Church Structure

“I am absolutely meetinged out. Meetings, meetings, meetings! Is that all you do is have meetings?”

Would you, pastor, have to answer, “Yes”?

V   V   V   V   V

E

very church need not be run like Miller Avenue
Baptist Church. Of course not! However, our structure forms the basic illustration for this chapter, because I think it is a workable structure for a small church.

The thesis for this chapter is: the church structure should be simple enough that distractions from the primary goal and mission of the church are minimized.

We have one single board, a church council, consisting of nine members. I am a permanent member of the church council. The other eight members serve for three years at a time and then must be off for one year. And they must be nominated and approved by the congregation. We meet once a month; we will skip a month now and again (usually in August and sometimes in December).

The church council functions as the church administrator, the clearing-house. The council does the “dirty work”.  Everything is on the basis of consensus; no vote is taken. Issues are debated until a resolution and/or consensus is reached.

We do have a budget committee that meets for about two hours a year to prepare the budget, which then goes to the church council, which then goes to the congregation.

There are four quarterly congregational meetings. At the third quarterly meeting the budget is presented. If and when it passes it means that the pastor and staff are hired for another year. Of course, I can be fired at any time, but generally it is understood that when the budget is passed the pastor’s salary is approved. I can count on another year then unless something truly atrocious occurs. And it is always possible to be terminated and I’m going to address that issue in another chapter.

The simpler the structure the less time will be spent keeping it all in place. Once a number of committees have been established, the following will be “forever” coming up:

1.   Attending committee meetings.

2.   Replacing members who have fallen aside, moved, changed church membership, or whatever the reason.

3.   Settling disputes between committee members.

4.   Interpreting the decisions of the committees to the rest of the congregation.

The personal politics, the personal petty politics, involved in on-going committees and boards can be more than a pastor would ever want to be involved in. I simply have no committees.

In our constitution various committees are described and can be staffed if necessary. (A copy of our constitution can be emailed to you by request at either kentphilpott@home.com or earthenvessel.net.) If I were to be terminated, a pastoral search committee would have to be selected. On paper we have that committee, but it is not staffed. If we need a building committee to investigate repairs then that committee can be created. But to maintain committees can be, and usually is, an unpleasant and unnecessary experience!

Let me illustrate our church structure with our Saturday Lunch. The people who run it are the people who participate in it; they are the ones who actually do the work. Problems they encounter are worked out internally, and if this proves impossible, they are taken to the church council. Furthermore, there is no oversight committee for the Saturday Lunch, the Divorce Recovery Workshop, or the Parenting Workshop. There is no committee that oversees the San Quentin or television ministry. There is no oversight committee except the church council.

I doubt I would be able to fit into another church. I have no desire to pastor any other church. If Miller Avenue fired me and another church wanted me, I would have to tell them that they would have to dissolve every piece of their church structure and adopt a simple church government. I would not administrate the committees, boards, and so forth.

The pastoral ministry has one great responsibility and that is to preach the gospel to sinners and saints alike, and to do so we must keep ourselves free of all other entanglements. And there are entanglements, entanglements, and entanglements! In Acts 6 is the story of the apostles’ problem administrating distributions to widows. They selected others, the first deacons, to do the job so they could focus on praying and preaching. It is wise to apply Acts 6 as widely as possible.

V   V   V   V   V

e If you had your druthers, how would you set up a church in terms of structure?

e What changes would you make to the structure you are presently working with?