Governance A Challenge To Small Churches

Many church leaders struggle with the administrative arm of their church. GOVERNANCE: A CHALLENGE TO SMALL CHURCHES is a practical guide to assist those leaders. The foundation of the content is the findings from ten small Jamaican churches and supported by the work of various authors, personal insights and the experiences of the author. GOVERNANCE: A CHALLENGE TO SMALL CHURCHES provides information on critical areas of leadership, administration, and governance that small churches need to pay attention to. In this engaging book, the author share insights of his experiences in ministry and those gathered from other church leaders. This book is an excellent resource for persons aspiring to lead the church, so they can have a foundation on what is expected. The author also incorporates experiences from his professional career as a Senior Financial Manager.

The Carver Policy Governance Guide series includes six booklets that offer board members a description of John Carver's Policy Governance model of board leadership. Policy Governance enables a board to fulfill its accountability to its organization's "owners," whether the owners are association members, city residents, company shareholders, or a community of interest. Policy Governance addresses the board's engagement in financial, programmatic, and personnel matters; roles of officers and committees; reporting and evaluation; agendas; and other aspects of the board job. The Policy Governance Model and the Role of the Board Member sets out a clear vision for excellence in board leadership. It gives board members an understanding of the concepts and principles that are at the very heart of John Carver's innovative Policy Governance model. This guide details members' main tasks and presents the guidelines needed to transform a board into an effective group that consistently leads powerfully. The Policy Governance model is based on the functions rather than the structure of a governing board. It outlines commonsense principles about governing that fit together into an entire system. The practices of the Policy Governance board, which are consistent with the principles, allow it to control without meddling, focus on long-term organizational outputs, powerfully delegate to a CEO and staff, and discharge its fiduciary responsibility in a visionary, strategic manner. Because the model is a total system, the Carver Policy Governance Guide series offers boards a complete set of principles for fulfilling their various obligations.

Charities operate in an increasingly complex environment. Their charitable status does not excuse them from governing their organisation in a manner that complies with the myriad of laws and regulations that apply to their day-to-day operation. This book is written to help leaders and board members of Christian charities as they seek to outwork their calling in New Zealand. It aims to help you to encourage the team that God has placed you in, and to outwork His purposes in and through your organisation.

In Governance and Ministry, Alban Institute senior consultant Dan Hotchkiss offers congregational leaders a roadmap and tools for changing the way boards and clergy work together to lead congregations. Hotchkiss demonstrates that the right governance model is the one that best enables a congregation to fulfill its mission--to achieve both the outward results and the inward quality of life to which it is called. Resources on governance for the nonprofit sector have burgeoned over the past decade, and this book translates some of what is most helpful from that world for clergy and lay leaders. it also recognizes that in some ways congregations are unique and need governance structures and processes different from those that work in other organizations. Leaders must continually balance the conserving function of an institution with the expectation of disruptive, change-inducting creativity that comes when individuals peek past the temple veil and catch fresh visions of the Holy. Governance in congregations is not the science of achieving optimal results through organizational re-engineering. Governance is an expressive art, like preaching. The forms of our congregations must reflect the values and perceptions of the sacred at their heart. Congregations need skills and methods for negotiating "our way" of governance and for passing the torch effectively to new leaders.

Proceedings of a conference held Mar. 28-30, 2003 at Yale University. Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-228) and index.

Winds of change are buffeting the mainline Christian denominations, resulting in declines in members, attendance and financial support. Modernism, relativism and materialism collide with piety and debate over church orthodoxy. The author, an ordained Presbyterian minister and attorney trained in organizational change, examines four significant forces within the polity of the Church-distrust, polarization, politicking and an ineffective discernment process. In The Challenge of the Presbyterian Church, the author identifies two different theories of change and applies them to analyze factors that inhibit transformation. He goes on to propose a series of second-order/adaptive changes to enable the Church to struggle, learn and resolve seemingly intractable conflicts. He draws on works of current thinkers about change, adeptly applying them to the complex Church organization. While this book uses examples from the Presbyterian Church (USA), the principles of analysis and change are applicable and useful for any church or group confronted with the need to make deep changes in this difficult time. This work was originally published as "The Challenge of the Presbyterian Church: Opening Governance to the Movement of the Holy Spirit." Feedback from readers suggests that the principles of change the author writes about are applicable to churches of all kinds, and the examples from his experience in the Presbyterian Church (USA) can be broadly applied by analogy. The author has previously written extensively about specific issues within his denomination and has traveled across America talking to leaders of various sub groups in the church. He is the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of Detroit and is nationally known in the Presbyterian Church (USA). A dialogue on this book and related matters has been created at http://thechallengeofthepresbyterianchurch.blogspot.com/. The author can be reached at [email protected].

This book explores the technological innovations and management practices of evangelical Christian religions. Beginning from the late 19th century, the author examines the evangelical church's increasing appropriation of business practices from the secular world as solutions to organizational problems. He notes especially the importance of the church growth movement and the formation of church networks. Particular attention is paid to the history of evangelical uses of computer technology, including connections the Christian Right has made within Silicon Valley. Most significantly, this book offers one of the first academic explorations of the use of cybernetics, systems theory and complexity theory by evangelical leaders and management theorists.

Now in a thoroughly revised and updated edition, this essential text offers a rigorous, systematic comparison of church-state relations in the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, and England. Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper examine the historical roots and contemporary strategies of the different approaches each government has taken. Providing clarity on the little-understood, evolving relationship between church and state in the West, this book provides an invaluable comparative analysis of a topic that is increasingly a source of profound political and social conflict. The authors persuasively argue that the United States can learn a great deal from other Western democracies in promoting religious neutrality and the free exercise of religion.