Proposed Changes to St Paul's
Leadership Structure
Several of our members in different committees have been working recently to adjust our current leadership structure to make it easier to share information, make decisions, and empower individual leaders in ministry. At our last Church Council, the members heard a report from the Committee on Nominations and Leadership Development. Jeff Whitlock and I presented some ideas which will be brought to the Church Council again in July seeking approval with plans to transition to a new model in January 2011. If you have ideas or are interested in learning more about this, please contact one of us.
For the last few years, we have used the ministry team model instead of large catch-all committees. Ministry teams have one area of focus and are only as large as needed to get the job done. They are self-organizing and relatively autonomous. Some teams are permanent, such as the Altar Guild, the Rice Depot Workers, or the Choir . Other teams will be temporary, such as the mission team that will go to Illinois in summer of 2011 or the 2010 Summer VBS leaders. Some teams, especially temporary ones with a special event as the goal, may be larger. Other teams might only have two or three people. Membership on the teams are not be top-down, with leadership plugging people into slots. Instead, personal interest, spiritual gifts, and invitation should be the method for creating ministry teams. That will continue, but in the proposal, every ministry team leader will relate to one of five areas: Discipleship, Nurture, Communication& Evangelism, Missions, and Worship.
The plan is that each of these 5 Ministry Areas will be led by 2 coaches working together. The Ministry Area Coaches, chosen through the annual nominations process, will join with the Administrative Support Committee Chairs (Finance, SPRC, Trustees) to create an executive committee of the church. This proposed executive committee, which we are currently calling the Ministry Table, would meet monthly and provide a regular forum to make decisions, responds to opportunities, and share information between meetings of the much larger Church Council which meets quarterly.
The Ministry Area Coaches, like the chairs of Staff-Parish Relations, Trustees, and Finance, must be committed to serving the church by empowering and mobilizing others to live out their ministries. Coaches will be responsible for creating budget requests for their area, equipping team leaders, and ministry prioritization. Soon, we will have a packet of information which you may download that will have more specifics, including a draft “job description” for the coaches who volunteer. As we consider these adaptations to our structure, the underlying mission of all our ministries remains unchanged: to Make Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.