The Difficulty of Definition in Church Leadership

As I am working with my hometown church, I have long been aware of a significant problem in operational leadership. Within the leadership of the church, there is a rather confusing structure and hierarchy, especially because along with the duties of the formal leaders, there are committees of congregants who have to approve of decisions before they are made. For example, we currently have a Reopening Task Force made of congregants who are doctors, nurses, or professionals in the medical sphere to make recommendations about various church programs opening. They have no decision making power, but every program has to be discussed and approved by this task force before anything can be presented to the decision making body of our church. This is an example of how the church typically functions in terms of decision making. Therefore, there is a lot of confusion among staff and the followers of our church on who to ask or petition to in order to create change. I think a solution could be streamlining the suggestion process and being able to have information readily available for people to know with which leader, director, or committee they should discuss certain ideas or problems.

Because there are so many leaders and committees within the church organizational structure, there is already a lot of collaboration and teamwork. People are well informed about the challenges, successes, and programming from other ministries within the staff structure. This is an asset in terms of positive communication and collaboration, but once again there could be more organization among the staff. The level of teamwork, though generally very positive, can also inhibit things from getting done, in the sense that some leaders assume that other people will take care of the task at hand. For example, our church has been trying to make a public statement against racial injustice for the past several weeks. However, it is unclear whose job this should be, in terms of figuring out the format and the wording of what to say. Everyone has collaborated and contributed to this idea, but who should execute it is unclear. This is significant because as silence is compliance throughout the movement and this is something that should have already been done, it is important to be able to execute these ideas in a timely manner.

Overall, the biggest problem is a lack of structure and clarity in terms of whose position should take up certain task, and it can slow down the execution of these good ideas.