Restoring Kingdom Builders

Who are the board members in your church?  Do you know their names?  Do you have any idea what they do?  Do you even care?

You should, because the success or failure of your pastor – and your church – is often determined by the people on your board and the decisions they make.

The whole concept of a “board” does not originate from the New Testament but from American corporate life.  The term in Scripture that best describes a church leader is elder.  Over 28 years of church ministry, I worked with deacons, then elders, and finally with a Board of Directors.

I much prefer the term “elders” because it’s a biblical concept and because the qualifications for the office are clearly delineated in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9, among other passages.

Where are the biblical qualifications for “board members?”  There aren’t any.  Besides, the whole concept of a board presupposes that a church should be run more like a Fortune 500 company than the living body of Jesus Christ.

And it’s transferable.  A church in Eastern Europe or Africa may not understand what a board is but they sure know what elders are.

In my last article, I mentioned three deadly sins that church boards sometimes commit:

First, they fail to view the pastor as a professional.

Second, they side with staff members over against the pastor.

Third, they begin making decisions without the pastor.

Let me now add to this list:

Fourth, they neglect to become accountable to the congregation.  From my early teens through my late twenties, I attended scores of church “business meetings.”  Most of them weren’t productive and caused friction in the church.  Think about the town hall meetings that Bob and Joanna used to attend in their little Vermont town on the Newhart show and you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about.

Churches in our day can do without the tension, griping, and ill manners those meetings produced.  Most decisions in a church should not be made by the entire congregation but by the pastor, staff, or church board.

However, what about accountability?  The staff are usually accountable to the pastor, and the pastor is almost always accountable to the board (at least humanly speaking).

But who is the board accountable to?

In a congregationally-run church, the board is accountable to the congregation, which sometimes nominates but almost always validates who the board members will be.

Staff members issue either verbal or written reports to the pastor, and the pastor issues a verbal or written report to the board.  But how often does a church board account to the congregation?

In some churches, only once a year: at the annual informational/congregational meetings.

But if the staff have to account to the pastor every week (and they do), and the pastor has to account to the board at least monthly, shouldn’t the board account to the congregation more than once a year?

When a board accounts to the church in a regular fashion, that board is less likely to become secretive and power-hungry.  But when a board keeps its own counsel and rarely if ever reports to the church, it becomes a self-contained unit and groupthink easily becomes the norm.

The reports can be made in the church bulletin or in the newsletter or on the church website or from the pulpit or in an all-church letter.  They can be made monthly or quarterly – but they need to be made.

If a church has membership, the members have the right to attend board meetings and even read board minutes.  The members have the right to know the decisions the board is making and ask questions about those decisions.  While board members do not have to share every thing, they need to share many things, if not most things.

Because one day, the church will have a crisis, and the board members will stand before an anxious congregation, and they will endeavor to explain some decisions they’ve made, and people will whisper to those nearby, “Who are those guys?  Why should we listen to them?”

That’s Deadly Sin Number Four.

Fifth, they become jealous of the pastor.  It’s not easy to be a church board member, especially when there’s a lot of stress in the church.  A friend of mine who is an advocate for pastors told me that when the recession started, an increasing number of conflicts began breaking out in churches over financial issues.

Church board members have to read documents, prepare reports, respond to inquiries, and reguarly endure meetings that begin around dinner time and end close to midnight.

And they do it all for free because they love the Lord and their local church family.

So how would you feel if you donated a lot of your valuable time to your church and nobody ever knew about it?

With some people, that’s okay.  But with others, it’s not.

Even though you put in many hours for your church, whose name is on everyone’s lips, for good or ill?

The pastor’s – and that doesn’t sit well with some people.

In addition, board members often know certain things about the pastor that few others do, so when they hear people extolling the pastor’s virtues, they might think to themselves, “If you only knew the guy that I know.”

This can easily lead to jealousy: “I serve for nothing.  He makes a lot of money.  I’m invaluable.  He’s expendable.  I serve from pure motives.  But him?”

I honestly believe this is one of the reasons why church boards involuntarily terminate their pastor.  They can’t tell the congregation this but their feelings smolder inside.  “Why does everyone know him but nobody knows me?”

Like Joseph’s brothers, they’ve had enough!  So they capture the pastor, throw him in a pit, go home with a phony story, and hope they’ll never see him again.

That’s Deadly Sin Number Five.

Sixth, they opt for making fast decisions when under stress.  There’s a lot of literature out today that identifies anxiety as the primary culprit in church conflicts.  Let’s say that you serve in a ministry where a conflict surfaces.  There are two ways to handle the conflict: the fast way or the slow way.

If you use the fast way, you can eliminate the stress quickly.  If you use the slow way, you may still feel the anxiety for weeks, if not months.

On a church board, there will always be one or two people who do not handle anxiety well.  They will opt for the fast way to handle tough issues.  They just want relief from all the uncertainty.  These are people who often have a lot of anxiety in their personal lives – at work, at home, with their health, and with their finances.  They can’t take any more anxiety at church.

So they opt for shortcuts instead.

This is especially true when the conflict involves the lead pastor.  Regardless of the issues – and because of the strong feelings involved – there are board members who just want the conflict over.

So they short-circuit using Matthew 18:15-20 and 1 Timothy 5:19-21 in their deliberations.  They exaggerate the claims against the pastor.  They don’t let the pastor face his accusers or respond to any accusations against him.

They just want him to leave, the sooner the better.  Then church life – and home life – can return to normal.

That’s Deadly Sin Number Six.

Finally, they fail to understand the consequences of their decisions.  I recently heard about a church board that made a decision involving their pastor that I believed was suicidal for their church.  After they announced their decision, something horrible did happen, and I thought to myself, “Didn’t they know that was going to happen?  How could they be so blind?”

After all, most people attend a church because of the pastor, not because of the board.

A pastor usually knows his congregation so well that he can predict how a major decision will impact the entire ministry.  But many church boards only know how their families and friends will react to a decision.  They don’t necessarily know the congregation as a whole.

Then rather than admit, “We made a stupid decision,” the board members circle the wagons and find someone else to blame.  It’s classic.

That’s Deadly Sin Number Seven.

Now pastors commit deadly sins, too, I’m sorry to say.  And so do staff members and ministry team leaders and others in the church.  But most of the time, these are individuals who make mistakes and who then must take responsibility for what they’ve done.

But by its very nature, a church board is corporate – and the individuals on the board rarely admit they make mistakes because they made their decisions together.  As a wise pastor once told me, “If you have a tough decision to make, bring it to the board and let them make the decision – and then hide behind the board.”

What you have seen along this line?  What do you think about the seven deadly board sins?