Podcast

080 – Church Governance

Posted on October 30, 2020December 4, 2023 by Ryan Sparks

What’s in this Episode?

Church governance. Who needs it? I mean, I’m called of God to lead this church, I’ll just do it and let the chips fall where they may. Well, that might not work out real well for you. The governance of the church is meant to help you, not bind you. In today’s episode of the Church Tips Podcast, we’re going to talk about exactly that.

Read the Transcript

Dick Hardy 0:26
Church governance, you know, some would say, you can’t live with it. Others would say you can’t live without it. You know, I was talking to a pastor, I’ll just leave the area just generally down south, here a couple of years ago, and this guy had a form of governance in his church. I’m guessing the church probably was, oh, six or eight hundred in attendance. But he didn’t adhere to any of the governance that was in place. So it’s like he had something, but the something that he had was really meaningless, because he wasn’t adhering to what the structure was encouraging of him. And, there were, there were conduct issues involved that really, ultimately worked against his good and the good of the church. Why? Because he just didn’t pay attention. He didn’t have the best of governance in place. And what he did have in place, he just wasn’t paying attention to it. So we want to talk today of the reasons that good church governance is important. We’re going to give you three reasons that we think if you’ll, if you’ll just stay attuned to these, you’ll say, okay, this makes sense why I want to have governance in place to help my church be effective to what the Lord has called us to do. So, Jonathan, why don’t you jump us in? What’s the first reason?

Reason #1: Accountability

Jonathan Hardy 1:57
Well, the first one really ties to your illustration of this or your situation with this particular individual and that’s accountability. When you have good church governance in place, it’s going to put the safeguards in place that’s going to help you to avoid the pitfalls that happen. I mean, hey, here’s the reality, the moment you enter ministry, the bullseye on your back just got bigger, and so we have to be mindful of that. And just be smart. And we are, we’re human. And we think all we’ve got this, well, no one ever fully has it, we have to have safeguards in place, and recognize our humanity, and recognize that when we have some accountability, that is going to help us prevent pitfalls, and mistakes, and not just moral issues, necessarily, but could be decisions that you make, and you’ve got some people come alongside you and say, hey, you know, I don’t know if that’s the best decision. And that type of accountability happens when you have good governance in place. Now, this particular individual you’re talking about, didn’t have good governance, and so because he was not adhering to it, and it wasn’t really functioning the way it’s designed, for him, obviously, it didn’t work well.

Dick Hardy 3:06
And then the board member talking to me with full knowledge of the pastor, he says, you know, I’m giving him the right counsel, but he’s not listening. And we’re friends. We’re gonna stay friends. But I mean, that thing just went upside down because he wasn’t doing the accountability.

Jonathan Hardy 3:23
That’s right. All right. What’s the next thing?

Reason #2: Structure

Dick Hardy 3:25
The next thing I think, and Jonathan and I would both resonate with this, if you’ve listened to Church Tips for any period of time, you would know that we’re structure guys, that having good governance gives you good, good structure. Now, there’ll be some hearing that right now, so well, wait a minute here, that sounds like that’s going to bind me up. No. That doesn’t bind you up, that actually frees you up. Structure frees you up. If you think about, you know, a racetrack you build for your little kid where you got the cars running around, you know, structure, the wall around the track, keeps the cars moving around the track, and you can go faster and faster because you have structure. And that’s the same kind of thing that we need in the church, to have structure, to have order. I mean, the Bible is an ordered book. The Bible understands where humans come together in human groupings, people groupings, there needs to be structure in order for the mission to be accomplished. We have in the church, the greatest mission on the planet, to read spiritually lost people with the gospel. And the Lord has helped us talking about deacons and elders and the structure of the church and how the body functions together. That’s structure. In fact we talked about this at length in the Church Board Track of training at Church University, I would strongly encourage you to head over to churchuniversity.com, and take a look at the church board track of training. In fact, if you do, because you’ve listened to this podcast, we’re going to give you a coupon code. It’s top secret. Not really top secret. 50 off. Now, if you’ll use that, you’ll get 50% off on the church board track of training that I’m telling you will change forever the way you view church boards, and church governance is going to help you. And we’ve had all sorts of pastors say, man, where in the world was this years ago? Church board members, this is a great thing. You use it with your church board. They’ve said, oh, my goodness, now I get it. What church is about and it’s not me being the boss of the pastor, or the pastor fighting with the board members. It’s, it talks about the structure, the right biblical structure. So that’s the second one that we’d encourage you to take a look at. Then the third one Jonathan?

Reason #3: Church Growth

Jonathan Hardy 5:53
Is church growth. So growing churches, have these types of good governance in place. On the flip side, if you don’t have good governance in place, I don’t know of churches that are growing, honestly. And so…

Dick Hardy 6:06
Well, or you could get a piece of growth, but you’ll go upside down so fast.

Jonathan Hardy 6:11
Yeah. So you might be able to get some momentum quickly.

Dick Hardy 6:13
But it can crumble last.

Jonathan Hardy 6:15
Yep. And that’s why the good governance is so important, because then it’s getting those safeguards, those measures, that structure in place that makes it sustainable for the long haul. And so that’s why it’s so unhelpful and important to do that, on the front end is get it in place. And that’s what’s gonna position the church to be able to move forward into the growth that God wants to give to the church.

Recap:

Dick Hardy 6:37
Absolutely. So let me recap three reasons church governance is so important. First, gives you accountability. Second, it gives you structure. And third, it sets you up for church growth. If you’ll do those things, you’ll see great things happen in the church. Jonathan, we’ve had a couple of other episodes that we’ve talked about.

Jonathan Hardy 6:57
Yeah. So we actually if you’re wanting to go deeper on the whole subject of church boards, episodes 18 and 19 are really good episodes on the Seven Essential Purposes of a church board. So you’re saying, Okay, well, this is great. You know, I understand we need to have some governance or whatever. Well, how do we break that down? What’s that look like? Well, I think it starts when you really get a good understanding of the essential purposes of the board. And so that’s why you want to check out episodes 18 and 19. If you have not yet done so, I’d also encourage you to subscribe to whatever platform you’re listening to this, whatever it is, whether it’s Apple podcasts, Spotify, or whatever other podcast platform, be sure to subscribe. And then as well, if you like watching on YouTube, you can hit that subscribe button there on YouTube and subscribe to our channel. So you get all the updates of future episodes coming your way. Anything else?

Dick Hardy 7:46
Nope. I think that’s good to go. We’ve enjoyed having you on here. And I just pray that you’ll take to heart the things we talked about. Make it a great one today and be blessed.

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Podcast

080 – Church Governance

What’s in this Episode?