mDNA - Governance and leadership structures
Some more mDNA reflections.
Governance and leadership structures
Leadership structures are important as they define expectations of accountability, responsibility and communication. One of the worrying signs in the emerging church is the fear of leadership and structure. It is likely that this is a reaction to the institutionalised leadership and structures that people have experienced and felt smothered by. Yet, not all structures and leadership are inherently bad. Governance structures are important to ensure that gifted apostolic leaders do not fall into
unhealthy patterns of egotism and empire building. The greatest strength of the determined leader which allows him or her to break through tradition, unwritten rules and conventions may, in the absence of good governance structures, be his or her greatest weakness. Without good communication, accountability and process, a leader may not realise when he or she has lost the understanding or even support of ordinary church members. Governance is helpful because it gives permission for frank and open feedback to an apostolic leader from those that are seeking to follow. This may highlight for the leader those times that his or her message and direction have been misunderstood.
Ironically, in Churches of Christ our high regard for the ‘priesthood of all believers’ has hamstrung our movement. One of the ways Churches of Christ focus on the priesthood of all believers is to centralise power and authority in a group of people often called the elders and/or deacons. This has arguably suppressed those who are apostolic in nature and has dampened innovation and movement. Often creativity and innovation comes from the edge of our organizations. Our structures that have centralized power and authority ensure that the sources of creativity and innovation are limited.
There are a number of ways to look at a church’s structure and life. Some people pay close attention to what role individual members perform (gifts); others to the programs that the Church should operate or tweak (seeker sensitive, alpha etc) and others look at the way the system itself functions. The multi-congregational structure of nccc has meant that each congregation has its own leadership which is empowered and encouraged to lead. This means that often new congregations spring from the congregational leaders and not from a centralized authority.
July 31st, 2005 at 8:44 am
[…] ch Missional — Brother Maynard @ 5:43 pm
Phil over at Signposts has some […]
July 31st, 2005 at 8:33 pm
That is a great post. Interestingly, Protest Churches advocate “teh Priesthood for all believers” but then institute and ‘elite clergy class’ of people.
Ironic.
August 1st, 2005 at 6:19 pm
Whilst I fully accept the need for some form of accountability, I think that the standard governance model (cava) leaves much to be desired from a missional point of view. The problem can become that those who have the highest stake in the sucess of the enterprise are at the mercy of those who have the lowest stake/interest in the project. People on ‘boards’, while having interest, often don’t have to ‘wear the choices’ that they make and operate under the policies that they produce. This can be problematic don’t you think? I would rather reverse it all. Those with great stake get greater say in policy and direction because they have to live with the choices.
August 1st, 2005 at 6:33 pm
I would actually see that as the strength of a governance model such as Carver. Policies written by a governance board, in a missional church, should not be detailed to the point that those in mission cannot make decisions. Infact, the reverse is true, a good policy allows authority to be moved to the edge and decisions to be made on the run and the midst of missional action.
I think this is a considerable advantage over the traditional board/elder model of management where often most of the decisions needed to be resolved at a meeting.
In any organisation that grows beyond a small size, some people must be set aside to guard the dna and health of the organisation. This and good accountability processes is very different to what you say about “People on ‘boards’, while having interest, often don’t have to ‘wear the choices’ that they make and operate under the policies that they produce.”
Alan, do you have some other structure in mind for larger organisations? How would you apply appropriate accountabiity processes that doesn’t involve a split between governance and management functions?
August 1st, 2005 at 6:46 pm
Call me simple, but I do not know about ‘carver’ but once any membership based organisation grows to a certain size, why cannot the members/congregation elect the board of those who govern their organisation.
Management will therefore be accountable to the board that represents the interests of Members, and therfore management must sell its worth to both the board and ultimately the elected members (congregation) it represents.
This will help eliminate autocracy and cronyism.