Twenty

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”?

         

Every 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

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Church Structure

“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

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For Pastors

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

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Church Structure

and preaching. It is wise to apply Acts 6 as widely as

possible.

         

  If you had your druthers, how would you set up a

church in terms of structure?

  What changes would you make to the structure you

are presently working with?