What’s your Board been up to…

When you join our Board, you’re given a dandy little book to read called Governance and Ministry: Rethinking Board Leadership by Dan Hotchkiss. In spite of having less pace that a typical John Grisham novel, several people in the church, including the entire Governance and Staffing Task Force have read it.
SPOILER ALERT: I was most surprised to read that, with good rationale, Hotchkiss recommends that the mission be the “owner” of the church. I won’t explain here, but you can read it if you’re curious (p. 70).
The Board’s job is to represent the mission. We’re learning this role as we go and, we hope, are getting better at staying out of the kitchen. Your Church Executive is, every week, getting stronger in acting as head chef and this helps us with this goal.

I hear a tune in my head that some of my generation back will remember—“If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true.” 

In that vein, we created board priorities for 2019 (the first column in the chart below.) 

To make sure this was something we should be doing, we looked at what aspect of our mission it linked to (second column.)
In the third column, we wrote out what it would look like when it was complete—how things would be different.
Then we made our best guesses at how long it would take and when we could start. 

Each month, we change the last column to reflect where we are with each priority. As you can see, our estimates were a bit optimistic. Some priorities are taking longer and the one in yellow, we’ve decided to suspend as we just have too much on our plates. It’s a living document, not a rule book!
Two board members, Jennifer Kaye and Julie Bergshoeff have just spearheaded moving strategic planning forward, so they’ll be getting your input in the near future.
As always, we welcome any questions you might have by email, phone, or in person.