I am back from the General Assembly Council meeting last week in Sacramento. Having served on the Council for a year now, I am finally beginning to get a big picture of how things operate. From where I sit, "We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us!" We have some major systemic problems.
I am convinced that Presbyterians, from sessions to the GAC, have a view of board operations that cripples our ministry. We view boards as entities that both set policy AND implement policy. The reality is that Boards should exist only to set policy and priorities, while gifted people with callings should be empowered to implement policy.
It is not hard to see where the confusion comes from. If you have been in small congregations like I have, the session very often contains most of the people who are actively implementing the programmatic ministry of the church. There are only a fixed number of people, and they wear multiple hats. They both set policies and implement programs. As an organization gets beyond 200 active people, this mode of operation becomes very debilitating as the board tries ever more challenging to manage and direct every activity.
The role of the board is policy and priority setting. Boards are to be rigorously focused on outcomes, not the management of operations. Boards set the boundaries and then empower those within the organization to make the desired outcomes a reality. By and large, our Presbyterian board meetings at all levels are management meetings, not policy and priority-setting meetings.
We need boards that set parameters for operations. They discern what outcomes need to be realized. They clearly communicate these policies and outcomes to the staff (and often volunteers), who make the desired outcomes a reality. Here is the most important part. Other than clarifying policies and parameters, the board gets out of the way and empowers gifted people to do the work so long as they stay within boundaries set by the board! It is not a board's responsibility to micro-manage gifted and experienced workers as they make desired outcomes a reality.
Furthermore, as it relates to staff, one person (the Executive Director at the GAC level) needs to be the staff person who is responsible for the outcomes achieved by all the staff. While other senior staff may interact with the board for informational purposes, there needs to be an unambiguous understanding that one person is responsible for the outcomes. When boards become involved in programmatic management questions, they sow massive confusion. Staff ends up with multiple "supervisors." They end up with competing (and often contradictory) versions of desired outcomes. Staff must ultimately be accountable to a head of staff who is accountable to the board for outcomes.
At the denominational level, I think several things need to change:
First, I think there should be one denominational board, not GAC and OGA. The General Assembly sets general policy. We need one board that does policy and priority setting for the denomination between assemblies.
Second, the board needs to be as small as possible while still reflecting our denomination's diversity.
Third, board members must be selected based primarily on evidence of visionary leadership.
Fourth, the board must be rigorously focused on outcomes, not programmatic details.
I think these changes would ultimately result in A) a board with less work but substantially improved oversight and effectiveness and B) a focused staff with much greater flexibility to adapt to increasing rates of change. These are the types of changes I expect to be working for. Who says Don Quixote is dead?
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