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July 1, 2010

Part 4: Doing Staff Reorganizations Well

Forming the team responsible for the church’s vision.

 by Paul Clark


Editor’s Note: Paul Clark, the Operations Pastor at Fairhaven Church in Ohio and a Contributing Editor to Your Church, recently underwent a major staff reorganization. In a four-part series that started three weeks ago, he explained what Fairhaven sought to change, and the first step for making that change—the dissolution of the executive team. Two weeks ago, he addressed the establishment of new title structures. Last week, he explained how Fairhaven created a Management Team. In today’s concluding article, he explains how Fairhaven created a Lead Team.

Step Four: Creation of a Lead Team

The final step involves how Fairhaven sets the vision and direction for the church. The new Lead Team is comprised of a mixture of individuals who are invited to participate based on their experience, gifting, vision, and their strategic role in the broad scheme of ministry. It includes both men and women, ranging from Boomers to Gen X. It's an eclectic group, each representing a unique vantage point on Fairhaven and culture.

The Lead Team deals with four strategic questions:

1. Where are we going? This involves the vision and values of Fairhaven Church. It encompasses who we are and how we believe God wants us to present the Good News to our community and our world. It's an understanding of the church’s DNA.

2. How will we get there? This second question deals with the strategic plans and initiatives that must come into being for our vision and values to become real. It's laying the tracks upon which the ministries will run, to insure that we remain who we believe God has called us to be. It's macro instead of micro. It's stays at the 30,000-foot level, leaving the details of implementation to the Management Team.

3. What are we saying? The voice of Fairhaven is established through the Lead Team. The messaging, the preaching, and the communication are coordinated at a macro level within the Lead Team. Our Communication Team director sits on the Lead Team. The team helps David Smith, the Lead Pastor, take the pulse of the congregation and identify the needs that should be addressed and the shape of our communication.

4. What's beyond the horizon? We love to plan and we believe that good planning always pays off. Though God can (and does) surprise us, good leadership necessitates good planning. The Lead Team handles long range issues like multi-site, demographic venues, facility expansion, and personnel planning.

The Lead Team is led by our Lead Pastor. He values lively discussion, a free-flowing exchange of ideas, mutual respect for one another, and relational integrity. Meetings are twice each month and last no more than 90 minutes. The team has unquestioned authority, even if for no other reason than it's led by the Lead Pastor. But because it has delegated most of the implementation issues to the Management Team, thus sharing power with another group of staff leaders, it has broadened the number of people with a voice in shaping the future of the church. Sharing power and decision-making has infused life into our staff and created the foundation for accomplishing the goals stated at the beginning.

Our former staff structure lasted five years, which doesn't seem like a long time. But the changing generational landscape of church staffs requires that we keep a careful eye on our organizational structure, not only to be prepared for future growth, but to be sure we retain a healthy and engaged staff.

Paul Clark has served as a pastor in the areas of administration and operations for 15 years, holding a BA from Moody Bible Institute and a MBA from Xavier University. His passion is management in the local church and supporting others in leading the church organization, which he has done through teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level. He has taught for Alliance Theological Seminary and currently serves as an adjunct professor at Mount Vernon Nazarene University. He has presented workshops on church management at Cedarville University, Moody Bible Institute's Pastor's Conference, and the CLA and NACBA national conferences. He’s been published in Your Church, where he serves as a Contributing Editor, and discusses church management issues on his blog, http://visionmeetsreality.org.

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Posted by Matt Branaugh on July 1, 2010 8:00 AM

Related Tags: administration, business administrators, church, Communication, conflict, executive pastors, hiring, leadership, ministry, office, pastors, planning, staff, Teamwork

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