Notes from Bill Easum and Tom Bandy on permission giving structure

of course, holding an 'church council' meeting quarterly
does NOT define what the agenda must be, or how long the
meeting is, or WHERE it's held (over dinner in a restaurant,
for example) or other aspects of it.


Gary is quite right, I think. There are many ways to change
the way boards meet ... and therefore greatly impact what they
discuss. Never hold a meeting inside the church building.
Never begin a meeting without reviewing and holding board
members accountable in their lifestyle for DNA. Never
conclude a board meeting without asking if individuals or
society has been really changed because the church existed
this month. Never send the board away without renewing their
covenant for serious, partnered spiritual growth. Do that, and
who cares if you have to discuss polity.

Tom Bandy ---

Part of the reason it is hard to give "nuts and bolts" to the development of

the servant empowering organization is that it does need to be developed contextually - shaped within the peculiar denominational polity and  local experience of a given congregation. Blueprints are hard to find. However, as I thought about your comments on the flight home, and during my son's hockey game this morning, I tried to organize my thoughts as if I was

counseling a church "tabula rasa" â€| an empty slate.

Step 1:

Build adult spiritual formation. Whatever the resource that works (Alpha,

Disciple -and indeed it will probably be multiple resources with more than one "home grown"), this is a key beginning. In part this is because the emerging servant empowered organization will rely on spiritually growing credible leaders to fuel its leadership. IN part this is because the

bottom-up mission presumed by the organization can only be fed by serious

spiritual growth among adults. In part this is because spiritual formation opens people to risk daring experiments â€| and built trust â€| and this is the life blood of the new organization. Churches in which most adults only have experience servicing committees will have a harder time.

Step 2:

Form a steering committee. The idea is NOT to dismantle the existing organization, but rather to build alongside of it (inoperative, so to speak) the new organization. (One does not rebuild a ship while sailing on the ocean â€| but in dry dock). The current board probably cannot do both.

Therefore, many churches appoint a steering committee to train in the new model. I

encourage the pastor to take the lead in their selection. They may be partly appointed by the congregation, but try not to involve people in lots of nominations â€| and try not to appoint people by virtue of their representing

some other body. Search out and hand-pick credible leaders who have

actual experience with a similar model (e.g. Carver model) in their work place

or non-profit experience, or who have a clear passion for risk-taking entrepreneurship.

Step 3:

Build clarity about the genetic code of core values, beliefs, vision, and mission. Depending upon the state of clarity in the congregation already, this may be a longer congregational process or a simpler board process. Nevertheless, it is a crucial piece. IN part this is because it will

Provide the foundational accountability piece to the future organization â€| but in part it will also provide a basis of trust as the current church constitution becomes "clay" and the steering committee is "trusted" to develop something revolutionary and new. Some congregations do this well, some poorly, and later they have to revisit it in order for the new organizational model

(once launched) to work effectively.

Step 4:

Mentor people in the philosophical shift toward "proscriptive thinking". This is not a re-structuring, but a different way of thinking. It will take a lot of one-to-one coaching. The key is to distinguish between "boundaries" and "supervision" as the fundamental methodology of accountability. I have always found that my images of "training dogs" vs. "raising rabbits" communicates volumes to people. Start with mentoring your own steering committee. The let the steering committee mentor board members, key leaders, staff, and more and more people. You might even preach on it ... ground it in the Acts of the Apostles ... etc.

Step 5:

This and the following step may seem twin processes. The first is, build the stability triangle. If the congregation is heavily invested in spiritual gift discernment as a methodology to nominate or appoint leaders, look for the following people. All of them must not only be gifted, but genuinely be able to say that they feel called to the team from their own prayer and spiritual discernment disciplines.

a) For the Human Resources Team, you are looking for people gifted in

shepherding, counseling, or leadership.

b) For the Training Team, you are looking for people gifted in teaching, helps, or service.

c) Fr the Adminstration team you are looking for people gited in adminsitration.

I suppose it sounds odd to say it that intentionally, but the truth is that most people nominated and elected to office in traditional organizations are acting out of a sense of duty, not out of a sense of personal fulfillment.

If you do not have heavy investment in spiritual gifts discernment, then go to the congregation itself. Draw an ideal profile of the kind of person you are looking for in each team, and ask people to anonymously identify 3 or 4 people who come to their minds. That is your short list. Interview each one. You are looking for credible, widely respected, spiritually disciplined people with a flare for growing, training, or deploying missionaries. I need to stress that these people need to be hand-picked by the steering committee, heavily influenced by the pastor and congregational input as stated above. Some church polities will require nominations and elections. However,

You need to stress that the "slate" is developed with integrity â€| and that people should be elected by their gifts and calling. Competency is actually secondary, since you will provide training for these teams later. Representational responsibility for various sub-groups of generation, gender, or whatever is much less relevant.

Step 6:

At the same time, start looking for a new breed of board member. Again, polity will partly shape how you go about this. You are looking for people with spiritual gifts in vision, organization, or leadership. These are people who can live in the future, be comfortable with chaos, dream

impossibilities, synthesize opposites. These are NOT experts in "management" â€| after all the

board will not deal with budgets, reports, or day to day management of the church. Can they talk to strangers? Can they interpret demographic statistics? Can they connect and converse with community leaders and faith leaders â€| locally and even globally?

Step 7:

Still in "dry dock", the steering committee can now spend time with the teams of the stability triangle and thecore of the new board. Together they need to hammer out their own "proscriptive" job descriptions. These do not need to be "laid on" â€| but rather developed from within the teams themselves. Unlike the old model, you are not nominating people to implement a "To Do" list

that has already been drawn out. You are gathering the right people to help them develop their own "Don't Do" list. They themselves can craft their job descriptions â€| pastor and steering committee can be involved.

I have tried to provide some basic "categories" of proscriptions that might be included in their job descriptions, but each team will develop the details themselves.  If you wish, you can even test them periodically with the existing board or the congregation for feedback and fine tuning.

Step 8:

Meanwhile (still in "dry dock") the new board can begin shaping the kind of broad policies that will become additional boundaries for the creativity of the church. Some of these may carry some denominational roots. For example, Lutherans might say that "every human being can directly access the fullness of the Holy without an intermediary, and every Christian is called to ministry" which is the historic "priesthood of all believers" doctrine. Such a policy will mean that the church cannot rely exclusively on clergy to celebrate sacraments or do ministries, and open the door for radical volunteerism. The "new" Board can begin to identify long term opportunities and obstacles, consider what measurable changes in social and personal change will become their guides for success, and ponder what degree of sacrifice they will personally model to the congregation to achieve mission. Note again, they do not need training in budget development, fund raising, program management, or even conflict resolution â€| the staples of the old "prescriptively thinking" board.

Step 9:

Once the teams of the Stability Triangle have more clarity about job descriptions, they will also have greater clarity about their continuing education needs. Whatever it takes, train the teams. One of the most helpful tactics will be to bring people in from outside the church (from secular,

non-profit, corporate, or health care sectors) to train the teams in their work.

Step 10:

Presumably the spiritual growth emphasis of step 1 has been utilizing small group multiplication as a key methodology. Now begin training those team leaders to develop similar proscriptive job descriptions for each team. Who does it? The Training Team itself from the Stability Triangle. This task will not only help re-shape the various cells, but it will be "learning-on-the-go" for the Training Team itself.

Step 11:

The Human Resources Team can begin refining both the gifts discernment process in the congregation, and also develop a grievance process similar to the one I have generally described in my book. They can also begin targeting the development of continuing education budgets for both volunteers and staff. Dialogue with the emerging "new" board may help them anticipate

Key areas for new learning.

Step 12:

Throughout all of this work, staff (and the pastor in particular) will begin to understand how their emerging new roles will impact their weekly agenda. They will need some mentoring (in cooperation with the steering committee), and can begin to re-write their job descriptions "proscriptively". How these job descriptions will look cannot be predicted by me from afar. It is

The very essence of the organization that job descriptions are not "generic" or "importable" from one place to another, but developed uniquely and contextually in each place. They will reflect the unique genetic code of each congregation.

Step 13:

When all is in place, an entire package needs to be set before the congregation. IN UMC circles, I presume that will require a "charge conference". The membership of the new board and stability triangle, the newly revised proscriptive job descriptions, along with the genetic code, all need to be shared. There may well be more than one gathering to try to educate the congregation on the new model. IN the end, the congregation will likely need to make a decision. You need to choose a date, smash the champagne bottle on the construction that has been till now in "dry dock",

and launch the ship. From that moment, the old organizational model is gone.

Step 14:

The next year will indeed be a "shake down cruise", but clarity and consensus around the genetic code will make it a smoother ride. No doubt there will be refinements and changes in job descriptions, team membership, etc.. Eventually, however, a new organizational model will become the "habit" of the congregation â€| and it will release more energies for mission.

Tom Bandy

From Bill Easum

Tom has given us a 13 step nuts and bolts approach to the Stability Triangle and accountability.  It is a good one and worthy to be followed.

Those who follow both of us know that at some points Tom and I diverge some,

but that is the essence of the world we are moving toward - no one has any

one good answer to most things.  Where Tom and I might differ a bit is on the job descriptions, but even then, not much.  I dont believe in job descriptions much anymore.   But if you have to have them to satisfy the old timers and Boomers, then limit them serverly to simply proscriptive

items and then not too many.

Say I am hiring someone to be the worship leader and the mission of the church is to "transform seekers into people filled with the Spirit" then about all I want that person to know about their job is that they are to use their passion and gift for music as a vehicle to achieve that mission

Within the vision and values of the church.  I think the values set all the boundaries a church needs - thus, no need for job descriptions.  For example. say one of the values is Teams.  then the worship leader knows that she/he must enhance the mission of the church through teams, not on his/her own.

Now, I am fully convinced it is a momunemtal mistake for job descriptions to include things like how much vacation a person gets, or how many hours a day they should work, or what day or days a week they get off, or how many sick days they get. If I have to police the people with whom I work, something is wrong. I dont have to be policed and neither should they. The only place this does not apply is with secretaries, Business Managers, and custodians.

They need set hours and the Business Manager needs to be on premise on Sunday mornings to keep the rest of the staff from having to field administrative issues which always seem to happen on Sunday.

I want paid and unpaid staff to join me on the journey of making the mission happen, not to fulfill a pre-determined job.  So the last few years of my ministry, our job descirptions were almost nil.  About all they said was that their role was to enhance the mission statement and to identify,

recruit, train, and deploy 35 new leaders each year. That was it. period.

So, let me encourage everyone to move toward either the elimination or very brief procriptive job descriptions which do not police and only direct the person toward the fulfillment of the DNA of the particular church.