in this? Can board members propose new ideas? What about the paid leadership? How would someone in the congregation present a new idea? Do people know how to do this and are they encouraged to do so? When was the last time as a congregation you celebrated together the successful implementation of a new, innovative ministry idea? What kind of excitement did that create among the people?  Perhaps new ideas are not emerging because people in the congregation or on the board do not think they have permission to present them!Maybe some have tried, only to have their ideas ignored, not taken seriously or outright rejected. When that happens, people become very leery about making any new suggestions.

Can a church board improve the climate of innovation in your congregation and among your church leadership? A significant element in good governance is governance that has a future orientation.  A diligent board member will not be satisfied with the status quo, recognizing that improvement can always be made. Further, a conscientious board member will be asking what decisions need to be made today so that the church is healthy and dynamic five years from now. Innovation means change and that always carries risks that have to be met with certain courage. So as a board member, what in your view is the most significant issue/problem/challenge that your church currently is facing and what innovations must be made to address them? Are you prepared to carry the load necessary to discern, define, and implement such innovations?

What can you as a church board chair do to create a climate that values and welcomes innovation within your church? Perhaps two strategies can be useful for you as a church board chair to support innovation. First, encourage your board to evaluate its own work over the past twelve months. Take the list of board responsibilities defined in the bylaws (or in some other document as that may be the case), create a series of questions that invite the board to evaluate the degree to which they think they are fulfilling these responsibilities, tabulate the results and share them with the board. You will probably find a surprising consensus about the things that are going well and other stuff that is not working very effectively. Invite the board to discuss the results and suggest ways and means of addressing those areas that are less than effective. Innovation needs to start within the church board itself.

A second strategy is to suggest to the board that it invite the ministry staff to dream a bit. Ask them to prepare a five page document (no longer) which defines the five most significant innovations that they believe have to happen (and citing reasons for this) if your church is to achieve better health and fulfill its mission. The basic rule in this is that it cannot mention personalities and there must be consensus among the staff that these are the five most significant innovations. This will require the staff to debate and discern together what these might be and not create a list driven by personal agendas. The board will probably be surprised at the creativity that results. There is no guarantee that any of these ideas will be implemented, but at least it will generate prayerful discussion and open the eyes and hearts of some to things they have never contemplated. It could be church-changing!

This year as chair of our church board I am encouraging the board to review and consider innovations in terms of prayer ministry. This issue has arisen from within the board as a matter of urgency and also within the congregation.  Second, I am suggesting to the board that a better means of equipping people to serve as board members (elders in our context) needs to be discerned and implemented, as part of our vision for leadership development. What this innovation will look like, I do not know, but if we can find a good way to achieve this, then it will enable the board of our church to have a strong and healthy future.


45. Decision-making in Church Board Meetings. #3: Implementation, Accountability and the Role of the Chair.

Published by Dr. Larry Perkins on September 13, 2010 in Board, Board Chair, Board Governance and Board Member. Closed Tags: , , , .

So the church board finally made the decision to support the initiation of a new ministry to the nearby community college campus students and employees. The board approved the ministry staff’s proposal, after vigorous debate, with only minor changes. Now it is three months later and as board chair you were reviewing the minutes of the last few board meetings to make sure the agenda for the next meeting included the necessary items. You have heard very little about the college ministry initiative in the meantime and none of the lead pastor’s recent reports have mentioned anything about it. So you do a quick review of the proposal and discover to your chagrin that nothing was said about followup reports. Nor was there much clarity about outcomes that would demonstrate how the board would discern whether the ministry was successful. Further, nothing had been said about what would happen if after six months none of the assumed outcomes had been achieved. You discern as chair that the board had not built in much accountability regarding this decision.

Far too often this is the case when it comes to church board decisions. The members and the chair focus on the big idea, identify some elements of risk, understand the resources it will require, and discern who is supposed to be initiating it, after being convinced that it will advance the congregation’s mission — if it is successful. But no one seems to have taken the time to define how the board will know if the initiative is successful.

As a board chair myself I know how hard it is to keep track of decisions made by the board over a twelve month period and manage the followup on behalf of the board that such decisions often require. One strategy you can implement is to number each motion the board makes (use a simple tracking scheme such as year, meeting number and motion number in the meeting (e.g. 2010-1-3. Third motion in the first meeting of 2010)). Then you can ask the board secretary to create an excel spreadsheet in which each decision is noted, with its number, the person responsible to implement and any information about dates for future required reports. The spreadsheet can become a standard part of the board’s information package. At the end of the year the spreadsheet for that year can be archived and a new one initiated.

Having figured out and managed to implement a tracking system, the chair then needs to ensure that as the board makes new decisions each one includes:

1. a clear statement of who is responsible to implement the decision. Does that person require any special authorization? If it is an employee, does this new responsibility require a change in that person’s position description? Do they have the skill and training necessary or will they need additional education to implement this decision? If it involves new financial resources, has the board identified where these will be found and authorized the person to access such funds in accordance with the project’s budget?

2.  a clear statement of the process by which the board will know when and if the decision has been implemented and is successful. What does success look like, i.e. how will the board assure itself that the expenditure of resources to implement the decision is justified because specific outcomes necessary to the fulfillment of the church’s vision were accomplished? In the case of the college ministry initiative used as the initial illustration, the proposal the board reviewed did not include specific outcomes that, if achieved, would indicate the initiative was successful. If such a statement of outcomes was not included in the original proposal, the board might decide for itself what these might include:

a. quantitative measurements (i.e. the number of students attending the college and involved with the church has increased by 50% in 12 months);

b. qualitative measurements (i.e. the relationship between the college leadership and the church leadership have improved to the point that the lead pastor has coffee with the college president once every six months);

c. the church hosted two events specifically for college students and employees ever twelve months.

Alternatively, before the board gives final approval, it might send the proposal back and require specific outcomes to be included in the report. Whatever the outcomes for the project might be, the board needs to be aware of them. Presumably the board approve the proposal because they consider these outcomes critical to the church’s achievement of its vision.

3. the motion of approval should include a specific date when the leader implementing the project must present a report to the board evaluating progress towards achieving the outcomes and demonstrating how resources used are enabling the program’s outcomes to be accomplished.  Perhaps the board may require a report at the end of the first six months of the initiative and a second after the first twelve months. This would enable the board to discern whether or not the initiative is contributing to the church’s advancement as the initial proposal had predicted. If it is not, why and what is being done to remedy the deficiency? A report of this nature would be included in the lead pastor’s report to the board.

Church boards seem to have some blind spots when it comes to such processes. Perhaps church people think it is inappropriate to require accountability or that defining the accountability too precisely shows a lack of trust or confidence in the ministry leadership. However, the board ultimately is accountable to the congregation for the use of resources in ways that will advance the church’s mission and vision. If the board betrays that trust, then it has failed in its duty and ministry.

One strategy as church board chair you can use to help the board and church leaders with this is to require decision and discussion briefs about new initiatives to incorporate as a standard feature a section that defines outcomes and indicators of success, a time line for reports, and a clear definition of who is accountable for implementation. Over time this would become a routine part of every proposal.

44. Decision-Making in Church Board Meetings #2: The Chair’s Role

Published by Dr. Larry Perkins on September 7, 2010 in Board Chair and Board Governance. Closed Tags: , .

If there is one constant in board meetings it has to be decision-making. Every agenda will include some matters that call for the board members to say yea or nay. Decisions require a chair to exercise the greatest skill in order to fulfill his role well and enable the board to accomplish its responsibility effectively and efficiently. Getting to yes — or no — involves recognition of different kinds of decisions, strategic prayer, discernment of decision risks and implications,  specific decision-making competency, and ability to facilitate ‘fierce conversations’.

1. Different kinds of decisions.  Not all decisions are equal! Some might feel routine, i.e. approval of the consent agenda for each meeting or a decision about the schedule of the board’s meetings. Others, while not routine, are viewed as straightforward because the issue is clear, there is a high degree of compatibility with the congregation’s values, and the recommendation fits well within the vision and strategic plan of the church. Such decisions might include approval to increase missions-giving in the next budget by 10% or agreement about vacation policy for staff. And then there are those decisions that are exhausting because the issues are so weighty, the risks great, and perspectives among the board members are significantly varied. Biblical guidance may be ambiguous, traditions are being challenged, and trust is being pressed.

A chair can help the board by identifying the nature of the decisions which the board must address. Some will be strategic decisions, others will involved policies to guide employees, and others will be financial or facility-based. The “theological” decisions and those that relate to specific people (whether employees or matters of member discipline) usually generate considerable angst. As well, clarity about the pathway to a decision can be extremely helpful. Who needs to speak into this decision? What information will be required and is it present? What is the time frame? Can the board make this decision or will it require congregational vote? Is this an administrative matter that the employees should be making? So as chair, if you know an item on the agenda will be particularly challenging, then talk it over with the lead pastor and discern together what the best process should be and share that with the board. It  might be important for the board to vote formally on the process so that later a board member cannot complain that the process was faulty. It is always difficult in the emotional moments of debate to sort out process.  In the structure of the agenda put the most important decisions early in the meeting, when people are fresh and there is adequate time to interact. If an immediate decision is not required, then introduce the matter for discussion at one meeting, but signal that a decision will be required at the following meeting.

2. Strategic prayer.   All the work of a church board is spiritual work and one way that you as chair can reinforce this perspective is by inviting the board members to pray together or individually at specific times in a discussion. Perhaps as the board begins the discussion of this item, you can remind them of one or two examples in the Bible where God’s people, faced with tough choices, prayed, sought God’s help, and this was provided. Or, if the debate has become vigorous and robust, declare a five minute recess and invite the board members to take individual prayer walks, asking God’s Spirit for calmness, wisdom, courage, and discernment. Once a decision has been taken, perhaps take some time in the board meeting to ask God’s help in its implementation or for grace and wisdom in communicating it to some in the congregation who may disagree with the direction.

3. Discernment of a decision’s risks and implications.     I think a key responsibility of a chair involves the board’s assessment of risk. While the chair does not perform the assessment, he does need to remind the board that risk assessment is a critical element in good governance. At some point in a debate the chair should invite the board members to analyze the risks apparent in each decision path. Use a whiteboard to list them. This should be done for each possible solution proposed for the issue under debate. This process often will generate considerable clarity as the board assesses which decision will advance the mission of the congregation with the least risk. If the board decides to take a course that does incur considerable potential risk, then the board must determine in advance, how it will manage that risk. For example, if the decision is to spend $1,000,000 on facility improvements, but the church only has $50,000 in its building fund, then the board has to discern and bring to the congregation a plan to secure the resources so that the project does not jeopardize the entire life and testimony of the congregation. Time devoted to this exercise will preserve a board and the church leadership from considerable grief.

4. Specific decision-making competency. Some decisions are simple and require only basic direction for a board to reach their decision. However, more frequently today decisions have a complexity about them that can be unnerving. As chair you wonder whether the board has enough information and the right information, or you question the legal implications of the direction being proposed. Perhaps one board member or a staff person is pushing the board to take a certain direction and the board reluctantly seems to be acceding, but as chair you are very uncomfortable with the proposal. It is possible as chair to help a board following good process by injecting into the debate at critical points a suggestion that the board pause and consolidate its progress. Perhaps take each proposed resolution and ask the board to analyze its good and bad features. Note these things on whiteboard. Do it for each proposed outcome. Once this is done, ask whether any other decision tracks should be considered. Often in the course of this exercise some clarity emerges and the board is able to isolate the two most appropriate decision solutions. At that point, further debate may lead the board to a focused and defensible  decision. A website that describes some of these decision-making tools is http://decide-guide.com/six-thinking-hats/.

5. Fierce Conversations.     Complex decisions will generate some fierce conversations within the board. This is not a bad thing. However, as chair you might encourage the board to develop a set of guidelines to govern such debates. For example, such guidelines might include:

a. courtesy is required of all board members at all times;

b. a board member should only speak to an issue once, or at most twice;

c. the debate must focus on the merits of the decision and not involve personal attacks.

If these can be agreed upon as basic elements of a board’s operations, then as chair you have some basis for managing inappropriate behaviour that may occur during a board discussion. Reminding board members of these principles again helps to set a good tone for the discussion.

If you as chair have develop good, personal decision-making processes, then probably these ideas make sense. If you struggle personally to make personal decisions, then learning how to apply some of these principles in your own life might give you confidence to include them in board work.