The Elder Board Relationship: The Goldilocks Zone Between Micromanagement and Neglect

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the extremes of church leadership structures, emphasizing the importance of healthy board dynamics. He introduces the concept of the 'two ditches' in church board management: micromanagement and abandonment. Rhoades advocates for finding a balance, or the 'Goldilocks zone,' where boards focus on outcomes rather than methods, allowing for strategic leadership without unnecessary control. He underscores the necessity of training board members to create effective partnerships between church staff and boards.• Church leadership often swings between micromanaging or neglectful board governance.• Micromanagement stifles staff innovation and fosters a culture of order-taking.• Abandonment leads to decision-making in isolation without accountability.• Healthy boards focus on outcomes and offer strategic oversight while providing clear boundaries.• Effective board-staff relationships require intentional design and communication.• Church staff should educate boards on healthy oversight and strategic engagement.

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Transcript

Why Micromanagement Kills Leadership

When The Board Disappears Completely

The Goldilocks Zone Of Oversight

Train The Board To Govern Well

Evaluate Recent Board Interactions

How To Reach Todd And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You're sitting in an elder meeting or the board meeting at the end. It's the third time. It's the third time this month. And they're debating on whether or not you can buy new coffee for the law. Maybe it's the opposite. Maybe you haven't seen an elder in six months. Except at the Sunday service, and you're making decisions you probably shouldn't be making alone. It seems like sometimes that's either one extreme or the other extreme. Where are you living in your leadership at the church? Let's talk about it today, right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at Chemistrystaffing.com. And at Chemistry Staffing, we're really, really concerned about the health of you personally as a church staff member and also the health of your church. So that's why we do these podcasts, the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, every weekday for you here. So I'm really glad you're here. This week we're talking about board structures, elder structures. And today we're talking about I want to have a conversation about what I call the two ditches. Okay, the two ditches. Most elder boards, most church boards, I believe, from my experience, and I've been doing this for oh my goodness, 35 years, something like that. Most elder boards and church boards lives in live in one or two ditches. Here's here are the two ditches. Number one. Ditch number one. They're micromanaging everything. And they're, truth be told, they're managing your calendar. They're approving your sermon series, they're questioning every purchase over 50 bucks. That's ditch one. They're just managing everything. Ditch number two, they hired you a while back and they just disappeared. It seems like you're flying solo on decisions that could actually tank the church. And what I'm here to tell you today is neither one of those ditches works. And here's what's happening, actually, in both of those scenarios. Now, hopefully, you're in a healthy culture and you're right in the middle. You're not in either one of those ditches, but a lot of churches, a lot of church leaders find that they're dealing with church boards that are either micromanagers or they're so hands-off they don't even know if they exist. So let's take a look at what's happening in both of those scenarios. First of all, when boards micromanage, here's what happens staff stops thinking strategically. Why bother? The board will just override it anyway, and you essentially become, as a staff, either you, if you're a solo pastor or your staff, you essentially become order takers instead of leaders. The church moves at the speed of the monthly meetings and no faster, and innovation dies. So that's the ditch one. That's the micromanagement. You lose all your innovation and you just feel like you're order takers and you're not really getting anything done. Now, let's look at the other ditch, all right? When boards disappear, the staff carries the weight that they weren't meant to carry alone. You have to make decisions. Whether you're a solo pastor, whether you're a staff pastor, if the board has disappeared, somebody's got to make the decisions. And you've got to make decisions. And those decisions are often made in isolation. And there's no accountability. That accountability is all out the window. The accountability, the healthy accountability just vanishes, and the senior pastor becomes a lone ranger. And when things go wrong, everybody on the board is just like, How did that happen? Everybody's surprised. Now, listen, both extremes come with good intentions. Boards either seem like they care too much or about the details, or they trust too much without really any kind of engagement. So this brings us to what I call the Goldilocks zone. Okay? You're all familiar with the story of Goldilocks, right? Healthy boards will focus on outcomes, not methods. They ask, are we reaching our goals? Not why did we choose that font? That's the healthy church staff board or elder team. Healthy teams, they engage monthly on vision and quarterly on strategy. They give you both authority to lead, but they also give you clear boundaries in which to lead. They put up those guardrails for you. They support publicly and question privately. And what this actually looks like is board meetings that focus on ministry impact, not operational details. Most healthy boards do not get stuck in the weeds of doing operational details. They're not determining the color of the carpet or what coffee to buy. They're determining ministry impact. So what happens in healthy situations is you report on metrics that matter, not just all the busy work. How many times have you written down, you've got a board meeting on Tuesday night, you've got to give a report. So you're like, oh no, what did I do? I need to write something down. Report on the metrics that matter, not all the busy work. Don't just fill the paper with what you're trying to report out. The healthy board should approve budgets, and then you manage the spending within them. Uh you get guidance on big directional decisions from a healthy board, and you also get freedom on everything else. Your job is not to avoid the board. And if you're avoiding your board, something is not right. Your job is not to avoid the board. Your job is to train them. Yep, train them. Yeah. If you're an elder or a board and the member listening, you're like, I don't want to be trained. But honestly, Pastor, staff people, it's your job to train them on what healthy oversight looks like. Because most of them don't know. They're bringing, as we talked about a couple of days ago, they're bringing all of their work experience and everything that they're doing in their businesses and in their jobs. They're bringing all of that into the church setting. And sometimes that's healthy, sometimes that's not. Most church board members, most elders have never been church staff. So you have to remember, they don't see everything exactly the same way you do. That's why yesterday we talked about making talking about getting the language, speaking the common language. Most board members are learning too. So here's your bottom line for today. The best elder boards, the best governing teams, the best church boards like a GPS. They know the destination and they help you navigate the obstacles, but ideally they don't control the steering wheel. That's gotta be that's gotta be you. So this week I've been giving you some challenges, and a lot of them has to do so far with just talking to your board members. I want you to evaluate today. Just get out a piece of paper, pencil, pen, whatever you're your writing instrument of choice, and I want you to evaluate your last three board interactions. Here are the questions I want you to ask. Were they focused on methods or on outcomes? And if it's all methods, I want you to schedule a conversation with your board chair. We told you to do this yesterday, about shifting toward strategic oversight. Healthy board relationships don't happen by accident, they happen by design. And part of that design is going to be a little bit of you and at least your board chair getting on the same page, or your elder chair getting on the same page, about not only functions of what the staff people do and what the elders do or the board does, but also how do you work together, how do you speak the same language and how do you achieve the same goals without micromanaging and without abandonment. Well, that's it for today. And we will be back here again for the next two days talking about elder boards, church boards, different aspects of how you as a staff member deal with your governing board. You can always reach out to me. I'd love to hear your feedback. Just go over to my website, todd.church is the URL. Todd.church. There's a place there where you can send me a message and I will read it and hopefully respond to you. I do, I respond to everybody. I believe I respond to everybody. Do my best anyway to respond to anybody that reaches out to me from the podcast. All right, that's it for today. Hope you'll join me again tomorrow. And thanks so much.