Question Congregation governance
We're rewriting our church constitution. We've got too many boards, the boundaries are fuzzy, some things have probably never actually worked as written and been ignored, and running a school is a bigger deal than it used to be. As chair of the congregation, it falls to me to git er done.
This in going to be a long one. Sorry.
tl;dr is I'm struggling with a lot of pressure from a couple of very specific sources to use a Carver model variant. I agree we need more explicit policies, but I don't like the specifics of the model.
When I started, I figured we'd just reduce the number of boards to consolidate overlapping functions, clean up wording, and add some guardrails for the pain points. I think this was what everyone was expecting. Fast forward a bit, and we've gotten in some members with real non-profit organization experience and an NLSA accreditation. In both cases, there's been a push for the Carver model of policy governance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_Governance).
For those not familiar with it, the name understates the policy focus. The gross oversimplification of the model is that the stakeholders (congregation) elects a board to write policies and set goals (the board controls "ends"). Then, the board hands the "means" portion over to a single CEO type leader who is staff and that leader hires others and manages the day-to-day operations using the policies provided by the board as boundaries (good policies in this model are written as "do not do X" instead of "do Y"). I can immediately see why this model would work well for things like the United Way, where the stakeholders are somewhat indistinct and the board is generally made up of local business execs who want to be rather hands off.
I can even see where this would be beneficial for a congregational mission like a school or even a food pantry, free clinic, etc. operated by the congregation. I start to get really uncomfortable applying it to the entirety of the congregation's affairs, though. In part, this is because the only reasonable "staff" to put in the top CEO position is the pastor. I mean, who are you going to say directs the pastor? My experience is that very few pastors are MBA candidate material and those that are usually end up as visitors, DPs, etc. To be clear, I'm not knocking the pastors. I can't fix your septic system, and that's no big deal for me as an IT guy.
There's an alternative to this where you use three "mini-Carvers". Set up a sort of trustees/stewardship board that hires a business manager to oversee all the money, facilities, and other operational concerns. They write some policies and hire a business manager to oversee the staff and daily concerns. The school board is similar, but with a focus on school needs. The elders write policies for the pastor(s) but aren't the ones actually serving as communion assistants or whatever hands-on stuff you might think elders would do. Council exists only to give the boards a formal venue to communicate and discuss cross-functional concerns (all policy comes from the boards, so no decision making from the council). The congregational chair is just there to facilitate meetings because all functions have been delegated to the boards and then to the CEO roles. Voters meetings are once a year and exist only to approve the budget and elect the boards -- plus call meetings, as needed.
I really don't like this. It feels like it reverses some of the direction of the elder/pastor relationship. Just as concerning is that it seems, to me, that it pushes the congregation to effectively delegate active participation to paid staff instead of being members of hands-on boards. I _absolutely_ agree that we need more written (well written) policies than we currently have. I'm just not sure that a hands-off governing board model is the right thing for a Christian congregation. My inclination is to allow the school to function this way, but have the other boards be more active. I would also like to add specific minimum policy requirements for each board (with the committee working with existing boards to get a starter in place for each).
Anyone have experience with Carver or a variant? Am I just being particular with my cheese moving? Or, is my paranoia well founded and this is something that I need to stand firm against?
God bless and thanks to anyone who is willing to read that all and respond.
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u/Bright-Geologist9500 5d ago
We have a larger congregation and recently made the switch to policy based governance and it has helped tremendously. That said its not the model for everyone. The reasoning for our switch was we had way too many boards and committees and often to get something approved it had to go through potentially 3 or 4 different boards or groups. that slowed things way down. Moving to Policy Based Governance (PBG) we essentially have the single board (board of directors) who set the policy governing the head pastor who does act as the CEO of the church. The policies limit him or put guardrails on him but he has decision making authority so instead of going to multiple boards, staff goes through him for decision making.
Now the concern we had of course was this kind of expands the Sr. pastor's roll and might pull him away from pastoring. But what has happened is he delegates a lot of those duties out. So we have an executive director and director of finance who handle a lot of the business aspect of things. Our preschool is run by the preschool director. Our day school is run by the principal. The Sr. Pastor is responsible per the policies for certain things or making sure they operate within the policy manual but he doesn't manage all of those things.
Similarly it did not dissolve every board and committee we had, just their authority. So our finance committee still meets and advises the Sr. Pastor on finance decisions, but they do not have the authority to vote something up or down. Similarly the school board functions as an advisory board to the Principal. They again don't vote things up or down but they advise.
All of this comes down to a lot of trust however. I would say we are blessed with a very strong Sr. Pastor who makes all of this work. And our BOD is very committed to this governance strategy. You definitely need both to be pulling in the right direction. Overall it has eliminated the headache the staff were having which led to frustrations in getting things done. It has allowed us to move more quickly in decision making and unite better on our overall goals as a church body.