REMOVING ROADBLOCKS TO BOARD UNITY
Familiar practices and assumptions may be the greatest obstacles to an effective church board.
Larry W. Osborne
October 1, 1986
My stomach was churning as I turned over in bed. I just couldn't keep my mind from replaying the meeting.
Another sleepless night, I thought, eyes wide open. Why does this happen every month? The ritual torment had to stop, but as long as our board meetings were like tonight's, I knew it wouldn't.
We'd begun with perfunctory prayer and devotions. Jim tried hard to minister to our spirits while most of the group was casually leafing through the financial statistics. A few stared into space.
Following our usual round of reports, we moved on to the evening debates. This time we were considering two possible purchases: a new Communion tablecloth and tires for the church-owned pastor's car.
The tablecloth brought a long and petty discussion. The tires sparked a full-scale argument. Two men squared off about the relative merits of new tires versus retreads. I felt the whole discussion was misdirected; I didn't want or need the car in the first place.
Now wide awake in the dark, I kept thinking: We have to find a way to replace our posturing and battling with a new spirit of teamwork and cooperation.
Eventually we did find a way. In the process I learned an important lesson. Most of the confrontation and divisiveness within our board was not rooted in the board members themselves. It was rooted in our board's structure.
Like many other churches, we had unwittingly set up ourselves for disunity.
When I learned to recognize and remove these structural roadblocks to unity, harmony increased. Here are four of the roadblocks and what we did to remove them.
Meeting in the Wrong Place
When I first came to the church, we held our worship services in a high-school cafeteria. Our monthly board meetings took place in my office, a large, refurbished ...
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