Good Morning Pastor!
As you have been able to tell, I have been absent in writing to you the past couple of weeks. My attention has been focused on some basic elements of starting the new church including many decisions and moving into the new office. Although I am without excuse, those are my excuses.
Starting a church has many dimensions that require sincere prayer and careful, thoughtful considerations. Many churches are started with a core group of experienced Christian leadership. Our new church does not have that to date. Because I am very careful not to be “recruiting” leadership from the other churches in the area it will be necessary to function with a interim board that may serve for an extended period of time as the church develops it’s leadership.
From a pastor’s perspective there are also many questions of what role and how much authority is put into place. There are the questions of whether the church should be congregational run, Elder run or a Board with Pastoral chairman with right to final approval or veto. I have always pastored congregational run churches but I also recognize that many of the fastest growing churches in the country are not congregational run and have some other form of operation with strong pastoral authority.
The positive part of taking a stronger pastoral role is that you can make some basic purchases as needed. So, if the computer blows up you just go out and purchase another that day instead of waiting perhaps weeks for a board, committee or congregational meeting. One time in a congregational run church I was consulting with, their computer went out and it took them about six weeks to go through the procedure of purchasing another. This is not acceptable.
The negative side of a stronger pastoral role is that many pastors accept no direction from the leadership in their churches, often causing abuse to the church and setting themselves up for moral or ethical failure. Someplace in the middle of this there has to be a place of acceptable operation.
I also recognize that I will retire or die some day and the church will have to go on without me as the pastor. Therefore, I must design the churches mode of operation to be long term viable carrying on for generations with great leadership from within the congregation. And if we set it up with too much pastoral authority we may set up the pastor who follows me for failure.
This week I am asking a number of pastors that I know how they see the best mode of church government and operation, how they would set it up if they were starting a new church from scratch. If you have any thoughts I would be interested in hearing from you.
Have a great week serving the King of kings and the Lord or lords!
In His Delight,
Lyn Sahr
Prov. 3:13
