Any system functioning properly requires a level of accountability from those in charge of the system. When it comes to shepherding the flock you’re leading, the stakes become even higher. There is no room in an assembly of believers for anything other than the highest quality of leadership. Whether purposeful out of selfish motivations or purely as the result of negligence, poor headship has no place here.
In order to create not only the accountability but the stability to run and lead your church effectively, a clearly-worded, explicit document needs to be created. This will serve as an operating standard for you and the entirety of your leadership. With minimal guesswork required to properly run your team, you’ll be able to focus your efforts on the best, most rewarding part of running a church: being a part of and bringing Christ to your community.
An important consideration when planning such a document is how you want information to flow, both inside your team and to your congregation. Ensuring the right knowledge gets to the right people in the right way means proper communication, making it easier for the leadership team as a whole to be as effective as possible.
While the leadership policy document itself tends to be long as a result of its need to be comprehensive, there are several overarching themes that are necessary to keep in mind and cover throughout the process of creating said document.
Accountability
Perhaps one of the most important principles of any leadership team, having accountability for all parties involved means there is a smaller chance for what had once been strong, positive motives to change into selfish, negative, or careless actions. Being proactive in establishing accountability as opposed to reacting to a situation where accountability was needed can prohibit these testimony-damaging issues from taking place altogether.
Of course, at the end of the day humans are humans and can make mistakes, but establishing a system that has protocols in place to avoid this as much as possible is well worth your time.
Delegation
As much as we may sometimes like to believe we can do it all, organizations are able to run most effectively when the those responsible for leading it are able to focus their time, energy, and skills on the most important tasks. To make way for this, delegation needs to happen. The best way to achieve seamless delegation is to plan for it, which is why this is something that needs to be addressed when putting together a guide for how your leadership team is expected to operate.
Trust
The headship of the church, the pastor, can only effectively do his job if he has a trusted team on which he can rely. When that dynamic isn’t functional, the pastor isn’t able to be as effective at shepherding the congregation, leading to potential problems in the church. The purpose of a policy document designed to guide the leadership team is to provide a framework for trust. When expectations are clear, it’s much easier to not only know what is expected of all parties involved, but how to execute those expectations in a way that promotes optimal operation of the church as a whole.
Fiscal Responsibility
As mentioned earlier, finances are a crucial-yet-often-ignored part of running a church community. Properly using the financial resources given to you as a leadership team by God in the form of tithing, offerings, community donations, etc., is a huge responsibility. Creating and maintaining a system that not only keeps accurate records of those resources but has provisions for how they are to be used requires careful oversight by the headship of the church.
It’s an absolute necessity to keep fiscal responsibility and the leadership team’s role in that in mind when creating the policy document that will govern it.