5 Signs Bad Governance Is Stifling Your Church’s Growth and Mission
How can a board make a decision on every item in the allotted time? How on earth can a congregation?
Yet it’s not that hard to find board members and congregational members who have opinions on everything … no matter how ill-informed those opinions might be.
Boards and congregations that micromanage keep their churches small because of their need to control every decision.
Churches in which boards micromanage rarely grow beyond 200 attenders because the issues facing churches larger than that require boards to stop micromanaging (here are seven other reasons churches never break the 200 attendance mark).
Micromanaging shrinks the size of the congregation back to the size in which everything can be ‘controlled.’
One more thing on micromanagement.
Great leaders never say, “Please micromanage me.” So if you want to repel great leaders, micromanage them.
2. Your congregation demands consensus.
Somewhere along the way someone got the idea that everyone has to agree with every decision.
I think that someone is crazy.
Where on earth did the idea that we need consensus on every decision emerge?
If Moses had waited for consensus before leaving Egypt, the Israelites would still be in slavery.
Consensus kills courage. Churches that look for consensus will never find courage, and churches that find courage will rarely find consensus … at least initially.
When you drive for consensus, decisions get watered down to the point where all the risk is gone, and any boldness evaporates. You get churches that come out in favor of yard sales and Mother’s Day. And that’s about it.
Look, if you and your spouse can’t agree on where to go on vacation, how do you think you’ll get 200, or 2,000, people to agree on anything significant as a church?
Almost nothing gets accomplished if everyone has a say.
So should you ever try for consensus? Well, yes, but likely at the board level. John Stickl has a fascinating approach to consensus-style leadership in a megachurch context that he explains in Episode 29 of my leadership podcast.
3. Your board or congregation doesn’t trust the staff.
This sounds so basic, but it’s so often missed.
For a church to grow and be healthy, there has to be a high level of trust between the staff and the board and congregation.
Naturally, that trust has to be earned by the pastors and staff.
But it’s amazing to me how many people in churches distrust their pastors and staff for no good reason. Churches that cultivate a default assumption of suspicion, not trust, will always pay a price.
The best leader I know on this subject is Andy Stanley, and if you haven’t listened to his 20-minute podcast on trust vs. suspicion, you should.
Bottom line?
If you don’t trust the staff, fire the staff. If you trust them, let them lead.
