My previous church had a traditional organization structure with a Church Council, Lay Leaders, and a Staff-Parish Relations Committee -- and, of course, a dozen other specialized committees on evangelism, missions, finance, etc. Just like The Book of Discipline spells out in detail. My current church has something quite different: a Church Management Committee and a Lay Leadership Committee. And that's it -- the whole governing structure has been streamlined into two groups. The plan is to make our church's governing structure a more effective catalyst for change.
What do you think of the traditional UMC local church governing structure?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
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At LC, we have a church council and staff parish committee. The SPC acts as almost a human resource department with staff reviews, recommendations, and job descriptions. Our church council is all staff and heads of ministries (maybe some others) and we meet once a month to primarily communicate the vision and pray.
According to the conference, though, we have people in all the committees they request. But, to be quite honest, what I stated above is our functioning structure.
As an inner-city new church start, we have the ability to do things a little differently, but it works.
We have an overall Network Team made up of community leaders, and other pastors & laity from the conference. This group meets quarterly and handles "big picture / vision" items.
We also have a vision team made up of staff and our own congregational people that meets monthly to handle carrying out the vision.
When something needs done, it gets done. We don't have to take things through 3,000 committees to put a welcome mat by the front door.
I don't know how long I'll get away with this - so forget everything you just read - this post will self destruct in 3..2..1..
I would love to learn more of how your structure functions. How can I do that? Could I call you?
Willy, are you asking me or Pjeffy?
John,
I would like to know more about how your church gets decisions made based on that model.
I took over a church last June with a nominal structure in place -in other words, there were some people assigned to be chairs of various traditional committees (worship, missions, nurture, preschool board) but there were no other people on the committees! I am just now starting to getting some of those filled out, but I am trying to steer clear of calling anything a committee except the PPRC, Trustees, and Finance - everything else is going to be some sort of a working group or team.
For example, I am just now starting a "Worship and Creative Arts Team" to fill the role a "Worship Committee" would have had. I envision them being very fluid in their membership, and their focus will be coordinating aspects of worship - banners, music, drama, etc.). I am anxious to find out how this kind of an approach will be received in the fairly traditional church I serve.
We have a Church Council that operates pretty smoothly; my finance committee was ineptly assembled, and my trustees have a history of talking about issues for a long time and never getting around to taking action. Fortunately, my PPRC is very good. So much of local church governance is getting the right personalities in the same room together - "chemistry."
Leadership selection is tough.
Larry, I really don't know. I've had classes on meeting night (Tuesday), so I've never been to any committee meetings, other than ad hoc missions meetings.
Trying to change ours at the moment...but wow your really brings the minimized bureaucracy to a new level
John,
I'm wondering who plans and implements your ministries; education, mission, worship etc?
Personally, I've big into permission-giving. When I arrived in Sumner the Ad. Council had to approve just about anything & everything that happened in the church. Now the Council serves as communication link for the various ministry teams and rarely makes any decisions.
I don't really know. I've only been in this church for five months, and have never had the opportunity to attend on meeting night.
But my limited experience is this: committees, inspite of the reputation that they might have in other venues, are not objects of obstruction in church. They are comprised of the 10% of members who actually do stuff -- the grunt work of the church. So perhaps they aren't really committees, but work teams.
Anyway, I suspect that the governing structure has been partially streamlined because the church is so much smaller than it was a generation ago. There's no need for a committee to do every task when you can assemble the active members of a church in one room all at once to discuss all of the ministry issues.
I was wondering about that -- how we could just ignore the Discipline on church government. I didn't know that there was a provision for situational change outside of General Conference.
At my previous church, we had charge conference once, and a member pointed out that the Discipline required a youth representative on the Church Council, and that we didn't have one. The DS immediately changed the subject and moved us onto another issue. That really bothered me. The plain text of the Discipline was being ignored on the subject of church governance, or the plain text was so confusing as to permit easy misreading of the original intent.
I am a member of a UMC. I was Lay Leader for three years in the past, but not now. Lately our church members have been unhappy with the leadership to the extent that 20% of our pledging members declined to pledge in our last stewardship campaign. I have recently rejoined the Ad council. I was shocked to hear our Staff Parish Chair announce that if his committee wanted to eliminate a staff position and create a new one, they did not need any approval from the Ad council They would simply notify us of who they had eliminate and who they had hired. I immediately argued that they do not have this authority, but was ignored. Am I missing something? My copy of the Discipline is old (1992), but it specifically says the SPC "recommends" positions, not informs the Ad council of who they just fired. This seems to me to be a gross usurpation of authority. Am I wrong? Forgive me, but I'm remaining anonymous.
A clarification of my previous post. I am not talking about firing an employee for cause. I am talking about redefining positions such that a particular position has been removed. Education Director position no longer exists, so sorry. Now we are using that money to hire an Associate Minister.Staff Parish thinks they can do this without approval of Ad council.
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