Thinking of Reducing the Three Church Boards Down to a Single Model? Don't.

There are typically two boards in a traditional Baptist church: Board of Deacons, and Board of Trustees. Sometimes, in larger churches there might be a Board of Christian Education.

Now, in the healthy Baptist church, the pastor leads and implements his vision and agenda 1) by persuasion; 2) by his own example; 3) by good administration; and 4) by good communications. He must not be the guy who leads by executive order. There is no room for Protestant Popes within the healthy Baptist church.

This model is successful for the pastor depending on how much opportunity a pastor has to persuade people. The pastor has maybe half an hour on Sunday to convey his vision, and maybe some time at midweek Bible study. The rest of the time comes from his face time in these board meetings.

If the two or three board meetings are reduced to a single board meeting, the pastor gets but one opportunity a month to sit in an intimate setting with his church members to discuss the church's ministry.

Further, let's take a church of 200 members. Assuming 1 deacon for every 25 members, there would be 8 members on the Board of Deacons. Thus, the pastor is but one voice in nine. On any given agenda item, individuals might well voice their opinion--maybe two or three minutes each! Right there, the pastor's ratio of input will be his two minutes to 16-24 minutes from others. It is unfortunate enough in this model that pastor's get so little time to share his views compared to the input from others, especially if the pastor has some expertise on the matter and has given considerable thought to it! In a two hour meeting, assuming each person has equal time, the pastor will have his share of about 13 minutes. If there are three boards, the pastor gets about 39 minutes a month to express his views and urgenices.

Now, let's pare this down to a single board. No longer does the pastor have three monthly meetings with a smallish intimate group of eight church members. Now, it is only one meeting a month, and the board must be comprised of 12 to 15 board members. In a two hour meeting, assuming each person has equal time, the pastor will have his share of 8 minutes.

All this to say, in a healthy traditional Baptist church, rarely does a pastor have substantial face-to-face opportunities to convey vision. But reducing the Boards down to a single Board reduces those opportunities substantially. In the examples above, with a multi-board model, the pastor gets 39 minutes to persuade and articulate vision in an intimate setting per month compared with a uni-board model where the pastor has but 8 minutes in a not-so-intimate setting.

Small group meetings might be messy and even laborious, but the effective pastor can accomplish much more in two or three smaller meetings than in a single large meeting.