The Importance of Vision

Getting the most from your Church Board

You have possibly heard stories of a minister who has some dynamic ideas to promote and expand the ministry of the church, only to have it all shot down in flames by a cautious board or a reluctant treasurer. The minister can get depressed, feel like giving up or even leave. However, ministers are rarely given much training in how to engage with the board. Before I became the Senior Minister at Figtree Anglican Church, I had only been to one parish council (board) meeting in my life. I knew almost nothing. My primary worry was about how I should actually run the meeting. I had not the slightest idea about how to recruit and get elected a visionary group of people who might share my heart for the parish.

And consider the issue from the board member perspective. Most people who sit on the church board are wonderful servant hearted folks who simply want their church to operate well. They are not malignant mal-contents who deliberately want to thwart progress. However, they have seen young enthusiasts come and go and have often not seen much progress and are thus cautious. They have sometimes seen ministerial disasters and want to guard against repetition. There was and is a wonderful branch church in the Figtree parish where in my time the leading elder had been the rector’s warden (leading elder) for nearly sixty years. He was a fundamentally decent man whose family had settled in the area a hundred and forty years before. That is serious history. He was passionate about this little congregation and had been guarding its life and finances for all that time. You don’t channel such a man into innovation overnight, even if it is for the best.

So, what is the answer? The basic idea is that leading the parish council is an integral part of the ministry. It is not an extra you tack on. It is not just running a meeting and getting a yes vote to whatever agenda items are your pet projects. Certainly, efficient running of meetings is crucial. If you are like I was, are not confident in this area, I suggest making this a prime area to improve by study, good books, observing well run meetings or asking for help from mentors. Just don’t ignore the problem. It will be an anchor dragging on your progress or a rocky shoal waiting to sink you.

The next issue is to minister to your elders. They are people with their physical and spiritual ups and downs in their life and family and work commitments. I tried to meet for lunch on a semi regular basis with individual parish councillors with the aim of sharing my dreams with them and listening to their dreams and their feedback. It gives the opportunity for ideas to be explored and misunderstandings to be overcome. I would often bring some leadership or marriage enrichment material to give to them to build them up. My wife and I often ran hospitality meetings at our home where individual board members and their spouses would come. In fact, the final meeting of the year was always short  with special Christmas food to conclude. I certainly did not want yes men and yes women on the board, but I also wanted to try to reduce the possibility of any wilful obstructionism that might be based on some form of animosity. I cannot think of an instance where anyone was deliberately difficult in twenty years.

After some years we conceived a procedure where we would not transact business every second meeting. The treasurer, who was highly trusted, would produce the monthly financials, but we would not discuss them. What we did instead was to discuss the implications of the vision of the parish for the next five or so years. I wanted them to be engaging with the question, ‘what should the parish look like if it was double the size and what decisions on staffing and infrastructure do we need to be taking now to make this a reality’. This approach generally excites your most competent volunteers, and they are delighted to be part of it. Part of this involved reading a book together about being a better church or a better board.

One key action was that I always paused the meeting in the middle for prayer. Prayer at the start is often perfunctory and prayer at the end of a meeting falters as people just want to go home. However, we would stop in the middle of the meeting, break into small huddles of three or four and pray for the business but also the families of the members. It is extremely difficult to be offside with the person who is praying for your children.

This sort of approach to engaging with the board takes time and it is often neglected in the busy round of pastoral life. However, it will bring huge dividends in harmony, amity, good decision making and ministry progress. I found that to be the case at Figtree and the parish was served with a succession of competent godly people. For more on this topic and many others, see my book: Giving Generously: https://givinggenerously.com/