There were several newsworthy decisions made by the General Assembly Council last week. Most of those have been well covered in the press. In my estimation, the most significant changes were adoption of the new governance plan and the Mission Work Plan, 2007-2008. This has generally been referred to as restructuring. While restructuring unquestionably is a part of the plan, there is something much more profound at work. I think the larger context is not fully appreciated by those who closely watch the General Assembly Council and even by many General Assembly Council members.
Before I describe what I think that context is, we need to be clear about what entities we are talking about and how they relate.
General Assembly (GA) – The elected body meets every two years to set the mission priorities and issue directives for the denomination.
General Assembly Council (GAC) – An elected body that oversees the ministry work at the denominational level. (The Office of the General Assembly (OGA) deals primarily with matters related to the functioning of the General Assembly and is not accountable to the GAC.)
General Assembly Council staff – Staff that does the day-to-day work of the GAC.
I am an elected member of the GAC. It is not our primary function to set policies and establish new initiatives. However, in times of declining revenue, it is more than obvious that we cannot continue to keep doing all that we have been doing in the past. Something has to go, but what?
Over many years, the work of the General Assembly Council became a confused web of disconnected mandates and projects created directly or indirectly by the General Assembly. In recent years, programming has been brought into some semblance of order through staff leadership teams. Senior staff leadership deserves high praise for this work. Still, the fact remains that there is far more to do than there are resources to do it with. Budget cuts for the 2007-2008 cycle will have to be at least four million dollars, likely more. This describes where we stood at the beginning of last week.
The Mission Work Plan has created eight objectives. All GAC work must be related to those eight objectives. Over the next two and one-half months, GAC staff and GAC elected will develop measurable outcomes for the objectives. The GAC budget will then be developed to fund the efforts to meet those objectives. The GAC elected will meet at the end of April to finalize these decisions. This final plan will then be submitted to the June meeting of the General Assembly for its approval.
All of this is good and well. Most people I have talked with grasp what is being done here. They also understand that we nearly cut the size of the General Assembly Council in half by our actions last week (Although that will require approval of the General Assembly and some transition time.) So what people see is primarily a downsizing and restructuring.
What I do not believe is fully appreciated yet is the redefinition of elected and staff roles as we go forward with these new plans. Presently, the GAC elected have three programmatic divisions (Congregational Ministries, National Ministries, and Worldwide Ministries) and Mission Support Service. (The latter oversees the financial and legal aspects of the combined operations.) The three programmatic areas match up with the three major divisions of the staff as well. The elected are divided into committees that parallel the division structure and spend their time reviewing the work of staff in those divisions.
The result for both the staff and the elected has been a “silo” effect. Each person becomes well acquainted with one aspect of the GAC functioning. Inevitably, this leads to turf wars among both staff and elected and cripples the ability of the GAC elected to act on behalf of the whole GAC.
Furthermore, there are unhealthy boundaries between the roles of elected people and staff in the work of the GAC. Many have been critical of the staff for inserting themselves into the decisions of the elected. Yet after two years on the GAC, my perception is that the greater problem is of elected inserting themselves into staff work. Staff are placed in the dilemma of working for the senior staff above them and trying to please elected members of the GAC. The lines of authority become muddled, and confusion is frequently a result. When people are seemingly accountable to everyone, they end up being accountable to no one. I am not ascribing malicious motives here, nor saying that these problems are pervasive. Nevertheless, the problem is real.
The work of the Performance Excellence Task Force is not yet finished, but the work that they have already done has cross-pollinated with the work of the Governance and Mission Work Plan teams. Key to the thinking of these teams is that the GAC elected must cease being a programmatic body and become a policy governance body. Decisions about how programs are run, and participation in the operation of programs are outside the boundaries of work for the GAC elected. The GAC elected role is to establish objectives with outcomes and then watch those outcomes like a hawk.
This does several positive things. One impact is that it narrows the work of the staff. Whatever they do must be directed toward the outcomes and objectives. That is what the GAC elected is going to evaluate. In another way, it increases the flexibility of the staff. The GAC elected will become largely indifferent to the means employed to accomplish the outcomes so long as they are within the bounds of legality and propriety and grounded in our Reformed heritage. This will also clarify the lines of authority as staff who, except for the executive director, will answer to whatever staff leader is over them. The executive director will answer to the GAC elected, and the GAC elected will deal with staff through the executive director.
The work of the GAC elected will then be aligned according to the four goal areas and eight objectives of the Mission Work Plan. The structure of the staff likely will not. How the staff organizes its work is largely irrelevant to the work the elected must do. This means that the entire GAC elected will be evaluating as one body (not multiple “silos”) the work of staff according to outcomes and objectives. There may be a need to create sub-committees to oversee some specific issues that parallel the staff work divisions, but if so, this work will not be the one to two-day events they are now.
Another as yet undeveloped piece in process is the regular evaluation of staff performance. For instance, (this is entirely my speculation at this point) it is possible that review teams (possibly including in part or totality people elected/appointed for just this work) would be developed to audit GAC units' operations. These reviews would then become a key evaluative piece for the GAC elected in their decision-making. This is just a scenario I am speculating on. The Performance Excellence Task Force will have more to report in the weeks and months. Stay tuned.
I hope this post clarifies that the changes underway are not just shifting numbers around and creating flowery words to justify all we are already doing. We are attempting to redefine the role of the elected and staff. We are trying to change the very culture of the way we think and operate.
Over the next two and one-half months, some gut-wrenching decisions will have to be made about the staffing at the headquarters. I realize some will view this as ultimately a good thing. I am inclined to agree. However, I hope we don’t lose sight of the fact that each of these “positions” is a flesh and blood person who came to work at the headquarters as a call to ministry. These are people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Many are people with families depending on their jobs for income. I hope you will keep the GAC in your prayers as we approach making some very difficult decisions at the end of April.
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