The Elder Board Relationship_ When Staff Vision and Board Vision Don't Align

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Roach discusses the challenges and importance of achieving vision alignment between church staff and board members. He highlights the common issues of miscommunication and conflict that arise when boards or elder teams reject or alter staff visions. Todd advocates for curiosity and collaboration over defensiveness, urging church staff to understand board perspectives and work collectively towards the church's goals. The episode emphasizes the significance of mutual understanding and adjustment to foster healthy leadership and effective vision implementation.• Common discomfort and confusion after board meetings.• Boards may reject visions due to perceived risks or lack of alignment.• Staff members sometimes wrongly view boards as obstacles.• Importance of curiosity and understanding board concerns.• Adapting communication to address board members' perspectives.• Collaborating with board members can enhance vision success.• Vision alignment is about collective leadership, not personal wins.• Boards' pushbacks can improve vision quality.• Encouragement to seek wisdom and shared goals with boards.

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Transcript

When Board Meetings Leave You Raw

SPEAKER_00 0:08

If you're a staff member and you had to go to a board meeting, have you ever left the meeting confused? Have you ever left the meeting maybe even a little bit angry? I remember early in my ministry, and if he's listening, I hope you're listening, I won't say your name, but I hope you're listening. Early in my ministry, went to a board meeting. It did not go well. It did not go well. And I remember traveling with the pastor, and we were both young. We were both young whippersnappers at the time. Walking back to the pastor with the pastor to his office. We closed the door and he kicked his metal filing cabinet as hard as he could. He caught it wrong and he limped for a week. He really ginked himself up. It's not unusual to leave a board meeting, maybe a little confused, maybe a little angry, maybe a little hurt. You know that ministry vision that you've been casting for months, the direction that you felt God was calling you and your church and your staff to go down. The board just said no. Or even worse, they said yes, but with certain conditions that just gut the whole thing. Why even do it? Have you ever been there? We're talking about that today, right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com. And thank you so much for joining us today. All week here on the podcast, we're talking about elder boards, church boards, and today we're talking about what I call the vision collision. And it happens a lot more than anybody really even talks about. Staff feels called to go maybe in one direction, but uh-uh. The board sees risks or costs or complications, and suddenly doesn't feel like you're managing ministry anymore, you're managing conflict. And here's can I be frank with you? Here's where a lot of staff members get along wrong. And I know when I say that, you're gonna say, Todd, don't tell me I've got it wrong. I've seen a few things, I've been through a few things, I've lived a few things, and I can tell you that there's this thing called the drift that we don't talk about a lot. And so immediately as staff members, when board doesn't, when the board or the elder team doesn't seem to go our way, we immediately assume the board doesn't get it. And we start having conversations around them instead of with them. And we begin to see the elder board or the church board as obstacles rather than partners. We talked yesterday about we both your board, even if you've got a bad board or a board that you don't get along with, chances are your board wants the success of the church just as much as you do. But when we as staff members begin to see our board members or our elders as obstacles instead of partner partners, that's when that drift really starts to take effect. Maybe we cave completely and we just we lose our prophetic voice. All these things can just kill healthy leadership if we let it get to us. Now listen, boards aren't trying to crush your vision, they're trying to protect the church. And just because they don't like your idea doesn't mean that they're against you. It's just that you've got some you've got some work to do. And that work probably has to do with recentering your idea or recentering your vision or recentering what you need to communicate or where you feel like you need to go. So I think one of the keys here is, and man, I know in my ministry career I started with defensiveness. If you start with defensiveness, when you get any kind of obstacle to what you think God's called you to do or what you would like to do, when you react immediately with defensiveness, you're almost always going to lose. So I think you should start with curiosity. Okay? Curiosity. Here's what that looks like. Help me understand what you're saying. Help me understand your concerns. What am I missing here that you're seeing? Where do you think the risks are? Why wouldn't we want to do this? And then something else I think that's really helpful is just try think about your audience. Try to present your vision in their language. If they think practically, if you've got a board or one person on your board that's outspoken, but they're very practical, show them the practical steps. If you've got somebody that that doesn't think practically at all, but they think totally relationally, you're going to want to put something in your presentation or your talk with them to show them the people impact, because that's the lens that they're viewing this from. You've got other people on your board probably that are just thinking they're not people. They're far from people, and they're not even all that practical, but they're very pragmatic and they think financially. So if you've got somebody on your board that's always got the financial questions, if that's maybe they're an accountant or they work at a bank or something, but if they if you've got somebody on your board that just thinks financially, make sure you bring in that stewardship angle. Show them how this is going to work financially. You got to find those intersections. Where does their vision, their wisdom, the wisdom of your board, the wisdom of your elder team, where does their wisdom meet your vision? Where's that intersection at? What parts of their pushbacks are actually making the vision better? Because guess what? You don't have all the best ideas in the world. You have some really good ideas, but maybe somebody on your team, maybe somebody on your elder board or your board can make your vision even better. Or bring some different aspects to it. Be willing to adjust, be willing to adjust timing, be willing to adjust your tactics. Maybe the vision is right, but the season's wrong. And maybe they're making a good case. Maybe they're actually safeguarding you from making a bad decision or pulling the trigger when the season is just wrong. Maybe the direction is solid, but the you're just moving too fast for everybody. Maybe you just need to slow down. On your board sits some wisdom that you need to listen to and not just go at whenever there's anything that comes up. Remember, this and this is important. Okay? It's not always about winning and losing. Matter of fact, it's not about winning or losing. It's about leading together toward what God wants for your church. And sometimes the best visions that that we feel like we have, sometimes those best visions that we come up with can get better when they're tested by wise people. So here's the bottom line for today. Vision alignment isn't just about getting the board to rubber stamp your ideas. It's really about building something together that none of you should see alone or could see alone. I know a lot of pastors that just think they they look at other pastors in other churches and they see their boards and how how receptive they are to their ideas. And really, what there's what they're looking at is a pastor that's built a board of yes men or yes women. And they think, boy, that would be great. You know what? It's not that great. When you have a board, I'm getting off onto a tangent now, but when you have a board of yes men or yes people or yes women, it doesn't make any difference what your vision is. Whatever you take in, they're gonna say okay. And that honestly is a dangerous place to be. Yesterday I encouraged you when you're talking about this to schedule some time with a board person. Not to present anything, not to defend anything. I'm gonna encourage you to do that again today. Maybe it needs to be with your board chair. Maybe just schedule 30 minutes, maybe take them out to Starbucks or something. And just ask them this. What do you wish? John, what do you wish that I understood better about how you see our church's future? Just share, open it up. Put it on the table. Say, we're what do you wish I understood better about how you look at our church's future? And then shut up. Just shut up and listen. Really listen. Because the best ministry happens when staff vision and board wisdom work together. Now you've got this, but you need to also get the wisdom from the rest of your team, not only your staff. Sure, get it from your staff, but also whenever you can, however you can, as often as you can, get that collective wisdom from either your elder board or your board of directors or your church board. It'll make a difference. All right, that's it for today. I hope this has been helpful to you. We're talking about boards and elder teams and governing structures, all that kind of thing, all week here on the podcast. I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. Reach out to me anytime. I would love to hear your feedback, your input, your output, whatever you've got for me. You can reach me over at my website at todd.church and check out all of our work that we do each and every day over at chemistry staffing.com as well. All right, that's it for today. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you'll be back here again tomorrow talking about elder teams and boards.