Lecture

Let’s move on now in lecture number 9 to viewing the leader’s role as a board or committee chairperson. This is an area in which people do not take a great deal of interest and in which they are not greatly concerned about quality, and yet it is an area of enormous importance for a leader, because every leader is eventually a chairperson of a board or committee and perhaps several. I can’t even think of how many committee meetings I have to chair in a given week. It’s just part of the job.

Let’s start with a story. A sea captain and his chief engineer were arguing over who was the most important to the ship, so to prove their point to each other, they decided to swap places. The chief engineer ascends to the bridge; the captain goes down to the engine room. Several hours later, covered with oil and dirt, the captain suddenly appears on the deck. “Chief,” he hollers, waving aloft a thirty-year old monkey wrench. “You have to get down there. I can’t make it go.” To which the chief replies, “Of course you can’t. She’s aground.” That simple story may evoke images of Captain Kirk and Scotty if you’re old enough, but it really illustrates a basic truth of ministry organizations.

On a team, we don’t excel each other, we depend on each other. This entire study is about team leadership, so you should not be surprised at my emphasis on the leader’s role as team player on whatever board or committee he might share. In fact, it’s precisely that nonbiblical adversarial aura we create between and among chairpersons and committee members which makes this dimension of ministry difficult and even some times dreaded. So as you read through the materials for this chapter and as you listen to this tape, keep the team concept foremost in your mind. My friend Michael Anthony puts it this way, “Clearly there are many benefits of operating ministry as a team venture.” In addition to those listed above, there is also a shared sense of ownership in the ministry. Accountability and decision making, freedom for idea sharing, all of which provide the church with more creative approaches to programming.

Team ministry also lightens the burden of overworked staff members, helps the average person in the pew see the importance of serving the Lord by serving His people, and provides all members with a degree of recognition for their contribution and their help.

The values of committee work, I think, should be obvious. They’re not always obvious when you’re sitting there in a committee, but they should be obvious as we work through a study in leadership. Group ideation is greater than the thought process of one person attempting to solve a problem. In Christian circles, the fellowship of God’s people working together to accomplish God’s work should make board or committee activity a highlight. Go ahead and laugh, but in reality this can happen.

Third, the presentation of joint thinking on some controversial issue has more authority and can develop more respect than the attitude of one person, so evangelicals should stop throwing stones at committees and recognize instead the great contribution they make toward collective ministry.

Maybe it’s necessary at this point in our study to distinguish between a board and a committee. For our purposes, we’ll consider a board a higher-level policy-making group and a committee a recommending group, usually appointed by and responsible to a board. Though various structures appear in different types of Christian organizations, the actual functions of boards and committees takes on a striking similarity. A college, for example, has a board of trustees or a board of regents, and then administrative committees responsible to that board. In a church you’d have maybe a Christian education committee and a missions committee, maybe a music committee responsible to the deacons or the elders or the session or whatever it might happen to be.

The first step to properly functioning as a board or committee chairperson is to recognize the essential (we’re now talking, I should say, about the various functions of boards) nature of the group and its objectives. You’ve heard that before. So team leaders convey this information accurately and adequately to all group members. A misconception of one’s role on a board leads to inferior performance and possibly even to a distortion of the ministry which board or committee work can be and should be.

Boards determine policy. We’ve already mentioned this. Let’s take it a little bit further. This aspect of board work can be observed in the function of a school board at any level—operating the school, its objectives and goals, enlistment of personnel, long-range planning. All these policy-making kinds of things are the board’s responsibility.

Recommendations come from the faculty and from the administrative groups through proper channels, but in the final analysis the board sets policy. In any organization, a number of steps should be followed in determining institutional policy. Review of past policies and present procedures helps us know where we are. Confirmation of goals and objectives based on the mission and those kinds of things are almost second nature when you get to be an experienced leader.

So you can see why accrediting associations, talking now about secondary schools and colleges and graduate schools, you can see why accrediting associations do not allow presidents or principals to chair the boards of their institutions. This happens all the time in corporate America, but it does not happen in education, and it certainly never happens in a Christian organization and certainly never happens in the church. It destroys the balance of power; it catapults one person into a frightening position. It seems to me that the whole thrust of the New Testament emphasizes that the CEO and chairman of the board is something that secular business may get away with but has absolutely nothing to do with the way we carry out the ministry of the church. Boards set policy. Boards implement policy. Well, actually that’s not entirely true, since much of the policy set by boards is implemented by staff throughout the organization, but nevertheless, the necessity of setting in motion the wheels of implementation rests on the board. Sometimes in certain aspects of board work, the policies will actually be executed by the board. It’s at least consistent to say that the board is responsible for seeing that the policies they have determined are satisfactorily implemented and say to the administration, “What did you do about this thing we decided in our last meeting?”

Third, boards advise policy. You see, the board may delegate its policy-making functions on occasion, passing to others in the organization the responsibility for deciding certain issues under study by the organization. In that case, the policy itself is formulated by a lesser body but results from authority delegated by the board. That’s consonant with transmitting the authority. There needs to be obviously some counsel, some advice. The more the board trusts its administration, the less it will get involved in implementation or even in advising policy. I can remember many times as a college president being told by a board, “That’s your area of responsibility, but we suggest that you keep in mind . . .” and then they’d have some advising guidelines for me, and those are helpful. Those are useful. You certainly don’t want to stand there and say, “Don’t tell me how to do it.”

Boards assume legal responsibility for policy. Every organization exists as an entity, which must be represented in some legal way. The smallest church has to have some legal form. Generally these representatives take some kind of form of some kind of board—regents, elders, deacons, trustees, elders, whatever. Legal documents, land deeds, incorporation papers are signed by board members who thereby assume legal responsibility for the organization’s proper functioning. Should difficulties arise, the court doesn’t render judgment against the entire congregation or against the leader, the pastor, the president, but against representatives whose names are fixed to legal documents.

I want to refer you to a book by Thompson and Thompson which is very, very useful in looking at these legal aspects. Let me see if I can give you the documentation on that. Robert and Gerald Thompson, Organizing for Accountability. This will be in the bibliography. Published in 1991 by Harold Shaw Publishers in Wheaton, Illinois.

Board and committee membership, our next topic. We can find innumerable technical differences in constitutions and bylaws of Christian organizations, but its surely safe to say that boards recruit their membership in three basic ways. One is self-perpetuation. A self-perpetuating board may or may not have a limiting tenure clause; that is, board members may hold office indefinitely, or the constitution may call for a limited stay on the board. When a vacancy does occur, it’s filled by election among the board members themselves. They add to their own ranks those they wish to serve.

The second way is representation. This is probably the most common approach and the one most familiar to us. This is used by the Congress of the United States—the House of Representatives. Congress certainly is a policy-making body. Its members do hold office by the choice of their constituents, and elected boards almost always place some kind of tenure limit on board membership, although technically the Congress doesn’t do that very well.

And then, third, what we call ex officio status, members who serve on a board by virtue of their office. They are neither appointed nor elected to that role. The pastor, for example, may be an ex officio member of every board and committee in the church. Why does he do that? Because he’s the pastor. Not because any of the boards or even the congregation have necessarily elected him to those. Ex officio, of course, does not mean non-voting. An ex officio member may be voting or non-voting, and that’s irrelevant to the term itself. It means by virtue of office or out of office literally.

I think limited tenure, that is, guidelines, timelines, for board membership is really a valid and recommended procedure. Boards tend to become entrenched if no boundaries are placed on the time of service. Several obvious problems can occur with lifetime board membership. Members tend to grow old together, stagnate in their thinking, aggressive planning can develop at the highest level. People tend to adopt vested interests when they know they can protect them over a long period of time. So another problem, I think, especially in a church, is the dismissal of a board member when that becomes necessary. If you have a lifetime deacon who falls into immorality, you’re going to have real problems, maybe even church-splitting kinds of problems.

But unlike boards, most committee memberships are appointive in nature. It’s not impossible to have a permanent committee, but most come up for review in change of personnel periodically. As vice president of Dallas Seminary, one of my duties, and dean of the faculty, one of my duties is to appoint committees, appoint faculty committees. I don’t do this in a vacuum. I talk to the chairs, I talk to the groups those committees will represent and do, and sometimes a chairman will say, “I’d rather not have that person on my committee,” and if I can accommodate that, fine, but I want to balance of people who can competently handle the business of the seminary in appointments and those appointments in that particular illustration are for one year. And those committees discuss and study and make recommendations and sometimes make a decision within their purview, but mainly they advise another group. An academic affairs committee in a college, for example, would advise the full faculty and the authority would be taken there.

A competent board chairperson assesses the interests and abilities of board members and then tries to put them on strategic committees and in strategic roles. I think the productivity of any board or committee largely depends upon the effectiveness and thoroughness of the chair, that’s really what we’re talking about in this study. She bears the responsibility of calling the meetings, helping the board analyze the problems before it, motivating the members, drawing them into ideation, assisting the committees, and formulating an accurate and thorough report. A chair is the strategic position on any board or committee, and as I said, leaders will occupy that chair many times through your years of ministry.

Let me say again, and I’m repeating myself deliberately here, that leaders in Christian organizations dare not let an adversarial attitude develop between executives and board members or the board as a whole. If we accept the concept of team leadership, let me approach the board neither with intimidation nor manipulation.

We serve together as one in the cause of God’s kingdom, and anything less than team spirit denies the emphasis of Scripture.

The chairperson’s role in board and committee work. Now about this point in the chapter and in our study, some will wonder why we have not dealt with crucial specifics of board and committee work—agenda preparation and handling of minutes and parliamentary procedure and so on—and the answer to that is that I’ve covered that in a book called Feeding and Leading, and that’s chapter 18 to be specific in that book. As much as possible I want our present study to be a companion, not an echo of that book, and as you know, I’ve asked you to read that book before you began this study, although that is not necessarily the book on which the study is based.

Blumenthal wrote many years ago about executives and sub-executives and tried to pinpoint levels of authority within that pattern. I don’t know that we want to get that specific about it, but it may be valuable to delineate the chairperson’s work in six major categories of function, and these should appear in your outline, and these will be applicable, I think, either to a board or to a committee chairperson. I don’t think there’s a difference here in these responsibilities between a board or committee.

Planning. The chairperson in concert with the executive officer or officers is responsible for structuring board or committee meetings, gathering any necessary information to be disseminated. The most strategic aspect of the planning function is the construction of the meeting agenda. This should be prepared in advance, distributed to committee members, and should contain sufficient information so that they know what they’ll be expected to face when they arrive. Use action verbs when you do that. Verbs which should genuinely define what the committee will do. Words like discuss, decide upon, propose, things like that.

Ample announcement obviously should be given for every meeting so that every member of the board knows the details and what’s going to happen. The agenda should be firmly based on the mission of the organization and the vision for its future. Board or committee agendas which deal constantly with past problems and present struggles soon create discouragement and, I think, even defeat. Leith Anderson says, “Every organization needs someone who looks out the window outside the organization to the world and to the future.” Surely that means the chairperson or executive officer or both. Either way a futuristic, purpose-driven agenda should result.

The next step is presiding. Once you plan the meeting, then if you’re the chair, you preside over that meeting. The board or committee chairperson does not dictate nor dominate but rather catalyzes group discussion and group action. Normally you wouldn’t even vote on an issue unless that vote were necessary to break a tie. The chair states the business clearly, keeps the discussion moving, secures necessary motions, or preferably consensus from the floor, and as much as possible, refrains from influencing committee members with his or her own opinion. We may assume that the very role of chairperson indicates influence over the thinking of colleagues. Add a persuasive personality to that and the influence can overwhelm the members, and to do so is a perversion of the office. We want to be careful about that. That’s one reason I don’t like pastors chairing boards and committees in the church. I know it happens all the time, and I know some denominations actually call for it, but I think it’s an unwise decision. I don’t know how you could possibly defend it biblically. I don’t know if I can necessarily attack it biblically, but it seems foolish to me to put the power of the office and the power of the chair into a situation where one could manipulate the thinking of other people and, thereby, get his or her own way on matters of great importance to the whole group.

Schmuck and Runkel, interesting names, but a wonderful book, describes what your board or committee meeting should look like. They say,

Effective meetings are characterized by at least four features: 1. A balanced mixture of task and maintenance functions with an edge given to sticking to the task. 2. Many more group-oriented actions than self-oriented actions. 3. Wide dispersal of leadership roles. And 4. Adequate follow-through to permit decisions made at the meeting to result in expected actions.

That’s a very brief paragraph, but it’s a very good one. Remember look for Schmuck and Runkel in the bibliography.

Appointing is the third function. Often chairpersons of boards or committees appoint other officers, appoint committee members or subcommittee members, and this task must be carried out with a full realization of the goals of the institution in mind. In Christian organizations, it can’t be some kind of political featherbedding. These kinds of appointments should generally be made publically in the meeting if possibly and recorded accurately in the minutes. In the seminary where I serve, one of my duties, as I have suggested, is to chair the academic affairs committee, the central hub of faculty and curriculum decision making.

Frequently I hear myself saying something like, “Let’s have the systematic theology department discuss this matter further and report to the committee at its next meeting.” Or maybe, “Ask Dr. Malfords to revise his proposal and submit it to the dean’s office as quickly as possible.” See, that’s extramural appointment of work. It saves enormous blocks of committee time for starters, and in my opinion, generally produces an enhanced finished product.

Representing. The board chairperson speaks for the entire board. While in some situations this may require a great deal of public exposure, in others a certain amount of writing even. Either way, the chairperson must accurately express the board’s policies and attitudes to the organization’s larger public. My daughter serves as director of children’s ministry in a Baptist church. Part of her task is to communicate all the ministries and functions of that age group. She represents every volunteer in the entire children’s ministry program, whether they serve in Sunday school classes, weekday club ministries, nursery duty, or anything else. As chairperson of the children’s ministry team, she communicates that crucial element of congregational life to the deacons, who will often be required to make decisions about time and space and money on the basis of the information she provides. So representing is a very important dimension of board or committee membership.

I would add counseling to this list. Now the counseling role of a board or committee chairperson leans more toward the function of advising than counseling in the technical sense. That chairperson on occasion may attend meetings of the committees which he is appointed and on those occasions offer some words of counsel as to how the committee can best achieve its objectives and carry out its functions. She might meet personally with the chairpersons of the committees or subcommittees, encouraging them in their work, guiding them in task achievement.

The chairperson is also responsible for spending some time with officers of the board—the vice chairperson, the secretary, the treasurer, and others. Notice that knowledge of the total structure and the function of the board or committee has to be really well in hand.

Reporting. Although committee reporting may not be done by the chairperson (it could be done by the secretary), that person is ever thus responsible for the report since the meeting minutes form the official record of what the board or committee does. When the secretary has been appointed or elected, the chairperson should give careful guidance to make sure that the minutes are recorded accurately and in proper style.

There’s no virtue in spending a great deal in board or committee work just for the sake of having meetings, so a distribution of minutes in advance alleviates the drudgery of reading through them at the beginning of every meeting. Make sure you prepare the minutes in a concise fashion so that committee members don’t need to wade through an enormous amount of material to find out what really happened.

Along with this oral reporting and this keeping of minutes, the chairperson may be responsible for the preparation of written reports describing the work of the group. These reports should pinpoint the policy issues, make them intelligible to all people served by that board or by the committee. So the image of the board and its work is developed and maintained by the reports given to the public or to the constituents. So the necessity of accuracy and clarity is surely obvious to you.

Let’s move to a final major section here, the responsibility of board and committee members. The chairperson should assume some responsibility for teaching the board how to function properly. It begins with regular and faithful attendance at all meetings. It continues with preparation for meetings. As the meeting progresses, the members should be involved in asking discerning questions about the policy issues on the floor. Constructive participation is essential on the part of every member. Of course, every committee has its negative members, and they usually exhibit several clear-cut characteristics. One is the ability to see only one side of an issue. This person makes sure that the committee realizes the dominant importance of her position. There may be several apparent views on the subject, but like a horse with blinders, the only way that this type can see is the direction in which he is headed.

Second, an emotional fixation on some issue or some side of an issue. Some members throw aside an empirical approach to the committee’s examination of problems and operate strictly on emotions rather than a volitional concern for the issues at hand. That kind of person is easily offended, maybe even will walk out of the committee meeting if things don’t go his way. If this never happened to you, just relax, eventually it will.

Third is the tendency always to vote with the chairperson or the majority. Remember, we’re discussing here some of the problem people that we’ll have on these boards and committees. The tendency always to vote with the chairperson or with the majority. Even though you exercise careful discretion in not offering your own opinion on issues, this rubberstamp kind of person settles on a position he thinks you prefer and votes that way.

Or maybe he sees the majority building up for a certain vote, and he’ll jump on that bandwagon so he can be counted with the majority. Actually, this kind of person has no use to you in the board or committee because there is no ideation going on here, but there’s sometimes not much you can do about it.

Number four, nonparticipation in discussion. This member may have a heart of gold and may have a head full of ideas regarding the issues that committee faces, but those can’t serve the committee since their proceeds can’t make an escape through a closed mouth. We need to get people involved, talking to us, talking to each other, working through the issues, trying to arrive at a group decision, that wonderful golden word consensus.

Five, there are people who monopolize the conversation. This is the opposite problem from number four. This can reap one of two possible results. Either the arguments of this kind of person are persuasive and he draws support, or their much talking builds enmity and other committee members sort of get hostile toward that particular position. Either way, it’s no good. It’s a bad situation, and you want to try to stop that. It may be a little more difficult to stop the over-loquacious member than it is to get the nonparticipant involved, but you cannot stop short of both of those. You must achieve them both in time.

Six, you have the people who begrudge expenditure of time. They don’t see their committee work as investment. They’re watching the clock. They probably serve on the board or committee for the prestige that may be involved. They aren’t concerned about genuinely effective participation. Of course, all of us are like this once in a while. You know, we have to rush on to something else, but if it characterizes a member’s attitude at every meeting, that person should probably not be asked to serve again. Voting on issues is an important responsibility of the board, and that voting can’t be a careless affirmative or a constant negative. Serious members vote according to conviction.

Now, there are, again, all kinds of things that we could say about the mechanics of how this all goes on. I’m trying to lay down principles. Actually a study like this can only be principial. I can’t deal with every situation that you might find yourself in. That’s just plain impossible. So we lay down general principles and see what will emerge as a result of that.

So let’s sort of wind down this study by calling attention to the fact that participation in a board or a committee provides not only for contribution of the individual to the work of the group but also for the influence of the group on the member.

I’m sure most board or committee members think of themselves as influencing the group, but Blumenthal suggests that the behavior of the board member is influenced not only by his own background and motivations and attitudes, but it’s influenced also by the behavior of the board as a group. People by their very nature are social beings. They’re not independent of their environments. So the attitudes of the group, this thing called group dynamics that we’ve already talked about in an earlier study, is very impelling and propelling and compelling in a group situation, even in a board or committee setting.

Remember hedonic tone, whether people are really happy and satisfied in their group involvement? In a board or committee, the hedonic tone is largely set by its chairperson. That person is responsible for developing a satisfactory climate in which a free and open discussion of even controversial issues can be carried out and can be carried out without loss of love among the members. This is no small trick in some board and committee situations, but we have to attend to not only the attractiveness of the group but also its effectiveness, and those are two very important dimensions. How does it look and how does it work?

So far from being a pedantic and mechanical vestige of bureaucracy, board and committee work can be ministry, and it can challenge group dynamics and leadership ability at the highest possible level.