Just coming back to this...has anyone experienced difficulties with church boards and how do you work through that.
Or have you been on a board yourself. Did you get picked or what.
I mean what is the concept of a church board anyway and how did Jesus work through that, were his 12 apostles considered his church board.
I still dont really understand them. How old do you need to be to be an 'elder'?
Is it like a council or a committee. Can anything really get done by comittee?
I haven't been on a church board, but I have had problems with them; they can tend to be slower than molasses in January (well, July, for those in the Southern hemisphere). Generally I have respected their decisions, though I have never felt shy about challenging them when I think they're wrong.
Again, going by what I've seen, board members/elders are nominated, prayed about, grilled (gently) regarding their position on various issues, and subjected to a vote of affirmation by church members. I haven't attended a church that had a formal minimum age for board membership.
The apostles were not a church board in any sense. They were there to learn and follow Jesus' direction, and had no say in what He did.
Back to your question on the Carver model, which I just saw now, I'll provide an illustration from my present congregation (the details are fuzzy as this is third-hand). About 20 years ago, before I attended there, it had a board of elders and a pastor. The board made nearly every decision by committee... even down to the smallest things. At one meeting, the pastor said that if he were a business owner, and he needed a part for a lawnmower, he would go to the hardware store, buy the part, and fix the mower. He explained to them that at the church, he needed to bring the situation to the board, where they would decide
whether the mower needed fixing,
whether to fix it,
when to fix it,
how to fix it, and
how much could be spent on the part needed (usually less than what it cost!). The pastor was constantly hamstrung by protocol. They caught on right away and worked to change things.
The Carver model basically sets up parameters around the role of the board and that of the primary leader (pastor, in this case). The board is responsible for legal matters (accounting, licences, property taxes, filing papers, etc.) and for major expenditures. The pastor is responsible for other staffing, programs, and, within an established budget, day-to-day financial decisions. For us it has worked very well. We're now making some adjustments to our model to be more effective in our ministry.