A couple of days ago I posted about a retreat that our Management Team and Church Board went on (see here).

We discussed the fact that administrative structure can be a barrier to growth.

We confirmed the fact that as our church grows we must continually be adapting our administrative structure to accomodate and facilitate further growth.

Let me give you an illustration of what I’m talking about…

I used to pastor a small church (avg. attendance of 50-60 on the weekend). Our monthly board meetings consisted of decisions like:

1) Who is going to teach our children in Sunday School?

2) Can we buy a computer for the church? What kind?

3) We need a secretary. Can we hire one? How much? Who?

These kind of questions used to consume our board meetings.

I have quite a bit of experience with smaller churches (vicarious and personal) and know that “stuff” like the following consume much time in meetings…

1) We don’t have enough money to pay all of our bills. Which ones should we pay? Let’s
form a committee to determine which bills should be paid.

2) The pastor is going on vacation. Who is going to fill the pulpit? Let’s form a committee
to oversee the process of filling the pulpit while the pastor is gone.

3) Who is going to mow the lawn? Let’s form a committee to oversee the mowing of the
lawn.

4) We need to paint the church sign. Do we have enough money to do it? Let’s form a
committee to oversee the painting of the sign.

OK, OK, you get the point!

Here’s the problem, the larger the church grows the more decisions there are to be made, and often times they need to be made quickly! The problem is that if you only have one board meeting a month there are A TON of “little decisions” to be made and often times they needed to be made sooner! So, you can either have multiple meetings a month or you can allow the pastors (and other staff) to make those decisions.

For instance, we recently had to decide who was going to plow our parking lot. Most small churches would wait until the board meeting to decide that. What happens if it snows BIG? Larger churches realize that it is okay and prudent to allow staff to make those kinds of decisions.

Larger churches realize, or they should, that most board meetings take hours to bring lay people up to speed to make the same kind of decisions that the staff would make. So the question is, why not allow staff to make them and save everyone a ton of time?

Our church’s administrative structure has been continually evolving over the years. We don’t have board meetings to decide whether or not we should buy a printer or who is going to paint the church sign. Our board meetings consist of things like…

1) approving the annual budget

2) discussing and setting policy (e.g. how much insurance should we carry on our two
campuses?)

3) Ministry updates (The Management Team is considering launching a new service @
South for 18-30 year olds.)

Let me be clear about this… I believe that the church board plays a critical role in the life of the church. They provide accountability to mission, vision, values, and policy; they provide wise counsel; they serve as a policy setting board; they serve as trustees of the local church; they are the models of what faithful leadership looks like; they approve Management Team level hires; etc.

At the above mentioned retreat we discussed the fact that more and more decisions are needing to be made on a daily basis that regard finances and personnel. So, in the continuing evolution of our administrative structure the Board made the following decisions…

1) The Management Team can spend up to $5,000 without board approval as long as it is
not against the policy, mission, vision, or values of our church and as long as the funds
are available.

2) The Management Team can spend up to $10,000 without full board approval as long as
the Director of Operations identifies the purchase and confirms this decision with the
treasurer.

3) For any of these expenditures to take place there must be a consensus of the
Management Team (four pastors and the Director of Operations).

We are also in the process of identifying a standardized hiring process… but more about that later.

The point of this post is to say that in order for a church to grow the leadership must be trusted to lead and that includes making financial decisions.

I want to thank our board for trusting the Management Team to make these kind of decisions.

One last thing… why did I post about this? Two reasons:

1) I want our church to know how our administrative structure is evolving, and

2) I want to help other pastors/churches who may be making this same journey