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.

Does your church board need help? Most do!

Could your board use some help in the common areas where church boards struggle? Make a small investment in moving toward greater board health and effectiveness!

-Coming to clarity about vision and direction?
-Getting the right people on the board and the wrong people off the board?
-Understanding what the role of church boards is and is not? 
-Building strong unified boards?
-Grow the spiritual commitments of the the board and congregation?
-Being more intentional in leading the church?
-Getting rid of the complicated board structures that strangle ministry in many churches?
-Developing board meetings that are focused and effective?
-Developing a set of guidelines that guard board behaviors?
-Learning how to bring needed change and negotiate that change with the congregation?
-Understand the DNA of your church including the spoken and unspoken values?
-Intentionally developing a more healthy church ethos?

These are the kinds of questions this book will help your board deal with. Eighty percent of churches in the United States are either plateaued or in decline and much of that has to do with how the church leadership leads. If you are weary of the norm and want a better way for your board, this book will help you get there.

When Congregationalism goes amuk

There is a great deal of confusion around the concept of congregationalism. Many mistakenly believe that congregationalism means that all folks in a church have a voice in all matters and that the congregation gets to weigh in on all decisions. In addition, to keep everyone in the loop and to ensure that nobody has too much power many churches continue to operate with numerous elected boards and committees. At its core, like American politics the system is build on mistrust of leaders so it is designed to make decision making complicated.

Congregationalism as defined above says more about bringing our national polity practices into the church than anything the New Testament says about church leadership! In scripture there is only one group of senior leaders variously called elders or overseers who are responsible for the spiritual temperature of the church, ensuring that the congregation is taught, protected, developed - empowered and released in ministry and led well. When new needs came up they simply appointed ministry teams like the deacons. All of this was designed in an atmosphere of trust where leaders were actually loved and appreciated by the congregation. And they were to lead well as under shepherds.

But what to make of the congregational thing? Congregationalism originally conceived did not mean a democracy or that every individual has an equal part in decision making. The priesthood of all believers is not the leadership of all believers. If that were true Paul would not encourage those with the gift of leadership to lead well.

Congregationalism meant something very simple. There could be no authority outside the local church such as the state church that could tell them what to do. Second it meant that congregations had a way to change the direction of their church if their leaders took it in a direction inconsistent with Scripture. Thus we say in the EFCA that if a congregation calls its senior pastor, votes on an annual budget, votes on any changes to the bi laws or constitution and must approve the sale and purchase of property it is congregational. Boards may choose to bring other issues to the congregation but this is what it means to be congregational.

Too often, the way we practice congregationalism hurts the church rather than helps bit. Multiple boards and committees are like toll booths that hold ministry up. The number of people on those boards and committees keeps those very people tied up in meetings rather than using their gifts in ministry. Leaders become discouraged because it is so hard to get things done and there is a huge loss on Return on Mission if indeed there is a mission being actively pursued.

If your ministry suffers from some of these elements it may be the very thing that is keeping you from moving forward missionally. And you do not have to live this way. My books High Impact Church Boards and Leading From the Sandbox (NavPress) can help you think differently about how you lead and about the missional elements to that leadership. Don't let your system constrain your mission. Design your system to serve your mission.

Rethinking Church Membership

I am a member of my church. It was easy. Give my testimony, agree to some nominal commitments like coming to church on a regular basis and I was in. The bar in my congregation like many is very low but what are the consequences of a low bar?

My question: Why do we have such a low bar for church membership? Jesus does not have a low bar for what it means to be a disciple but we send a different message when we make it easy for people to join our congregations.

Low expectations yield low commitment. High expectations yield high commitment. I suspect that one of the reasons there is such a low level of true followership today is that the church - the bride of Christ has low expectations of those who want to join.

Some churches have recognized this and have called their "participating members" to a higher commitment. They are clear that membership carries with it expectations:

-To give generously

-To attend regularly

-To resolve conflict biblically

-To attend a growth group

-To follow God obediently

-To use their spiritual gifts in ministry

That commitment carries a very different expectation and raises significantly the importance of deciding to become a participating member. Notice the difference between the description of "member" and "participating member." One implies I am in the church. The other, I am an active member of the church. Which description would you rather have?

Some churches are raising the bar even further by asking participating members to "re-up" every year. This is a declaration that I am "all in" on an annual basis and a reminder of what that commitment means. It is not a meaningless "membership card" but a serious commitment to the church and its ministry.

By the way, if you raise the bar you will get push back. Interesting! Why would you get push back for expecting what God would expect of obedient followers? Because we have trained our people that our expectations are low. "You mean, you have expectations of me to be a member? What are you thinking?"

That is precisely why congregations ought to consider raising the bar. It will certainly get people's attention. And you will get the very people that you want in making ministry decisions.

How low or high is your membership bar?

When congregations don't let leaders deal with staff issues

There are many congregations that make it very hard for their leaders to lead. In doing so, they severely hinder leaders from carrying out their Biblical leadership mandate, and just as importantly hinder the congregation from maximizing its ministry opportunity. Let me share a real life example that I have seen played out a number of times. While the example is specific to a staff situation, the principles apply to many situations that leaders face.

The Scenario:
A board must deal with a staff situation where a staff member no longer fits the ministry, is not performing well or is uncooperative with the senior pastor. In either case, the senior pastor or leadership board must help make a staff transition if the ministry is going to move forward. These are always hard issues for a senior leader and for a leadership board.

The board works to help the staff member move to another ministry and does so with grace and a healthy process. An announcement is made that honors the staff member and indicates that he/she will be leaving the church. Immediately, leaders start to get calls from members of the church. There is pressure to change the decision and there is pressure to explain why the decision was made.

When leaders indicate that the decision has been made after prayer, discussion and with due process, they then receive a letter from the "loyal opposition" in the church calling for a congregational meeting to discuss the situation. This comes out of a faulty understanding of "congregationalism" where it is believed that all decisions of the church must be discussed and decided by the congregation and that they have the right to weigh in on any decision. (There are several blog entries under the lable of "congregationalism" that address this issue).

The problem

In doing this, the congregation (or members of the congregation) place the leadership board in an impossible situation. First, they deny the leadership the ability to lead. Leadership is not about taking a poll and simply doing what the majority of the group want to do. Biblically, leaders are called to oversee the health and direction of the congregation. And, as they lead, congregations are asked to cooperate with their leaders so that their leadership is a joy and not a burden (Hebrews 13:17-18).

Second, to say to leaders that you cannot make staff decisions is to handcuff them and create a culture that is permission withholding rather than permission granting. In other words, you cannot make key decisions without our permission.

This actually stems from a posture of mistrust toward leaders which is prevalent in many churches but which violates the culture that the New Testament describes for the church. Essentially it is importing the mistrust that society has for its political leaders and importing it into the church. The church, however, is to have a culture of trust rather than mistrust.

Third, how do leaders discuss staff issues (performance, cooperation, effectiveness) in public? Why would we assume that those discussions are private in the workplace but public in the church? From a legal perspective you cannot do that, nor does it honor the individual involved. So in asking for "all the information" from leaders, congregations place their leaders in an impossible bind. They are not free to share "all the information," nor should they.

Even if the information was freely shared (lawsuit anyone?) how is a congregation supposed to process that information? They are not the supervisor of the staff, they do not know the dynamics of the staff and they cannot resolve issues that there may be.

The congregation is asking its leaders to disclose what they cannot and should not disclose, and insisting that they get to make the decision even though they do not have the information and should not have the information and are coming at the issue from a position of mistrust (otherwise why are they challenging the decision?).

Why would anyone choose to lead in a setting like that and why would we assume that a congregation with this culture would flourish in ministry? You cannot handcuff leaders and honor God and you cannot handcuff leaders and be effective.

Checks and balances in church leadership?

I hear one common objection to moving toward what I suggest is a more biblical and healthy governance system: the question of checks and balances. If a church only has one board, and if greater authority is vested in this board, where are the checks and balances to its power?

That is a good question and one that goes to the heart of congregationalism. But it also reveals that the American church is driven more by its national polity than its biblical theology.

American government was designed as a three-part system - the legislative, judiciary and executive branches - each with different responsibilities and a carefully worked-out balance of authority so that no one branch could exert disproportionate power over the other two (at least in theory). The framers of the Constitution had a high-enough view of the depravity of man and the potential abuse of power that they tried to design national governance structures that would limit the power and, therefore, potential abuse.

Interestingly, the New Testament also provided for healthy leadership accountability, but in a different way. For instance, the New Testament always speaks of a plurality of overseers or elders, of which teaching pastors are one.

In other words, authority is never vested in an individual but in a group of leaders. In addition, strict qualifications exist for those in leadership positions, starting with character qualifications. These leaders are not at liberty to do as they please. Rather they are "under-shepherds" of Jesus, serving on His behalf, and will have to give an account for the quality and faithfulness of their ministry. That is huge accountability! Leaders are never the ultimate head of the congregation. Jesus is.

What you never find in the New Testament are competing boards of groups that exist to limit the authority of the senior leadership group, 'balance' its power or provide a check on its leadership. When we incorporate such systems into our church governance, we are modeling our systems more after our national polity than our biblical theology.

In a proper understanding of 'congregationalism' the congregation itself has the ability to override decisions of the designated leadership, but there is no biblical model or rationale in the New Testament for other checks and balances to the authority of the senior leadership.

The common dysfunction of bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is a first cousin to control because it is perpetuated through unnecessary 'toll booths' that must be stopped at and tolls paid before one can move forward. Bureaucracy is not usually created to control (although sometimes it is) but rather to ensure that right decisions are made and right directions pursued.

Boards that require all items to come to them before decisions are made, or leaders who demand the same from team members, or layers of organizational leadership and oversight often create unhealthy and unnecessary forms of bureaucracy.

I define burearcracy as unnecessary toll booths that need to be negotiated by ministry personnel in order to move forward. Again, leaders have a significant role in whether or not bureaucracy is part of the culture.

Bureaucracy matters because it has a negative impact on the ability of the ministry to make timely ministry decisions, on the level of empowerment leaders and staff feel and therefore on their satisfaction level in their ministry. Where Return on Mission is affected by bureaucracy, it hurts the organization.