This isn’t really a part of the series, but I had an “a-ha” moment when reading Hotchkiss’s article that had to do with decision making process and why popular vote is a bad way to go.

We all know that there are times when tough decisions have to be made in church. As a leader, we always want to have the support of the congregation when these issues come up. We often cross over into the manipulative side of things when we try to concoct processes that will soften the blow and work the decision into the culture of the church in a back door kind of way so that one day members look up and find that they are just now realizing things are different and that they are okay with them being different.

Trying to soften the decision process by seeking popular support is also not always a good idea. Sometimes decisions need to be made that are in the best interest of the church but not in the best interest of people’s comfort zones. Seeking popular opinion on a topic that isn’t popular is an easy way to doom an idea before it gets off the ground.

Now, as to popular opinion in particular, Hotchkiss makes a comment that I thought was brilliant in its simplicity. He says, “A real problem with democracy in congregations is that future members do not vote. If they did, at every meeting they would make up a majority.” That’s really an insightful statement that helps leaders take their focus off of the here-and-now and look toward the future in their decision making.

It isn’t the responsibility of leaders to make and/or keep the members of a congregation happy. It is the responsibility of leaders to lay a foundation of leadership on core spiritual leadership principles that takes into account the health of the church now and into the future and to then do what can be determined as “best” in light of the these concepts.

Again, the title is lame, but it is in a series.

The major point of the article written by Hotchkiss is that the driving force behind a congregation and its decision making process should be its mission. Specifically, “Whose lives do we intend to change and in what way?” Answering that question first makes answering all the other questions easier to approach. I believe just having that question laying around during some of our meetings will help loosen things up a great deal. I imagine, and am only guessing, that we probably place decision making quality on a scale that correlates with a scale of past vs. future. If the decisions are about keeping things the way they were or are about preserving some piece of the present that we enjoy, it’s probably going to fall lower on the organizational decision quality scale. If the decision is about moving forward in accomplishing a vision that has been set for and is about becoming who God wants us to be, it will probably rate higher on the scale.

The thing that is nice about this is that the specific decision isn’t at issue. Instead it is the motivation behind the decision, which is really what we’ve been questioning all along in this series. It’s not about whether to use praise teams or not. You can have opposite decisions in separate congregations and still meet the criteria for following the specific vision of the congregation. If done honestly and in good group process, negative things that tend to creep into our decision making process are held in check while the good of the whole bubbles to the top.

One personal benefit I enjoy from mission centered leadership is the way it takes justification of decisions out of the process. Any questions about “why” something was done or decided fall back to “because the group honestly felt like it best helped us fulfill our mission as a church.” Those on board with mission will understand, and those who are motivated to question by selfishness will be exposed for who they are.

Now, at this point the title of the series doesn’t exactly match, but since it’s a series I want to run with it.

Regardless of who is supposed to make decisions or what group of people are given the responsibility for finalizing those decisions, something has to be said about HOW that group should function as they make those decisions. The role the group plays and the criteria that they use for making decisions will greatly affect the entire congregation.

In Hotchkiss’ article, he says that a majority of board members feel it is there job to act as a representative or as a fiduciary for the congregation. The representative part is similar to other elections where candidates arise and are voted by popular vote to either serve or not to serve. There is some hint of that in our elder selection processes, but not a great deal of campaigning. As a fiduciary, the board is expected to on behalf of another person to protect the interests of the owner. This can be troublesome for us because it gets us back into our question on who’s interests, as the owner, should the fiduciary act upon.

This point of the discussion becomes somewhat labored because we have to start to differentiate between what should happen and what actually does happen. I can understand the desire to make people happy, especially when they are not. When decision makers make that their primary goal they switch over into representative mode and start to seek the interests of their “constituents”. If this become the core principle for leadership, they quickly become fiduciaries of the members of the church.

There are a couple issues that surface when leader’s act as though they are making decisions on behalf of the members that are not good systemically. I’ve got one in mind I’ll share tomorrow, but I want to see what kind of benefits or weaknesses you have observed from a leadership that decides issues based on what the members (including themselves) want in the church.

James made a comment worthy of getting its own post in this series. Actually, it’s worthy of two. The second will come later. Here’s James’ quote:

Just my opinion, but saying men who have accepted the responsibility for shepherding a congregation but have neither the integrity nor skill to lead properly are still good or great men is the same as saying Jesus was a good man and great teacher but not the Son of God. It doesn’t match the facts.

“He was a great man but not a good elder.” Sorry, if he was a good man he wouldn’t be an elder, unless he was capable.

A great man who cannot lead would step down from his position or take steps to become a better leader. One who does not recognize his shortcomings or refuses to respond to them responsibly is not a great man.

Now THAT’S a fun comment.

The Lord/liar/lunatic argument for the deity of Christ works insomuch as they cannot coexist and still be true. If Jesus wasn’t the Son of God but claimed to be, he’d clearly be a liar an therefore NOT a good person.

The argument works a little different with shepherds, mostly because of the requirements put forth to be one. No where in the requirements for elder do we find something like “must be able to strategically lead organizations of 100-1000 people” or “must understand the multi-faceted implications of mission and vision” or even “must be able to develop a spiritual development process to use with individuals”. If they agreed to these terms but knowingly couldn’t do it, then they’d be liars and couldn’t be good men.

As the requirements are listed, however, one could pretty easily say “Wife - check. Kids - Check. Believing kids? - one is baptized, soooo - check. Beyond reproach - Mmmmm - check.” As the requirements read, men can pretty readily fulfill the requirements and be honest about it. Unfortunately, leading a church and being spiritual shepherds requires two different, but not mutually exclusive, sets of skills. This, I believe, is the gap between being good men and being good leaders. All good leaders are good men, but not all good men are good leaders.

Now, that may sound like I disagreed with James. What really happened is that he challenged my thinking a bit and that is what came out of it, which is EXACTLY the type of interchange I’m looking for in my blog. Also, I had to tell the story to get to this question, which I pose very honestly as I haven’t processed through it all the way:

Since there is a difference between the requirements for elders/shepherds and the requirements for strong, effective organizational leaders in our congregations… have we coupled the spiritual act of elder/shepherding with the organizational act of growing and developing churches in an unnatural and somewhat unBiblical fashion? The question goes beyond “Should the elders be in charge of everything” to “Should we even expect the elders to be able to be in charge of everything”.

And THAT is what I want input on today.

Disclaimer: I love shepherds. Unfortunately, I’m a full time minister. That means that the worst of my stories come from interaction with elders. Most of the elders I’ve known are good people. Unfortunately, the requirements for elder require more than just being a good person. I’m afraid I might come across as an elder-basher, which is completely not my goal. Please keep this in mind as I share some of my stories.

Disclaimer 2: My current elders are amazing, and they’re not standing over me as I type this. Their dedication to being spiritual shepherds and seeking out the meaning of that on a daily basis attracted me to this congregation.

Actual Post: We’ve been playing with semantics a little bit in the discussion about church ownership and I realized I probably didn’t connect my thoughts all that well. It’s what happens when you blog in your easy chair watching all the critters in your back yard.

I made a potentially illogical jump between owning the church and making decisions for the church. I completely understand the confusion in that area. I suppose a compromise question would be “Who’s the boss?” That, in fact, let’s us expand the conversation beyond churches with traditionally hierarchies and include those that don’t have elderships. These churches may operate with deacon’s meetings, men’s meetings, or congregational meetings. Either way, when you’ve got an organization that has a central group of people making decisions for the whole, you’ve got to ask the question about how they are supposed to function. What are the guidelines by which they make decisions?

Scarily, many of the elder/board/committee meetings I’ve sat in on have not been focused on any external criteria by which they make decisions. Guess what takes over in the absence of core direction and guiding principles…

Selfishness and individualism. This is one of those times when the church is no different from world. When there are no guidelines keeping people in check, they tend to revert to the worst parts about themselves in making decisions. They may protect their own interests, the interests of their spouses, the interests of their small group of people that they connect best with in the congregation, or any other influences they may succumb to. The most unhealthy of our leaders will resort to passive-aggressive behavior and downright manipulation. This is not an absolute, 100% of the time kind of thing. I think, though, that we can look at the condition many of our churches are and trace the history enough to find clear evidence of this occurring.

So, what is the outside force that should keep our leaders in check? What are the core leadership principles that should be followed to prevent this type of stuff from occurring?

We’ll talk about that more in the coming days. Until then, you tell us what that outside force should be.

In the April 21st, 2008 edition of The Alban Institute’s weekly newsletter, Dan Hotchkiss asks the question “Who owns a congregation?” The answer seems simple. We all want to say something like “God” or “Jesus”, and from a theological perspective we would be right. But what about the way we act? How about the way churches carry on business? If a secular business person observed the way we do things, who would they say owned our congregations.

Hotchkiss takes a strictly denominational view point toward the question. Some of what he says doesn’t really apply to what we in Churches of Christ deal with. What is clear is that even within our own congregations there are different opinions about who is in charge.

Actually asking the question has been sort of taboo and any dialog around the topic is short lived. Traditionally the answer is “The elders.” If pressed for further reasoning, most people have trouble coming up with any real, solid reasoning. It sort of reminds me of the discussions about instrumental music and dancing that I had with adults when I was a kid.

I may be way off base, which wouldn’t be strange for me, but I have this weird feeling that answering the question about who is in charge is the key to solving a lot of the troubles that our churches are experiencing. What do I mean?

Within the last year or so I had a conversation with an elder at a church that was clearly suffering from the long term effects of poor leadership. The elders had the final say in all matters but unfortunately didn’t leadership ability to carry the burden. When questioning a decision one elder had made and why he chose to make it without consulting the ministry leaders responsible for the fallout from the decision he responded, “I have the authority to make the decision because I’m appointed by God to do so.” When he saw the empty look on my face he added, “And I have the authority from the state because I’m a trustee of the church.”

Are you kidding me? Is it not obvious that there are ownership issues when our leaders are appealing to a recognized position with the state instead of appealing to core spiritual leadership principles? It’s really scary.

The next few days I want to talk more about church ownership. Before we get to that, tell me what your initial thoughts on church ownership are.

No, it’s not really my birthday. But today is a very special birthday-like day. Today marks the 300th post on my blog! Who knew that I would keep up this little venture into cyberspace long enough to hit 300? I don’t think I’ve ever done anything else as frequently, which is simultaneously sad and something to celebrate.

To celebrate this momentous blogging event, here’s a little bit of bradpalmore.com trivia for you:

• The first ever posting was on December 12, 2005. In this post “Intro to Cody“, I discussed the theological and intellectual depth that was and is our cute little mini-dachshund.
• My blog started on Blogger, but moved to TheoBloggers when Randy and I started it up in mid-2006. The first post on TheoBloggers servers was June 13th, 2006.
• TheoBloggers was actually the second name for our company. The initial idea, and the first web domain that we registered, was Theoblogians. We were trying to get “blog” into “theologians”, which we successfully did. Unfortunately, it was a stupid name, mostly because “blog” is a short “o” sound and “theologians” is a long “o” sound. Fortunately, we were flexible enough to come up with something else.
• For the first 15 posts there were a combined total of 2 comments.
• The most comments on any one post was the post asking “Where are You?” This is sort of cheating since it was a guestbook post. The second highest number of comments was 23 on New Year’s Resolutions, although most of them were probably by me.
• In July of 2006, my blog had an average of 21 unique visitors and 186 hits per day.
• In March of 2008, my blog had an average of 290 unique visitors and 1287 hits per day.

I got into blogging as an experiment and wasn’t really sure what to expect. Three years later I stay in it because of the community that has developed and the ability I have to express and play with ideas that members of that community contribute to. Thanks for being partners with me in this cyber-journey!