The Elder Board Relationship_ When Your Board Thinks Like Owners, Not Partners

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the common issues encountered when church boards adopt a business mindset, and offers strategies for fostering healthier relationships between church leaders and board members. He emphasizes the importance of shifting the language and perspective from corporate oversight to spiritual partnership, and suggests practical steps to build genuine connections with board members.• Challenges faced when church boards adopt business-like approaches.• Importance of using inclusive 'we' language to promote partnership.• Encouraging board members to see their role as spiritual covering rather than corporate oversight.• Strategies to translate ministry goals into terms board members understand.• Ideas for building personal relationships with board members outside formal meetings.

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Transcript

Translate Business Talk Into Ministry

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SPEAKER_00 0:08

You walk into the boardroom and you can immediately feel it. The energy in the room, the way they look at you across the table, it's almost like they're shareholders questioning the CEO about quarterly earnings, not ministry partners wrestling together over God's word. If this sounds familiar, if this sounds like your board meeting, we're going to talk about it today and actually all this week right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at ChemistryStaffing.com. And I'm your host right here every weekday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Well, sometimes it happens gradually. Elders start using business language for ministry decisions because that's their language. Maybe they're business people. So they come into the board meeting or the elder meeting with things like, hey, what's the ROI on that on that their youth program? Hopefully they don't sound like that. Hey, we need to see some metrics before we approve more staff. Or staff become employees to manage rather than pastors to help support. And here's where it gets tricky for you as a staff member or as a senior pastor. And it's when over time that your board becomes less of a board or an elder board and be start thinking like they're the owners. You start feeling like they're constantly to constantly defend yourself instead of really dreaming. Every idea, every new idea, at least requires some kind of a business case or a return on investment. And over time, in innovation dies because risk just feels like poor stewardship, and staff meetings, because of all this, just become ongoing performance reviews. And you find yourself kind of just over time walking like eggshells around the people who really you had hoped when they hired you in would have your back. The board sees problems to solve instead of people to shepherd. And listen, most of these elders aren't villains. Although I've met a couple of elders in my time that I think probably could have been a villain in maybe some kind of an old-timey TV show or something, but I get off track there. Most elders aren't villains, okay? Most come from successful business backgrounds. They're successful in life, they're successful, hopefully, in their spiritual life. And that's why they're on your board. That's why they're a part of your elder team if you have an elder team. And most of them have backgrounds that cause them to bring certain things to the table in the elder meeting or in the board meeting that they think are really valuable for the church to have. How do you it's almost like you're speaking different languages? So, how do you get everybody on the same page? How do you start shifting toward what can turn into animosity? Turn the animosity into a partnership. And I think one of the first things you have to do is you have to start using we language in the board conversation. So instead of saying, I think we should do this, or what if we tried this, or instead of saying, I think we should do this, you should say, What if we did this, or what if we explored this? Bringing elders or your board into the process is an important part of the process. It's not just to get them to help you make a decision. They need to be a part of that process. So, as a leader, most of the board members and the elder people that I've worked with over the years, they don't live the day-to-day ministry. They come in, they come in on Sundays, they do their ministry, they come to a meeting once a month, and this is their kind of view into everything that's happening. They don't get into the messy middle of ministry that happens Monday through Sunday every day in and out of the office. They don't see any of that. They just see the decisions that need to go into that, and they want to see the polished outcomes. So if you just ask for their wisdom, that is a huge part of the thing, not just for their approval. Don't pretend to think that you know everything and they don't. Don't guard information that you only know that you're not going to share with them. Because you need to spread the table, you need to set the table and let them know what's going on, and then ask for their wisdom. Ask for their wisdom. And really, there is great wisdom sitting around your board table. I am convinced of that in almost every case. So ask for their wisdom, not just for their approval. Help them to see their role as a spiritual covering, as a really spiritual thing, because it is. The Bible lays out church leadership as a really important thing. Help them to see that spiritual covering, not just the corporate oversight. And here's another thing I think will help is that if you can shift the language, even ever so slightly, replace things like, hey, reporting to the board, to updating our partners, change change, I need to get board approval to that, or to something like, hey, I I need to bounce us off the elders and get some input and get their blessing on this. See how that just it's slight, it's a slight difference, but it just changes uh the language changes uh even the tone of everything. Talk about ministry investment instead of budget allocations. Frame challenges as prayer requests before preventing presenting them as problems. Because here's the deal. You your elders want the church to succeed just as much as you do. It just might not seem like it sometimes. Okay? They're just using the tools, they're bringing the tools that they know from their day jobs, and they're bringing those in to the elder meeting or into the boardroom. Your job isn't to fight that business mindset, if that's what you're dealing with. Don't fight it. It's to translate it. Okay, translate that ministry reality into language that they can embrace, into language that they can understand. Here's the bottom line for today. You can't demand partnership from your elders, but you can model it until they join you there. So what can you do? Todd, what can I do this week? Here's something I think you can do, really tangible step you can take this week if you're ready, willing, and able to do it. Okay? Schedule a coffee day with one elder, not to discuss church business, but to ask about their heart for ministry and to share yours. Start building relationship that makes partnership possible. One of the things that we did at my last church where I was an elder is that we did regular monthly elder meetings, but when you also meet, boy, I don't remember if it was once a month, I think it was once a month. We would meet every morning, and it was a killer, man. It was a killer because it was every morning at six o'clock, and I had to drive 30 minutes to get to the place where we met for breakfast. Every, I think it was like Thursday morning, every first Thursday morning of the month, let's say, we would meet for breakfast at six o'clock in the morning. There were about five of us. And the only rule was we don't talk ministry. We don't talk ministry. We only talked about, hey, how's your family doing? How's the job going? We talked personal stuff. Where are you going on vacation? Those kind of things. But what we found is that building that personal relationship outside of the elder meeting or the board meeting process made such a difference. It put us on the same page language-wise, it put us on the same page, even with a lot of ministry stuff, even though we didn't discuss ministry stuff when we would go out for those monthly breakfasts. So that's another thing. You can do it one-on-one with one elder, or maybe propose, hey, once maybe you can't get everybody to come out every morning at a morning at six o'clock, but propose, hey, once a month, let's get together. Let's get us and our wives together and let's play cards. I don't know. But just do something that's outside of the business or the spiritual aspects of the church and get to know each other. Get to know those that you're serving with. Healthy elder relationships don't just happen. Healthy board relationships don't just happen by accident. They're built one conversation at a time. And a lot of time, you're not the one talking, you're the one listening. All right, we're talking about elder boards, church boards, relationships, all of that this week. I hope it's going to be helpful for you. I don't want you to miss any of them. Wherever you're listening to this, if you're not a subscriber, and most of the people that listen every day are not subscribers, just hit the subscribe button, and that way you'll be able to get updates as to when we when we update every day, and it'll also tell you what we're talking about for that day, so you won't want to miss it. So subscribe, and if there's any way that I can help you, you can reach out to me at podcast at chemistry staffing.com or check out my website. The URL is todd.church. All right, that's it for today. We will be back again tomorrow talking. You guessed it about elder boards and church boards. It's fun stuff, and I don't win.