Church organization can’t guarantee effective ministry, but the wrong structure can certainly stifle it. One aspect of vision is knowing when changes are needed and how to make them. This is the account of how one pastor saw the flaws and rallied the people to a creative solution.
It didn’t match the drama of the shootout at the OK Corral, but everyone certainly felt the tension in Grace Chapel’s conference room the night the deacons and elders squared off.
The issue: trespassing. Each board accused the other of treading upon its administrative territory.
After the verbal volleys, we sat in stunned silence. Our church had been blessed with a history of aggressive unity. No one was used to this kind of confrontation.
Soon the meeting was adjourned with the leaders promising to “look into the matter further.” Frustrated board members left for home wondering how they had reached such an impasse.
We should have seen the moment coming, but most of us hadn’t. Over a number of years, the climate for conflict was building; all we needed was the right issue at the right time for a firefight. And that night it happened.
I wasn’t the only person to comprehend what was taking place, but I was perhaps the first to start moving toward a solution. Before going to bed that night, I called the two board chairmen and suggested breakfast the next morning. Both agreed, and we met early over toast and coffee to lick our wounds.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “what happened last night is only the beginning of conflict to come. More and more issues like this are going to hit us, and our frustration is going to rise higher and higher. As I see it, the problem is structure. Our congregation has grown to such size and diversity, and our ministries are so complex, that our present administrative structure can no longer bear the stress. The lines of authority and responsibility don’t fit anymore. It’s obvious we’ve got to restructure.”
The two agreed. They both had seen the problem and felt it was time to begin the massive overhaul.
We made one decision that morning: to call a joint meeting of the governing boards and propose an all-out effort to create a new leadership process. The meeting convened one week later; we wanted memories of the tension to be fresh. I was designated to make the initial presentation.
That evening I chose Acts 6 as a springboard to thought—”In those days, when the number of disciples was increasing, there arose a murmuring in the church.”
“How,” I asked, “did the first generation of Christians in Jerusalem, who had seen the incredible work of the Holy Spirit, suddenly degenerate into a group of muttering, accusing individuals? Did the gospel fail? Of course not.
“What they had,” I suggested, “was the failure of structure. An effective ministry was advancing so swiftly that no one had kept pace with the practicalities of administration.”
I tried to trace the problem. Acts 2 shows the explosion of sharing and caring, a result of the joy of knowing Christ as Lord and Messiah. Those with material resources were glad to give to those in need. This ad hoc generosity, however, could only last so long before someone would misuse it. At some point, a few perceptive people must have come to the apostles and suggested that financial help be channeled and directed for maximum impact and fairness.
“Perhaps someone said,” I theorized, ” ‘Let’s give the money to the apostles. They’ll know how to distribute it fairly to the disadvantaged.’ “
Something like that must have happened, because in Acts 4 we’re told the money for charitable purposes was now laid at the apostles’ feet. How long did this system work? Who knows? One thing is certain: by Acts 6, the new system was breaking down. Too many things were slipping through administrative cracks.
Result? A complaining congregation.
Granted, the people shouldn’t have complained, at least not the way the dissidents in Jerusalem were doing. But we must also admit that a new organizational system was needed, one that would meet the need and set everyone free to concentrate on ministry. Thus, the Jerusalem church reorganized! The results were healthier relationships, effective distribution to the needy, and further expansion of the congregation itself.
Our joint boards saw the point clearly. They agreed when I said, “Last week’s meeting should be a sign to you that we are no longer configured to handle the matters of a congregation this size and shape. It’s time to change as Jerusalem changed.”
Before the evening ended, they voted to create a five-person committee to research models of organization and propose a new structure.
Finding the Shape that Fit
Our new committee on restructure worked hard. Their first objective was making sure they all agreed on what a congregation was and what its purpose should be. They spent hours studying Scripture.
While welcome at their meetings, I chose not to attend, though I did ask the chairman to report all developments. I had confidence in the committee. The members had experience in both the congregation and the world of business management and leadership.
In the meantime, I was wresting with the structures of churches in the Bible. Where did the titles and assignments of congregational leaders come from? How did the early church do its business?
I was surprised to find that virtually every title came originally from secular sources. The word pastor was derived from agri-business—the world of sheep-tending. Deacon was a first-century equivalent of waiter or waitress. Elder probably dates back to the time of the Old Testament judges, if not earlier, referring to an informal group of wise men who gave administrative counsel.
This impressed me, because I’d heard so many church members decry the use of secular terms in church leadership. Here, all these terms came from nonreligious sources.
While looking at New Testament congregations, I saw they were modeled after the synagogues, which emerged after the Exile. Studying the synagogue could probably tell us a lot about what early church planters had in mind. Working back still further, I concluded that even the synagogue was probably little more than a miniature of their earlier religious life—an enclave for Jewish exiles trying to recapture a taste of early kingdom life as they met on the Sabbath.
Perhaps the most important conclusion, however, and one the whole committee also reached, was this: The congregation’s structure should always reflect the culture of its people and conform to whatever will help it accomplish the objectives God has presented for the congregation.
The committee wrestled not only with biblical models but with their understanding of Grace Chapel’s specific purpose. They worked to discern it and define it with fresh words. They settled on this initial statement:
Grace Chapel is a congregation of Christian people committed to the discovery and enjoyment of a self-revealed God . . . and to the creation of an environment where people can grow to the fullness of Christian maturity.
This was our overarching objective. It expressed both the vertical (our individual and corporate relationship to God) and the horizontal (our “familyness” that leads to spiritual growth and reproduction).
Our statement went on to reflect how this key objective would be pursued:
This we will do through the exercise of worship, caring and fellowship (for one another), Christian education, and mission (to those reachable outside our fellowship).
With these general principles, the committee continued to work. It wasn’t long before we found that a new structure for a growing church would have to face not just these general principles but some hard realities such as:
1. Assigning some people the pastoral dimension and others the administrative side of ministry. We had learned from experience that when a person or board is charged with both, administration almost always overwhelms pastoral work. The two cannot be completely exclusive, but assignments must clearly emphasize one or the other.
2. Eliminating the confusion between ordained and lay leaders. The old question “Who is running this church?” had to be answered honestly.
3. Allowing for clear communication, not only so top leaders understood one another but so information could also move down through the structure. Of course, information has to be able to move upward as well.
4. Insuring a reasonably democratic congregational polity (since that was our heritage), yet making sure the elected leaders would work as a team with the pastoral staff and not as adversaries.
5. Creating a structure that would easily flex and adapt to new needs and conditions, new growth patterns and leadership styles.
This was a difficult task, but within six months the committee had a structure to propose (see below). Now the real work began.
Putting the Changes in Place
Several wise leaders counseled us, in the excitement of creativity, not to move faster than necessary. In the best of situations, people not involved in the process will have a tendency to doubt. Take nothing for granted, we were told; give maximum opportunity for them to air their concerns. We accepted the advice, and they were right—not everyone had kept pace with our thinking.
First, our existing boards had to be convinced that these were the right changes, and frankly, that was no easy task. An interdenominational congregation, we had board members from a host of backgrounds. Those of Anglican persuasion wanted to centralize church power, much to the horror of our former Baptists, who would have preferred more frequent congregational votes. Our Presbyterians, Methodists, and Catholics each confessed to their biases, too.
Slowly, however, they all saw that the committee had learned from each of the represented traditions, and the proposed structure fit us today and into the foreseeable future. And when it no longer fit, we affirmed, we would change it again.
Our patience paid off. The boards finally endorsed the new structure with enthusiasm.
Taking the proposal to the congregation was a bigger challenge. Many people didn’t realize we’d had a problem with the old structure. Besides, large groups don’t embrace change readily, especially our multi-denominational mixture. What to do?
Again, Bible studies from the pulpit. The Acts 2, 4, 6 story. Description of the development of church leadership and organizational forms. Finally, a series of sermons on our church’s stated objectives and the practicalities of pursuing them.
Then we proposed an experiment: to suspend certain provisions of our bylaws for a two-year period and institute a provisional church government based on the new restructure recommendation. We promised quarterly reports to the congregation on how it was working. And after eighteen months, if all was going well, we would prepare new bylaws to make the changes permanent when the two years were up.
When a few were anxious about “experimental government,” we pointed out that we couldn’t be sure everything would work perfectly. We needed time to work out the bugs. Better that, we suggested, than coming back to change bylaws time after time.
Virtually all of this, except the pulpit ministry, was carried out by lay leaders. They made the key presentations, answered congregational questions, and reassured the cautious and dubious.
In the end, the congregation agreed, and at our annual meeting, we elected officers who would implement the new plans.
Surprisingly, the two experimental years flew by with hardly a problem. Almost nothing in the proposed structure was changed, and with the congregation’s permission, we wrote the new bylaws making the new structure permanent.
The Happy Ending
Many good things have flowed from our restructuring, the richness of which we had not anticipated.
For the first time, our elders could really act as elders, meeting the needs of people. They have the time to be trained and put that training into action. Most of our general pastoral visitation is done by these elders.
Our top administrative board is composed of people who have at their disposal all the information necessary to form sound policy.
The ordained pastors and lay leaders work together as a team, not as adversaries.
We don’t have appointed committees, which spend much of their time learning to get along with one another. Rather, we appoint chairpersons who then form their own task forces. This has streamlined decision making.
We’ve minimized the possibilities of miscommunication and maximized our best resources.
Most of the board members in that joint meeting several years ago hardly remember the tension of that night. It’s been buried in the good experiences of the last few years. Restructuring isn’t a cure-all for congregational tension, but in our case, it helped us do what a Christian congregation ought to be doing.
KNOWING WHEN CHANGES ARE NEEDED
What are the signs a congregation should reconsider its administrative design?
1. Rapid growth. A congregation of one hundred must be organized differently when it reaches five hundred.
2. Developing a multiple-pastor staff. If a congregation has pastoral leaders with no official access to governing boards, if lines of communication and decision making don’t clearly define staff pastors’ roles, confusion will result. People will be unsure where the real leadership resides—with the staff or laity.
3. Conflict between major boards. If the number of disagreements over administrative responsibility increases, a change is needed.
4. A clear gap between the formal and informal leadership within the church. Formal leaders are always elected through some constitutional process, but pastors may find themselves going more often to informal leaders. Perhaps the pastor feels more comfortable consulting these individuals, or else the support of these unelected leaders is necessary for any venture to succeed. If this is the case, it’s time to retool.
GRACE CHAPEL’S NEW STRUCTURE
Our structure is by no means novel. Various church traditions will find hints of their structure within ours.
The structure is centered around two main bodies: the Church Council and the Board of Elders.
The Church Council is made up of fourteen members: eight laity, the senior pastor, and five pastoral staff. This body sits as a board of directors, mandated to guarantee that the ministry of the church be run according to our objectives and policy.
The church’s ministry is broken into five divisions: Worship (including music), Caring and Fellowship, Christian Education, Mission (including evangelism and discipleship), and Administration (which includes finance). Each is headed by a staff pastor who sits on the Council.
Of the eight lay persons on the Council, one is the church treasurer, one the chairman of the Elders, and one the head of the Trustees (a subcommittee of the Administrative division responsible for property management). The other five are elected at large for three-year terms, and from this group comes the chairperson for the Church Council.
The Board of Elders has no administrative function; it enters wholeheartedly into pastoral work, serving people with personal needs and periodically reviewing the spiritual “temperature” of the congregation and the effectiveness of the ministries. The Elders alert the Council any time they see items for concern, but it’s the Council’s responsibility to take action.
Gordon MacDonald is pastor of Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts.
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