The Need for Governance Reform
In 2010, I (Bob Thomason) chaired a Governance Task Force that designed the first major overhaul of MPBC’s governance structure since its founding in 1948. The world had changed significantly in those 67 years, and we needed a new system. What’s happened since, is the pace of that change has accelerated both in society and even more so in our church. Most specifically, in terms of membership we are less than half the size we were in 2010, we have a much smaller staff, and we are an older congregation on average. We made some changes in 2019 to adapt to this new world but it’s time to make some more.
I’m on the Strategic Deacons group led by Jenny Martella. At the last Congregational Transition Team meeting on October 21, she discussed the new world we are in and outlined some of our group’s ideas for governance reform. Perhaps our biggest recommendation is to right-size our Board of Deacons to reflect our church’s smaller size. The extensive research we did for the 2010 governance overhaul showed clearly that effective governing boards are 7 to 12 members in size. For 67 years the Board had 36 members. In 2019, it was reduced to 18 plus 3 Life Deacons. We are now proposing to reduce it to 12 plus 2 Life Deacons. Just to illustrate why this is needed consider that for our entire history we’ve had an official subset of Deacons - called variously "the Executive Committee," "the Management Council," and "the Church Council"- which did much of the Deacon work. Our new structure will not have a group like this, and the smaller Deacon Board will do all the work. It will be much more efficient.
As Jenny said in our Transition meeting, a second goal for this round of governance reform will be to beef up our Ministries and strengthen their connection to the Board of Deacons. Our Strategic Deacon group is also working on a way to include non-Deacon congregants in important Deacon groups such as the Finance Deacons and Strategic Deacons. The Ministries are where the real work of the church gets done. It’s also the place where future leaders learn about the church and hone their own leadership skills. We envision the Ministries becoming a more effective pipeline for future Deacons.
Another part of our plan is to ensure one or more Deacons are on every Ministry. Communication between the Deacons and Ministries has always been a challenge. Having a Ministry member/Deacon for every ministry at the table when Deacon decisions are made will mean better decisions. The Deacons will work closely with the Ministries to ensure a steady stream of new members are called into Ministry work.
There will be more recommended changes from our group, and they will be presented to you in the next few months. Our goal is to complete our plan and have Deacon approval by the end of the year. Then, it will be presented to the Congregation (you!) for a vote early next year. We want to have the best governance system we can by the time we call our new Senior Minister.
One final point: changes to governance are never written in stone. As always, if any of the changes are not working, we’ll make revisions. Please reach out to any member of our team if you have questions or concerns.