The setting was a question-and-answer session with one of America's best-known television pastors. I raised my hand and said, "Can you tell us what kind of relationship you have with your deacon board?"

The man repeated my question, while a hundred ministers waited. Then he said, "My relationship to my board is that I allow them to meet once a year to rubber-stamp my plans for the coming year."

At least he captured one outlook on the question.

On the other extreme stands a grimly resolute board chairman who has gathered almost total power. In his zeal to keep the pastor from "getting out of hand," he has presided over more pastoral changes than Italy's had prime ministers.

Why are we still agonizing about this question? In my visits to churches across the nation during the past years, I have seen problems again and again where pastors and lay leaders are in conflict about their relationship to one another. It is a major, if not the major, cause of unrest in churches today.

This is true even ...