Comment: Governance

How do you see the governance being filled?

Governance is a really complicated thing in relation to the church. The world's perspective of governance is command and control. Governance from the world's perspective is about power. In the Church however governance is about leadership and servanthood. Where the world views the measure of success as how many people they control and how much money they can get, the Church measures success by how many people we can serve and how much money we can give away. In this way the idea of governance in the church needs to be looked at with the careful eye on the scriptures to see how Christ intended His Church to be led.

At the same time we find ourselves in a country with laws, and our laws require that a non-profit organization like ours have a structure to insure the fiduciary responsibility that accompanies the trust that people place in us when they give. So we are obligated to do our best to contextualize the teachings of scripture into the laws that we submit to.

Here are 4 keys to my idea of our governance structure:

1. Select leaders that are living it. We don't need to put people in leadership that don't have a commitment to Christ. That commitment should be lived out in the area of community and cause. They should be living a life that is exemplary for how someone who is following Jesus lives. Not perfection but examples.
   
2. Select leaders that are leading. Churches often make mistakes by having a structure that puts people in leadership who are not really leaders. As followers of Jesus our leadership is always servant-leadership. If people are not serving already, they probably have little to offer no matter how successful they appear of how much clout they carry. If they're not willing to serve they're not going to lead either. They may have strong and loud opinions, but we don't need opinions we need leaders.
   
3. Select leaders that are listening. None of us has got it all figured out. Good leaders know this and compensate by listening to others. They get coaches and practice transparency so that through listening they can grow. Leaders listen to leadership, they listen to their followers, and most importantly they listen to God. A person that doesn't listen is not a leader we want.
   
4. Select leaders that are learning. Leaders are learners there is just no getting around it. We need leaders that will devote a part of thier life to learning the ways of leadership. Leadership is a spiritual gift that Romans 12 tells us is used to minister in the church. When a person is placed in an area of leadership the gift of leadership is available to them through the Spirit of God. But like any gift we can learn how to use it to the best degree possible. The leaders that we'll want governing the church will be people who are learners.

Who are the people that are Living, Leading, Listening and Learning in our church? Well, I think that there is a clearinghouse for these types of leaders, and the governance that I propose will be based on selecting leaders from this area. Our Growth Group leaders are people who should be demonstrating all of these characteristics. And Christians that are growing in their faith and leadership will be emerging as Growth Group leaders. So we will have a pool of leadership to draw from.

We are making a commitment to train our Growth Group leaders, and equip them to lead a grou of ten. Out of that group will emerge leaders who can lead fifties, hundreds and perhaps thousands (Exodus 18). Therefore I'd like to see our structure have a board of leaders comprised of all Growth Group leaders, and a board of Elders that are selected by the board of leaders, and ratified by the membership at large, to work with the pastoral staff to give direction to the church, care for the financial obligations of the church and focus on the vision of the church. I believe this structure offers two great strengths:

1. Communication. Because every leader on our boards goes to small groups and talks each week it keeps people informed. It also gives people a contact to communicate with the leaders questions or concerns they might have.
2. High Value Selection. Church politics is not about popularity. It is about discerning that God is at work in people who are at work in the church, and simply puts them in the place of leadership.
   

Ok, this has gotten really long now, and is still not a fully crystallized plan, but it's a start. Other issues are qualifications of Growth Group leaders, limits on the number of years an elder can serve, and a host of other ones, but for now I'm just trying to get the conversation started.

--Ben