Getting your Board on Board

Getting your Board on Board

I was blessed to have a succession of very positive parish councils (church boards). In 1995 they paid for my wife Helen and me to visit some large churches in America and attend a church seminar. Their investment was repaid many times as I brought back a plethora of ministry ideas including insights into raising resources for ministry. America, of course, has a very different culture to Australia so the insights needed to be tweaked and modified. However, I did this and with the parish council’s endorsement, ran a very fruitful Commitment Day that improved our giving by forty percent. Our church never looked back. I did not have too much difficulty getting the parish council’s endorsement. They were the ones who had sent me on my odyssey after all.

Word of this increased giving somehow got around, and I was invited to fly to Melbourne and give a presentation to the parish council of a significant Anglican church there. The senior minister was an extremely able person who previously had been approached and declined the leadership of the parish of Figtree before I was invited. Now the council was obviously on board enough to issue my invitation, but I was very impressed by the way this minister involved the whole group.

After I had given my presentation there was ample opportunity for members to ask questions and interrogate the process. Further, and this is what I found particularly helpful, the senior minister did nor merely call for a vote. He actually went around the entire board person by person and asked them to state what they thought of the proposal and give any hesitations. No one was left out. Everyone had their say and no one was able to sit and passively hold negative thoughts to themselves.

An alternative could have been, listen to my presentation, have a question time where non-assertive people with reservations kept their counsel and then push the vote through. I think I have been guilty of that sort of procedure, steamrollering a vote without adequate discussion because I was reluctant to give negative voices a platform or publicly dispute a negative voice when it was expressed. I learned later the principle that people don’t need to have their opinion agreed with, but they need to have it heard. If they have had their say they are most likely to accept the majority decision. If they don’t have their say they can feel devalued and can put up a subtle rear-guard action against the proposal. This wise leader ensured nothing like that happened.

There was an extra bonus to the trip. To my surprise this Melbourne parish council not only whole heartedly agreed to adopt a pledge system for general offering; they also agreed to simultaneously ask for a special gift for missions. This was a step I had not been bold enough yet to propose at Figtree. However, I thought that if Melbourne could do it, why not Figtree. Yet Figtree’s next commitment day was only in two weeks’ time. All our promotion had mainly occurred, and literature was printed and in circulation and no parish council meeting was planned to ratify any change. So, I rang around the parish council, secured their individual approval over the phone and announced a mission project to the generous people of Figtree who responded with a special offering that amazed all of us.

When I was in the United States, I heard Rick Warren speak in person for the first time. One of his sayings was, ‘people are down on what they’re not up on’. This is a terrific lesson to remember for the church as a whole and for the board when confronting difficult decisions.

For more on Raising Money for Ministry see my book,

 Giving Generously https://givinggenerously.com/buy-the-book-2/