Growing health and effectiveness

A blog centered around The Addington Method, leadership, culture, organizational clarity, faith issues, teams, Emotional Intelligence, personal growth, dysfunctional and healthy leaders, boards and governance, church boards, organizational and congregational cultures, staff alignment, intentional results and missions.
Showing posts with label leadership boards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leadership boards. Show all posts

Friday, March 24, 2023

Ten Dysfunctions of Church Governance Boards

 



I want to say this gently but straightforwardly! There is a leadership crisis in the church as it relates to who we put in leadership, whether we call them councils, boards, elders, deacons, or simply the leadership boards. This crisis is responsible for many of the dysfunctions in local churches. Leadership at this level matters a lot. 

Having served for years as a pastor, board member, or board chair, I know it is difficult. That being said, it is vital to the church's health that we have healthy boards. There is much that I could say - my book High Impact Church Boards is an accessible and readable book for boards. But for now, let's look at the top dysfunctions of church governance boards.

Not guarding the gate to leadership.
It takes only one or two wrong board members to sabotage the health of a board. See my blog, Eight kinds of people who should not serve on a church board. This means that how we select leaders for church leadership matters a lot. There are actual implicit and explicit qualifications spelled out in Scripture that must be considered. Most churches do not have a safe and effective way of choosing church leaders, which hurts the board and the church. See The profile of an effective church leader.

Allowing elephants to exist in the boardroom.
Elephants are the issues everyone knows are there, but no one will name them. They are dangerous precisely because the board is unable to talk about them. And they are issues that usually matter. Dysfunctional boards allow elephants to exist that healthy boards do not, and those issues are generally issues that cause harm to the ministry and church body. Periodically, I recommend asking the board if any unspoken elephants need to be named. Once named, elephants are simply issues to be discussed.

Allowing known issues to fester way too long.
There needs to be more courage on many boards. Either we don't talk about known issues (elephants), or we talk about them but only resolve them once they finally become significant issues that must be dealt with. Passive boards that avoid conflict lead passive churches that will do the same. Peter makes it clear in 2 Peter 5 that church leadership is not easy or for the faint of heart. Many boards don't deal with known issues until that issue has caused a lot of damage in the church. Here is a principle. It is relatively easy to deal with an issue straightforwardly when it appears. When you allow it to fester for years, it is far messier to clean up.

Substituting business for the spiritual work of leadership.
Boards must do business, but it is not their only work. It is spelled out in the New Testament as keeping the spiritual temperature high, ensuring that the congregation is taught, cared for, developed, and released into meaningful ministry, protected, and led well. Most boards I work with have allowed prayer to become a perfunctory way to start and end board meetings rather than a central priority of seeking out the heart of God. Boards devoid of significant spiritual life will lead churches of the same nature.

Not doing due diligence on issues.
I have seen associate pastors fired with no questions from a board on the word of the senior pastor when even a cursory conversation with the affected party would have indicated that what they were hearing was highly skewed and inaccurate. I once interviewed all staff who had left a church over 12 months, and they all had the same story of abuse and unfair treatment by the senior leader, yet no one on the board had ever asked and were living in denial. Where there are patterns, pay attention, ask questions, and verify. I have often encountered boards that knew something was happening but chose not to inquire. In the meantime, people were severely hurt.


Not asking the hard questions.
Board members tend to avoid questions that might create conflict or create embarrassment for the senior leader. A good board meeting is seen as one where there is harmony and the avoidance of controversy. This is sad because it is in the hard questions that we get to the heart of existing issues or ensure that we cover our bases in the ministry. In fact, the very best board members are willing to ask the most challenging questions for the sake of the ministry. Hard questions create the dialogue necessary for a church to improve and get better. 

The inability to police their own members.
I am regularly fascinated by the fact that board members want congregants to "behave" and will even sometimes "bully" them into doing so but are unable and unwilling to police their own behaviors. That is a huge disconnect. I tell boards they operate without a board covenant at their own risk. In some congregations I have worked with, the congregation's behavior surpassed that of their presumptive spiritual leaders. 

Lack of a plan, intentionality, and accountability for results.
Part of the biblical mandate of leaders is to lead. Yet many boards cannot articulate where the church is going and why. That is clearly not leadership but rather babysitting the status quo. Where there is a plan, there is often no intentionality about pursuing it, and few church boards hold staff accountable for real ministry results but simply spiritualize the issue (the Holy Spirit is responsible for results). There is a reason some churches see more results than others: they have a  plan, are intentional about the plan, and regularly evaluate how they are doing.

Misusing the authority of a leader.
Some church leaders are frankly bullies and full of themselves because of their title. Most of us have met one. Of course, this goes back to the need to guard the gate on the front end so that people with agendas or a lack of humility don't get into leadership. The predominant job of church leaders is to serve God's people in the spirit that Jesus served people during his life on earth. It is about service more than position, example more than pronouncements, living the Jesus life and pursuing His agenda rather than our personal agendas. I encounter too many leaders who throw their weight around rather than serve.

Passivity
This is the most common dysfunction of boards I have worked with. These are boards that, in the face of apparent issues to any outsider looking in, have ignored the obvious for years. They have simply been passive in the face of issues that need attention. I have often wondered why otherwise brilliant individuals choose to park their thinking at the door of a church boardroom. Is it because they don't feel qualified to deal with spiritual issues? Is it because challenging their pastoral leader messes with "God's anointed?" Or is it simply that we are a culture of "nice," and dealing with issues threatens that culture? As a consultant, the issues often seem so obvious that I have to ask why they have been ignored. Passivity is not leadership and is a sin of many church boards.


Sunday, January 5, 2020

High Impact Church Boards and Leading From The Sandbox are both back in print

I am pleased to announce that High Impact Church Boards and Leading From the Sandbox are back in print and available. 

The books are available at AddingtonConsulting.org

I am available to meet with church boards and dialogue with them on the challenges they face and possible solutions. With zoom technology, this can be done easily at low cost to you. If interested, you may contact me at tjaddington@gmail.com.



Sunday, May 11, 2014

Who is best qualified to be an elder or church leader?

I am in a friendly dialogue with a large church regarding the qualifications of those who would serve on the elder board (the leadership board) of the church.

They have traditionally taken the posture that anyone who meets the Biblical qualifications of an elder is eligible to serve on the leadership board. These are the character qualifications spelled out in the New Testament. When I suggested that there are some other issues that need to be considered, the suggestion was made that these are "extra biblical" qualifications. I do not agree with that assessment.

While the Scriptures are clear on the character and spiritual qualifications of church leaders there are in fact other implicit or explicit issues that are laid out in the New Testament. For instance there are six responsibilities that leaders are given in the Scriptures. They are to keep the spiritual temperature of the congregation high, ensure that the congregation is taught well, that they are cared for, protected from the wolves of division, heresy and serious ongoing sin, that people are released into meaningful ministry and led well.

There are many Godly people who by character and spiritual health are qualified to serve as elders but who are not necessarily be qualified to carry out these responsibilities. For instance, there are many conflict avoidant individuals who do not like to confront problematic behaviors. There are people who do not have a leadership bone in their body but simply love others. There are many who cannot think systems which is how you carry out some of these responsibilities in a larger church. There are others who can only drill down to tactics but who cannot think big picture.

My point is that character and spiritual qualifications are fundamental but that there are other characteristics of good leaders that must be taken into account. The very reason that the vast majority of churches in the United States are plateaued or in decline goes to the heart of this issue of leadership. Leadership requires a skill set and not all Godly individuals have the skill set.

If the above are the six key responsibilities of church leaders, what is the personal profile of a good church leader? If we look at the New Testament for its explicit and implicit statements on the matter we see 13 non-negotiable characteristics of an effective church leader.


  1. They exhibit a Godly character and lifestyle
  2. They have a deep passion for Jesus
  3. They exhibit personal humility
  4. They love people
  5. They are life long learners
  6. They agree with God's leadership assignment for church leaders
  7. They are able and willing to grapple with the future
  8. They are team focused
  9. They are a willing leader
  10. They have a positive influence on others
  11. They are purveyors of hope
  12. They have an action bias
  13. They have good emotional intelligence
We are frankly naive to believe that just because someone is Godly means they can lead well. It simply is not true. I encounter many church leaders who are Godly but who cannot lead effectively and it hurts the church. Just look at the state of many churches today and you realize that unless you guard the gate of church leadership you pay a high price! The larger the church the more complex leadership becomes and the more expertise that is required to lead well.

The most powerful group in any church are those who choose who will be in leadership because the quality, skill, wisdom and discernment of leaders will either contribute to church health or to dysfunctional and unhealthy ministry. As one who consults with many churches I see the latter all to often and the former all to seldom. Be smart in leadership selection! You get what you choose. 

The following blog links may also to helpful to you:


Eight kinds of people who should not serve on a church board

Choosing the right leaders in your church: You get what you choose

Rethinking leadership selection for the church

Choosing and preparing new board members

Toxic team and board members

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Opaque boards: When boards do their work in private rather than in the board room

There are boards that are transparent and there are boards that are opaque. Transparent boards are those where the key conversations between board members take place in the board room so that everyone is party to the conversation. This is how boards are designed to operate. 

Board members must make decisions and in order to make good decisions they need to have all the relevant information. In addition it is in the give and take of dialogue among good board members that the best decisions are made. It is a commitment to a corporate decision making model.

Unfortunately this is often not how boards operate. In many cases, leaders or powerbrokers on boards use a divide and conquer strategy. Rather than having the key conversations in the board room for all to hear they have private conversations behind the scenes with different board members which in turn influences the outcome of decisions at the board level.

Some would say this is smart politics and it is surely politics. But consider this: the practice destroys the concept of corporate decision making. This is a manipulative strategy designed to get one's desired outcome but not through group means. Not only that but it robs other board members of the information they should have. They don't know of the private conversations that have taken place and therefore are not privy to why people take the positions they take. In this scenario, the only individual who knows everything is the one who has been having the behind the scenes conversations. 

I have consulted with churches and organizations where this practice took place on a regular basis. I call it an opaque process because it is not in the open and it is not transparent. Decisions get made but not in the open - they are made behind the scenes. It is a practice designed to get one's way but not designed to reflect good governance. It disempowers those not in the know and creates triangulated relationships rather than open, honest relationships.

Opaque boards and decision making is never healthy. Avoid it at all costs.