Paul Clark

Power & Church Leadership I

One leadership topic that has interested me is the study of power within organizations. Power is the ability to influence people. Having been in the church as an Executive Pastor for 15 years, I have seen power used to inspire and elevate people toward amazing accomplishments. I’ve also seen power used inappropriately, manipulatively, and with negative results. I’ve certainly used my own share of power to get things done and to direct the activities of others. Power is an unavoidable reality of leadership. If you’re in leadership, power is a part of the equation of your ministry. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the Senior Pastor or whether you’re a mid-level staff person who leads only volunteers. In any hierarchical organization power comes into play as leaders move people and resources toward accomplishing the goals of the organization. For Christian leaders managing in the church, power is a reality that we must understand in order to effectively reach toward the God-given goals of our ministry. Over the next few posts, I’m going to be writing about types of power, uses and abuses of power, and finally, power and godliness.

Bateman & Snell (2008, pp. 439-441) identify five different kinds of power:

1. Legitimate power is where the leader has the right, or authority to tell others what to do; employees are obligated to comply with legitimate directives. In the church setting, the Elder Board or Governing Board may have legitimate power based on Bylaws and a Constitution. The Senior Pastor almost always has legitimate power over staff. Wherever a supervisor-subordinate relationship exists, there is the presence of legitimate power. Legitimate power is based on employment contracts, reporting structures, job descriptions, and titles. In my situation, my Senior Pastor and Governing Board both hold legitimate power over me. Legitimate power is the easiest to understand because it’s contractual and it can be clearly illustrated through an organizational chart.

2. Reward power is where the leader influences others because she or he controls valued rewards; people comply with the leader’s wishes in order to receive those rewards. People comply with directives because of the potential for positive consequences. Rewards can vary from predictable things like salary increases and promotions to less formal rewards like preferred office space, access to budget funds and prime space in communication channels. Individuals who control scarce resources have the potential for reward power, although such power may not necessarily be complemented by legitimate power. In the church setting, committees, Elders, Senior Pastors, administrators, even facility managers and custodians, may hold reward power.  

3. Coercive power is where the leader has control over punishments; people comply to avoid those punishments. Coercive power is the opposite of reward power. It is usually dependent on fear and threats, and the desire to avoid pain or frustration. A subordinate complies with a leader’s directive in order to escape the negative consequences. It is the least effective form of power because it relies on manipulation. It often thrives in the autocratic form of leadership. Even in our churches, it is frequently and subtly used, since virtually anyone in the church organization can wield coercive power. As contemporary leadership styles become more participative and supportive, coercion becomes less of a factor.

4. Referent power is where the leader has personal characteristics that appeal to others; people comply because of admiration, a desire for approval, personal liking, or a desire to be like the leader. Referent power is one of the benevolent types of power and speaks to the soft skills and characteristics of leaders that set them apart. Admirable leadership traits, emotional intelligence, charisma, and biblical virtues are some of the categories that create referent power.

5. Expert power is where the leader has certain expertise or knowledge; people comply because they believe in, can learn from, or can otherwise gain from that expertise. Expert power may be technical, such as specialized computer skills, or it may be relational. In the church, expert power may be derived from theological knowledge, homiletical skills, or mastery of the biblical languages. A church leader may also derive expert power as a gifted counselor or as someone with exceptional people skills. A gifted problem-solver or an astute administrator may enjoy expert power. The skills, training or gifts we possess that set up apart from others form the potential for expert power.

Take some time to think through the types of power you may possess. Think about power in your church organization. How is it evidenced? What types of power dominate? Is power used in a healthy manner or is it wielded with a heavy hand? Begin to think about power in the biblical context. How do the five types mentioned above relate to the teachings of Christ? Those are some of the issues I’ll explore in the next few posts.

Bateman, T., & Snell, S. (2008). Management: Leading and Collaborating in a Competitive World (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Tracking Vacation and Time Off

I recently came across an article in HR Specialist regarding the tracking of employee's vacation time. The article stated that more and more businesses are experimenting with unconventional time-off rules and benefits, including taking a much more flexible approach to monitoring employees’ vacation and personal leave. It cited the following examples:

• At technology giant IBM, each of its 355,000 workers is entitled to three or more weeks of vacation, but the company says it doesn’t officially keep track of the time off. The amount of vacation days isn’t ruled by seniority, and the time-off doesn’t carry over from year to year if unused.
• At electronics retailer Best Buy, a flexible-work program called “Results Oriented Work Environment” gives its 4,000 corporate employees the freedom to do their jobs without regard to the hours they put in daily—opening up the ability to take personal time off without a lot of prior approvals and scheduling rules.
• Online DVD distributor Netflix doesn't allocate a specific number of vacation days to its 400 salaried employees. What’s happening? In essence, employers are rethinking their traditional time-off policies in an effort to meet valued employees’ needs for flexibility—and boosting productivity and retention at the same time.

I don't know about you, but I think this is an idea worth considering.  Church ministry is unlike almost any other vocation.  In many situations, the work and the demands spill over into the evening and the weekends, and it sometimes feels like a 24-hour a day job.  Since most pastors of ministry leaders are evaluated on the execution of their ministries, not their time on the clock or their hours at their desk, why not allow a much more flexible and fluid approach to vacations and time off.  Tempting...  Have you tried it?  Has it worked for you?

MissionsFest '09

This weekend we launched our annual missions conference, which we call, MissionsFest '09.  This year, we constructed a replica of a small Congolese church on our stage and had the church service mimic the music, style and culture of a normal Congolese worship service.  Worshipers sat on benches just like in most Congolese churches, wore authentic african clothes, and sang the songs that are normally sung by Congolese Christians. We were tempted to get some roosters and such to strut around the stage like most rural churches have in the Congo, but thought that might be a problem waiting to happen.  Our speaker, Ron Julian, is a home-grown missionary serving in Brazzaville, Congo.  He was able to really allow the congregation a chance to feel what it is like to be in the Congo and attending a Congolese church.  It was a great day and the congregation seemed excited with the whole sensory experience.  Each year we take on an annual missions project, which this year is in the Congo, where we are helping to build a national training center to train Congolese pastors.  So the service setting, the speaker and the whole experience helped to connect the dots for our church family.  Check out our whole MissionsFest '09 experience at our website.

Meeting Job Seeker's Needs

We've started a Thursday morning Job Seekers Support Group to help not only our own people who have been affected by the recession, but those in our community who are looking for help.  This group, which has been meeting for several weeks now, has grown each week such that we have to keep giving them larger rooms.  As you can tell from the picture above, it's a full house.  A couple of the city newspapers have heard about it and written stories.

We have a retired HR specialist here at Fairhaven who is graciously helping us to plan and lead the group.  For this particular session, the facilitator, herself a professional executive recruiter, is reviewing how to work with recruiters to get the most impact.  The group also heard a presentation on writing great resumes.  Networking, encouragement, prayer and community are also components that we are weaving throughout the sessions.  It lasts from 9-11 am each week.

Good theology recognizes that God has not promised us a life free from all pain and uncomfortable surprises.  This recession is causing pain for many people in our church communities.  But God has called us to be his voice of encouragement, hope, help and truth.  Perhaps your church has the resources to step into the gap and offer a "cup of water" (Matt. 10:42) to those who are searching for help and answers.

So Much for Being High-Tech...

My whiteboard reserved for my brain-dumps has been overtaken by a monster from the 70's... Post It notes.  We're trying to figure out all the room use needs throughout the building during the different phases of construction and what collisions we need to resolve.  I'm sure Google has some free app out there somewhere that could make this easy, something that twitters, something that all the young guys are using, but if it works, that's all that matters...

Question about Retreats and Performance Appraisals

Hi Paul, have enjoyed your blog and your comments on XPastor. I hold a similar position here at Central Wesleyan Church in Holland Michigan, we run about 3000 on Sundays. I came from the marketplace too, 16 years with Weyerhaeuser Company. I read with interest your meeting schedule on Tuesdays. Wow. We don't meet that much . I am re-thinking it though. Half my staff loves meetings, the other half hate them. Balance! I AM very interested in your three retreats..who goes , When are they, and what is your agenda? Also would love to know how you do Performance appraisals.could I see your forms? When you get time... Thanks Paul.

Mike McKay
Exec Director Of Ministries
Central Wesleyan

Mike, Thanks for the email. Sounds like our churches are similar in size. I visited Holland, MI and thought it would be a beautiful place to live (at least in the warmer months). I relate to half the staff loving meetings and half hating them. That's our situation as well. What I blogged about is where we landed to try to trim it down to a reasonable size. You should have seen what we started with!!

Our Executive Staff retreats happen three times a year: January, May and September. We go offsite for between 2 and three days, usually to a StayBridge Inn where they have a great Boardroom and suites. The Lead Pastor and myself work through a draft agenda beforehand, but spend some time at the first session brainstorming as a group the issues to discuss. We try to keep it strategic: in recent retreats we worked through a new missions statement, a process for spiritual formation, a 5-year staffing plan, etc. We spend time in prayer and Bible study, eating out, going to movies-it's a great relationship-builder for our team. There are five of us attending-what most would call our Management Team, but we call our Executive Team: Lead Pastor, myself, and three other Executive Pastors (Worship & Fine Arts, Community Life, and Equipping and Missions).

We do not do performance appraisals. We simply could not find the right tool, nor could we insure that they happened on a timely basis. It was always a ball and chain dragging around behind us. So rather than have something in our Employee Handbook that we do not do, we took it out and replaced it with a process for ongoing coaching and mentoring. We did some training with staff about how that should happen and what it looks like. It fits our staff culture better. We believe it works better for us than the dreaded annual PA. Here's the paragraph from our Handbook:

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT Supervisors are encouraged to adopt a coaching model of supervision for all direct report employees. Coaching should be relational, holistic, and collaborative. Performance coaching should be objective and should include written goals which are agreed upon by both employee and supervisor. It should provide ongoing monitoring and assessment with feedback given to the employee in a timely manner.

We use 6-month Work Plans as the tool for "written goals which are agreed upon by both employee and supervisor." Hope that helps!

Finding the Right Staff Meeting Structure (Cont.)

So here's where we have landed and how we use our Tuesday staff meetings to communicate with, connect with, and inspire our staff around the vision and plans of the church:

9:00-9:30 am Connecting Time: Coffee and donuts/bagels for all staff at all levels. We use this 30 minutes to connect with each other, cross departmental boundaries, spend time with support staff, laugh, ask questions, talk about the big game, and for the younger staff… wake up.

9:30-10:00 am Prayer Time: Includes both guided prayer and spontaneous times of prayer, again including all staff members. At one time, we had staff prayer every morning at 9:15 am for all staff, but because of how flexible schedules have become, we have settled on this one time where all the staff comes together to pray for the church, the vision, the issues and the people. We do not take prayer requests, so that it does not become a recitation of everybody’s personal prayer list. We pray about the big issues of the church and major health issues. If there is a major announcement that the whole staff needs to hear from the Senior Pastor, he will use that time at the end to make it. Otherwise the flow of information comes through the meetings that follow.

10:00-10:30 am P&D Meeting: All pastors and directors meet for 30 minutes to work through our three “D’s”. That’s decisions, direction and discussion, which is how the printed agenda is organized. We pass along decisions that have been made by the Senior Pastor in counsel with the Executive Team, or policy decisions from the Governing Board. We give direction regarding upcoming events, or answers to questions that have been asked. For instance, yesterday we gave direction regarding our upcoming District Conference: the dates for the conference, who was required to attend, when we would leave and return, etc. We also include issues for discussion such as recent topics like our revised mission statement, topics for our next Fall Campaign, how to manage overcrowding, etc. We discuss issues where we want the broadest participation, ideas and buy-in of the entire staff; issues or problems that affect everyone. One Tuesday each month, we use the P&D meeting as a Bible interaction time where we dig into a passage that has some relevance to ministry or leadership. That’s always a fun time together.

10:30-11:30 am Team Meetings: Following the P&D meetings, the separate teams have time allocated to meet together. That would include the Communications Team, Children's Ministries Team, Community Life Team, Worship & Fine Arts Team, and others (see our website). Team leaders use these meetings to process and plan the execution of decisions and direction flowing out of the P&D meetings and to discuss issues unique to their teams. They also have the flexibility to use that time to meet with individual team members or to meet with the entire team, as needs dictate. Those meetings, for the most part, are led by Executive Pastors.

12:00-2:30 pm Executive Team Meeting: The Executive Pastors meet for a working lunch with the Senior Pastor to discuss management issues and to process any flow of information that has come out of the individual team meetings. This allows the flow of communication to go from the top to the bottom (not intended as a qualitative description) and back to the top. That way we have a communications feedback loop. We do not want to lead in a vacuum. An agenda is used to keep the meeting on track, and it is intended to be a tactical meeting. In other words, what will be happening in the short run that we need to discuss in tactical terms? We reserve strategic and visionary issues for our three yearly Executive Team retreats. The Senior Pastor meets for coffee regularly with each Executive Pastor offline, which reduces the temptation to discuss issues which do not involve the larger group.

It's a challenge finding the right structure, but we think we've landed on something that will work for us--perhaps it might work for you as well.  Feel free to shoot me any questions.

Finding the Right Staff Meeting Structure

How do you manage staff meetings when your staff is growing and the number of people in the room swells to a size that begins to seem unwieldy? We have 60 or so people on payroll, including 12 pastors and 13 directors, and a myriad of support staff. How do you organize for effective communication and direction? How do you keep people in the flow of information, but not waste people’s time? It’s a tough problem to solve. Today and tomorrow, I’m going to share how we have structured our staff meetings in order to try to maximize the effective use of our time, and keep our meetings relegated to a single day in the week. It’s way too much to put in a single post, so I’ll break it into two. It’s worked extremely well for us, so I hope you’ll come back tomorrow and read the details.

Our staff is divided into several categories:

• Executive Staff: including the Senior Pastor and four Executive Pastors
• P&D Staff: Pastors and Directors (currently about 20 people)
• Ministry Support Staff: includes all other staff both full time and part time

We have worked through several iterations of staff meeting schedules, trying to control the length and number of meetings (see Lencioni's Death by Meeting) and make sure the right people are in the room to maximize communication and quality decisions. This has not been an easy process and has included some trial and error. Nobody wants to find themselves in meetings that have nothing to do with their issues and feel like their time is being wasted. There is a fine balance between under-communicating and over-communicating, and both have a negative impact on staff effectiveness.

By the way, thinking through our meeting structure led me to ruminate about the values that drive us as a staff and form the foundation for how we work together. So here are my Top Ten Fairhaven staff values:

1. We are highly relational.
2. We affirm people regularly.
3. We celebrate successes.
4. We admit mistakes.
5. We keep short accounts.
6. We invite questions.
7. We don’t point fingers when things go wrong.
8. We expect excellence.
9. We’re optimistic.
10. We call our staff to purity and godliness.