A few days ago I mentioned that in small church leader conferences I lead the question is often asked why the newer, nondenominational churches in the area seem to be growing when many of the established churches are in decline. In that previous post I shared one answer I give. Today, I want to share another response I often make to that question. The reason is often in the way the churches are structured.
These newer churches often have a much simpler structure than some of our smaller churches. Many of them may only have one business meeting a year, or at the most one each quarter where many of our traditional churches have one every month. The newer churches often function with active teams assigned to different areas of ministry in the church while our existing churches still operate with committees with no authority to do anything without permission from the larger church body. Their only function is to talk endlessly about things until they can bring a proposal to the business meeting for more discussion. The newer churches expect the staff to handle the administration of the church freeing up the congregation to do ministry, and traditional churches often expect the staff to perform all needed ministry while the congregation handles the more important tasks like determining the color of the toilet paper that the church will use and which brand of coffee should be used during fellowship times.
To sum up the above paragraph, most of these new growing churches are structured for ministry and growth, and many of our traditional churches are structured for maintenance and decline. One of my favorite sayings is "Your system is perfectly designed for the results it is getting."
There is one other thing that should be noted about church structure in smaller churches. Our smaller churches are frequently highly over-structured. Many of them are still structured as they were when they were much larger churches. They still have the same number of committees, the same number of officers, with the same expectations placed on each of them that they had when they were a larger church. Now, they have more slots to fill than people to fill them.
I am aware of one church that decided to change it's structure. This very traditional church eliminated all their standing committees and boards and replaced them with two teams. One was responsible for the spiritual well-being of the congregation, and the other was responsible for taking care of the property. Members of the congregation were told they could only be on one team, and they could choose which team they wanted to be on. When things come up that need to be addressed ad-hoc teams are formed from within the primary team to study the issue and make a recommendation to the team which them takes action. The church has one business meeting a year to approve the budget and officers for the coming year. There are very few things the congregation must vote on, and if one of them come up a meeting is scheduled to vote on those items. It is a much cleaner structure that provides for growth which this church is experiencing.
The reason such a structure would not work in some churches is the trust issue. This type of structure requires a lot of trust of the leaders, and some churches simply do not trust their leaders, or for that matter, each other. Regular business meetings have to be held to keep an eye on what is going on and to hold people accountable. Without trust, a simpler structure will not work, and while we are keeping an eye on one another we eventually find there are fewer people we have to watch.
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