The steps necessary after the initial decision is made are as important as the decision itself.
—John Vawter
There really was no choice. After four years of growth, despite enlarging the parking lot, our problem was becoming more severe.
Street parking was already jammed. Purchase of adjacent land wasn’t feasible. The only alternative, concluded the long-range planning committee, was to pave part of the church ball field, which hadn’t been used in three years and was covered with weeds two feet high.
The elders voted unanimously to recommend the proposal at the next congregational meeting. It seemed such an obvious decision that we quickly moved on to the next item of business.
At the congregational meeting, however, person after person raised strong objections:
“Buy more property.”
“We built that for the kids.”
“Are you certain we need more parking?”
When the vote was taken, the motion failed to carry. I was more stunned than disappointed. I was amazed at the vociferous reaction over a minor issue. And why weren’t the people more concerned about our continued growth?
As I evaluated the meeting with the chairman of the elder board and long-range planning committee, I realized we had made a fundamental mistake in our decision-making process: we had made a decision without adequately preparing to follow through. We had not informed the congregation prior to the meeting that the vote was going to be taken. We had not considered how to prepare the congregation for the vote, nor had we marshaled the evidence to support the paving of the ball field.
Simply making a decision is meaningless unless it is carried out effectively. Later on, when clearly shown the implications of our decision, the congregation voted overwhelmingly to pave the field.
Unfortunately, this incident didn’t cure me of my penchant to neglect the second half of the decision-making process. I had to learn the hard way.
Recently we completed a new worship center. In our old facility, we had been filled to capacity with double services and two Sunday schools. Now, since everyone could fit, I announced we could return to one worship service. It seemed a simple decision, so I made it … and nearly had revolution on my hands. If lynching wasn’t outlawed in Minnesota, my staff members might have tried it.
I hadn’t thought through how the decision would affect the Christian education department, which had grown so much with double sessions that even the new facility couldn’t handle everything at once. But I had announced one worship service, and therefore one c.e. session.
After much negotiation and analysis, we finally agreed that we’d likely grow enough this year to be in double worship services again next September. So we settled on a less-than-ideal c.e. program for a year in order to have everyone together in worship. One worship service, I’m convinced, was the right decision. But I went at it all wrong. I didn’t think through the follow-through, and thus I was responsible for a lot of grief. In retrospect, the decision needed to be discussed with my colleagues, those affected by the decision, before everything was set in cement.
Since then, I’ve become more aware of the steps necessary after the initial decision is made. In many cases these are as important as the decision itself.
Resistance preparation
Any decision-making process should include asking these questions:
- Who might this decision affect, and should their advice be sought before a final decision is made?
- What will be the impact when they hear the decision?
- What kind of resentment will have to be lived with if this decision is made? Is it worth the price?
My staff members felt betrayed when I announced we would have one Sunday school. I should have consulted them before making the final decision. On the other hand, if you wait until everyone is happy before making a decision, you can bring the church to a standstill. It is a fine line to walk.
I once heard that every institution is made up of 10 percent innovators, 40 percent maintainers, and 50 percent inhibitors. The percentages may exaggerate the point, but the principle holds: you must weigh, not count, the critics. Some will always complain and resist change if they haven’t made the suggestion themselves. We must be ready and prepared for resistance.
Are there certain people who should not be consulted in advance? I have made it a practice not to ask the advice of the chronic complainers and those who appear to resist all change. Nor do I seek out those who appear consistently carnal. I refuse to mollify (here you see my personality style coming through) those who never seem to have a good word to say about anything.
Disagreement, however, is not the same as carnality. It is foolish not to listen to dissenters and use their insights when implementing a decision. After all, no one person, including the pastor, has a corner on truth and wisdom.
Who’s responsible?
Decisions frequently go to waste because no one is given responsibility to carry them out. Board members agree to act on something, but no one is assigned to make sure it’s done. Sometimes too many subjects are discussed at once, and just as discussion on one item winds down, someone introduces the next agenda item or raises a question off the subject. Assignments are overlooked, and no action is taken.
We’re improving on this, thanks to our chairman, who is a strong proponent of making as few decisions as possible but making certain the ones we do make are effective. He runs a tight ship, making sure one subject is completely finished and assignments are made before a new topic is raised.
We’ve also discovered the assignments must be specific. Usually this means one person must be given responsibility, not a group.
When we were adding the new worship center, we also decided to renovate three portions of our old facility—the kitchen, the old worship center, and the balcony. Since this renovation was not part of the building contractor’s contract, we decided to do the work ourselves and assigned three individuals to research the costs if we used volunteer labor. Unfortunately, we did not assign one person to oversee the whole project. Consequently, blueprints were lost, communication broke down, time spent on research was wasted, and ten months later we were no further ahead than when we began.
The fault was not with the three volunteers. The problem was caused by not authorizing someone to be in charge of the project. No one was ultimately responsible, and therefore the job wasn’t completed.
Sometimes the opposite problem occurs: too many people feel responsible, which leads to confusion and tension. In this situation, not only responsibility but authority must be spelled out.
For instance, one of our secretaries has the responsibility for the maintenance of our building and grounds, authorizing repairs, directing the custodian, and paying the necessary bills. Although she is accountable directly to me, because of her newness on the job and her conscientiousness some people in the church began telling her what to do. Trying to keep everyone happy, she was intimidated until I made clear that she reports only to me, and she is the one in the best position to decide and follow through on maintenance problems.
Wise assignments
When responsibilities are assigned, they must (1) be given to responsible people, and (2) be defined clearly.
Responsibility to carry out decisions is sometimes given to people without considering their capabilities. It is naive to assume that everyone in the church is equally able to follow through.
“One of our elders is a detail person,” said a pastor friend. “He loves data, and although he’s good at one-on-one, he has a hard time getting groups of people motivated. Thus, we are careful not to assign him to personnel tasks, but we do give him responsibility in areas demanding paperwork. On the other hand, another elder does poorly with details, but he’s a great motivator and recruiter. We assign him the people tasks.”
Too often decisions turn sour not because they were wrong but because they were assigned to the wrong person. Thus, part of the responsibility of the pastor and/or board chairman is to know people well and know what they can handle.
Sometimes even capable people fail to follow through because they weren’t given clear enough directions and parameters. Do they have the authority to act or only inform? What are the deadlines? Is there a budget at their disposal?
Several years ago, we were trying to discover ways to maintain our building more effectively and be more energy-efficient. We asked one woman to research several churches in the city to see how they handled these problems.
When her report came in, it detailed administrative systems of the churches surveyed but said nothing about building, grounds, or energy conservation. It was a classic case of poor parameters. The report and the researcher’s time were wasted.
Supervisor assignment
In addition to assigning the specific responsibility, someone else needs to be responsible to make sure the assignee is on target and on schedule.
Often in church circles, we act as if everyone is a “nice guy,” and therefore we don’t need to supervise assignments as we would in any non-church situation. Consequently, decisions are sometimes carried out poorly or not at all.
One of our elders, a genius at long-range planning, has helped me with this. As I was preparing my section of the church’s five-year plan, he called almost every week to ask how everything was coming along and if there was anything he could do to help. He knew this was a new area for me, and ultimately he was responsible to the board for the plan. Thus, he wasn’t taking anything for granted and was making certain I was getting the report done the way it needed to be done. I did not take this as a put-down of my pastoral office or personal abilities; I perceived it as good leadership on his part.
Another way we’re working on this is to have my secretary take minutes at all elder meetings. She knows what assignments have been given to each elder and what needs to be done before the next meeting. Everyone knows she’ll be calling before we meet again to give gentle reminders of their assignments and the respective deadlines.
Organizations and churches can get careless and allow details to be overlooked. Assigning someone to keep track of the implementation of decisions is the best prevention.
I remember sitting on the district board of our denomination when we decided to subsidize a mission church for one year. The decision was made with the understanding that the church would be required to show significant growth and development within that year or the subsidy would be discontinued. Exactly one year later, without any discussion, we were voting to continue that subsidy when a board member said, “Wait a minute. Wasn’t this subsidy only for one year, pending a progress report?” He was exactly right. No report had been made, and without it, no continuing subsidy should have been considered. We informed the church that the reports would have to be submitted before we could authorize further funds.
Only the board member’s memory kept us from being careless administrators. Assigning someone to monitor the project would have been better.
Admitting mistakes
A sometimes-overlooked reason why decisions are not carried out is because they were poor decisions in the first place. Often we don’t see the flaws in a decision until we try to implement it.
For example, in the midst of discussing our evangelism efforts, I decided we needed some kind of outreach in the local park. I immediately assigned an assistant pastor to work on it. Later, he came to me and said he didn’t think the timing was right and that he didn’t see how it fit into our overall strategy. Rethinking it, I realized he was right, and we decided not to pursue the idea further.
Backing down from a poor decision is wiser than trying to prove yourself right when the follow-through falls apart.
Standing alone
Often, especially in the initial stages of implementing a decision, the pastor will have to stand (and sometimes act) alone. Learning to live with resistance and criticism is part of the pastoral task.
My predecessor was more of a topical preacher than I am; my style is more exegetical. My first series on Ephesians took fifty sermons, and I was criticized for that. I have been criticized for not being sufficiently committed to our denomination—although I serve on our district board and have been asked to serve on various committees. I have been criticized for my tight control of what appears in the bulletin. Regardless of the issue or decision, there will be criticism. I am learning to accept criticism without continually second- and third-guessing myself.
Occasionally it’s also necessary to stare down the critics. A colleague in another church was criticized because he allowed guitar music in a worship service—in spite of the fact that the kids in the growing and healthy high school ministry appreciated it. The critics thought worship music should be confined to organ and eighteenth-century melodies. The pastor held firm, however, saying, “We are a family, and we will endeavor to have a bit of music for everyone’s tastes. Each of us needs to be patient when our tastes are not being satisfied.”
Finally, at times you must act alone to implement a necessary decision. In some circumstances, the pastor has to function as a shepherd and enforce tough decisions unilaterally.
Another pastor friend is in a church with a detailed and involved process for removing deacons from the board. One deacon, however, was disruptive, given to anger at board meetings. His presence was so counterproductive the pastor felt he couldn’t wait for the “system” to work. He felt he needed to take immediate steps to correct the situation, to confront the sin involved that was affecting the whole group.
In a spirit of gentle correction, the pastor met with the deacon and said, “I love you, Ed, but I also need to protect the unity and effectiveness of the board. Your anger is inappropriate and is sabotaging the church’s ministry. I think you need to either stop your outbursts or resign.” The man admitted to his anger and opted to resign because the board was more pressure than he could handle.
I’m not a proponent of violating guidelines. However, there are those rare occasions when decisions must be acted upon immediately. The pastor must invoke the “War Powers Act” because waiting for an “act of Congress” would prove disastrous. Obviously this must not be done impetuously but with a genuine sense of God’s guidance—and an explanation to the board.
Unenviable but inevitable
As one National Football League season was beginning, Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry made the decision to bench starting quarterback Danny White and replace him with Gary Hogeboom. Landry, a successful coach for many years, said the decision was so unpleasant he wished he were “on a lake fishing with Bud Grant instead of making decisions like this!” (Grant had just retired as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.)
The significance of Landry’s sentiment was not lost on me. Landry was a veteran coach, a brilliant football mind, a strong leader. And yet he still struggled with decisions.
The same will be true of our decisions in ministry. That is why we need to know ourselves and whether or not we are capable of making the difficult choices necessary to develop and protect the parts of the body with which we have been entrusted. We need receptivity to God’s signals and willingness to obey those signals, which allow us to make wise decisions—and make them in such a way that we can follow through on them.
Copyright © 1997
