By Laura Stephens Reed

Effective lay leadership in congregations is essential. Without it, either little gets done or the pastor takes on too much and becomes crispy-fried, leaves, with the church flailing in the sudden absence of someone to do all the things.    

Many congregations are currently in a lay leadership quandary. Church attendance has significantly declined, leaving fewer members to fill all the roles. This has meant that slots remain open or are populated with reluctant people. Leaders also end up staying in their positions for much longer than intended, leaving them fatigued and the congregation without a needed infusion of fresh perspectives.  

In other words, leadership structures built for larger congregations have become too cumbersome for a smaller membership to sustain. When that happens, much of the church’s energy goes into recruiting leaders rather than accomplishing ministry. 

It’s time for an overhaul.  

This might sound daunting, and there is no quick fix. But with some discussion and discernment, your church can have a nimbler leadership setup that allows everyone to focus on faithfulness to God’s dream for your congregation and the world. 

First, it can be helpful to reflect on how your leadership currently works. Most structures fall into some variation of one of these three: 

Board-centered. All major (and many minor) permissions and decisions run through one body, which could also be called a council or the deacons. 

Committee-centered. There is a committee for everything, and authority and responsibility are vested here. The board might not be very functional, or it might simply be a gathering of representatives making committee reports. 

Staff-centered. The pastor (and sometimes staff as a whole) cast the vision and create the strategies for living into it. The staff might also do most of the work outlined by these plans. 

Draw your church’s organizational chart as it is designed and how it honestly functions. Note where the power is and where the work is done as well as where there are gaps (including both unfilled roles and areas of church life that currently have no one assigned to provide direction), redundancies and places of confusion. That’s step one. 

Next, consider the polarities that your overall leadership structure needs to be able to hold. There must be attention to both administration and transformation. Effective organization makes it even more possible for your church to change lives. Don’t do things just because “that’s the way it’s always been done,” but do embrace the legacy and spirit of the congregation as you move toward the new. Acknowledge that your pastor is both spiritual guide and manager of staff and ministry, taking into account that these roles influence each other and not locking your pastor out of either aspect. Avoid the pitfall of the three structures named above by balancing the centralization and distribution of authority and responsibility. Each constituent in your evolving organizational chart needs a clear and potent purpose that serves the church’s overall aims.  

Then, consider these categories. (For more information on them, check out Governance and Ministry: Rethinking Board Leadership by Dan Hotchkiss.) 

Governance. This slice of your leadership structure (likely a revamped board/council/deacons) is responsible for discerning your church’s identity, purpose and values and the big picture strategies for living into them. But these leaders don’t do this visioning in a vacuum. They are tasked with finding ways to bring the whole congregation into these discussions. The governance aspect is also the fiduciary one, meaning that it is accountable for the safety of people who encounter your church, the resources at your congregation’s disposal and adherence to the procedures and guidelines everyone agrees to by virtue of their participation in the church. The few standing committees (made up of those who are selected/elected) your church might have are tasked with supporting the fiduciary bits, such as personnel and finances.  

Ministry. This is the development of specifics coming out of the big picture work of governance and the carrying out of these on-the-ground initiatives. Rather than forming standing committees for ministry, people can be invited to self-selecting, project-based teams. This creates leadership opportunities for those who can’t make long-term commitments or have a  particular interest or skill set. It also resists the temptation to set ministry approaches in stone, because it gathers people with different ideas and foci.   

Management. Staff members partner with governance in visioning, setting useful policies and procedures and helping to implement and monitor all of these pieces in the day-to-day of church life. They collaborate with ministry in recruiting, training and supporting volunteers and in doing some of the hands-on programming. 

Finally, gather your congregation (or at least your key stakeholders) to consider these crucial questions:  

• Who are we? 
• What is God’s dream for us and for our neighbors? 
• Based on what we know about our current structure, the polarities we need to manage and the descriptions of governance, ministry and management, how can we best organize ourselves to  partner with God toward God’s dream?  
• How many people do we actually need for each part of this work?  
• Who will make what decisions, and how? 
• How will we measure our faithfulness to what God has called us to be and do? 

You might have trusted leaders in your church who can lead these conversations, or you might look outside your congregation for a skilled facilitator who can create a container for the discussions, point out dynamics that insiders cannot see and encourage when needed. 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to reconfiguring your church’s lay leadership. There will be variations based on congregation size, identity, history, resources and more factors. But no matter your situation, discernment about your structure can provide the clarity, energy, agility and support that will set your church free to be as faithful as possible. 

Laura Stephens-Reed is a clergy and congregational coach based in Alabama. She has been credentialed as a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation and as a Certified Mentor Coach, and she sits on the faculty of two coach training schools. She has also been trained as a Congregational Consultant and an Intentional Interim Minister by the Center for Congregational Health.