In yesterday’s blog I quoted Tom Ehrich’s image of an entrepreneur as applied to pastoral leadership. “Typically, an entrepreneur owns the enterprise, is invested in its success, has freedom to innovate, accepts accountability, expects rewards and is driven by opportunity and challenge, not by safety or fear of failure.” What would it look like for a church board to encourage such innovative leadership.
While in most churches, the pastor does not “own the enterprise,” it is naive to suggest s/he does not have a major investment in the direction that a church takes as it seeks to shape it’s future. Like a football coach, s/he can’t control the outcome but people are quick to blame the coach if the team is not winning. A church board that wants to support innovative leadership needs to be open to experiencing new ideas. Not all new ideas are good and some can even be destructive, but to hear them out and give them full consideration is an important task of a church board that seeks a vital church.
At the same time, part of being a supportive board is not to let the pastor hang out there all by him or her self. The accountability should be a two way street. If a pastor is building a community, s/he cannot make decisions without interpreting the reason for them to the board and the synergy of that discussion can often sharpen the promise of the idea if it is indeed a good one.
The challenge is to discuss those ideas in a way that encourages innovative thinking. Most new ideas do not have all the answers already figured out. Yet if the response of the body is to attack, one soon learns not to think too far ahead of the group. I once heard about a creativity institute that suggested that when someone came up with a new idea, members of the group needed to respond first with what they liked about the idea. Then, having done that, they suggested whatever concerns they had as a group challenge rather than just the challenge to the one suggesting such ideas. That might be a good way for a church governing board to discuss possibilities before them.
