10 Crucial Commitments of Effective Deacons

Pastors do not expect their deacons to be blind, unthinking followers with whom there is never a disagreement. However, the Bible teaches that pastors give ultimate leadership in local churches. Men who cannot support their pastors should not serve as deacons.

Does it?

Agreed: “Men who cannot support their pastors should not serve as deacons”

But this too: “Men who cannot support their deacons should not serve as pastors”

As an aside: our single-pastor mentality that predominates Baptist circles has done much harm to churches.

https://trust.guidestar.org/blog/2014/10/17/a-nonprofit-boards-fiduciar…

A fiduciary is someone acting on the behalf of another based on an expectation of trust. A nonprofit’s board is the central decision making body for the organization. It has ultimate responsibility and accountability for the organization’s actions.

According to the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership, a nonprofit board and its members individually have three fundamental fiduciary duties: a duty of care, a duty of loyalty, and a duty of obedience.

The duty of care means that the board member actively participates, attends board meetings, is educated on the industry, provides strategic direction, and oversees management.

The duty of loyalty requires the board member to operate in the interest of the nonprofit and not to use the position to further personal agenda.

The duty of obedience requires the board to know the state and federal laws and regulations that apply. This includes the regulations and guidance issued by the IRS. Obedience to governing documents requires a deep understanding of the operating documents (by-laws, rules, board manuals) and a clear understanding of the difference between the terms “may” and “must” contained in those documents. Finally, obedience requires that the board not act outside the scope of the organization’s legal documents.

I have to smile as Jim Vogel notes that it’s not about management, but his title is “executive director”. Something of a dual message there. That noted, Jim Peet’s comment on “follow the pastor’s direction” is well taken; a tremendous amount of damage has been done by autocratic pastors and other “my way or the highway” leaders.

Really, I would argue that a good parallel is a comparison of how government-led economies perform vs. how market economies perform. The guy at the head of the government agency leading controlled markets may be 50 points higher in IQ than the average citizen, but the collective intelligence of the markets beats central control by miles. Might we argue that a model of distributed ministry might greatly outperform a centralized control model as well?

I’ve been a deacon where the “leadership team” (the multi-pastor staff & full time treasurer) have all the financial information (salaries, et cetera) and the deacons only received summary information.

Won’t do it again

Wait! You mean that having multiple pastors and spreading out responsibility isn’t a panacea? Who knew?

Pastors salaries are one area where Deacons must lead. How can pastors set and manage their own salaries without compromising their integrity?

Having served as a deacon in both my current church and my previous, I know that the deacons are there to handle some of the “under the sun” ministry of the church to free the pastor for ministry and prayer, and by and large, we do support the pastor, and follow his lead. HOWEVER, this support is not absolute, in my view. At my previous church there was a question that came up about something regarding the pastor, which the deacons investigated, found no truth to, and took it back to the accuser. Another member, who himself had been a deacon on a previous rotation, thanked me for “supporting the pastor” through this. I gently corrected him, and reminded him that my loyalty was to the church, and to the truth, not to any one man, pastor or not. He didn’t reply to that, but I got the vague impression he didn’t like that answer at all, and was from the school of thinking that we “ought” to support the pastor.

And I wholeheartedly agree with Pastor Barkman that the deacons need to take the lead on the Pastor’s salary (as well as on other things that minister to him and to his family). This is something both churches I served in as a deacon did right.

As a modern-day interpretation of our “waiting tables” duty, our church has the deacons control finances, though beyond a certain amount, the whole congregation has to vote before they can spend it. The pastor doesn’t write or sign checks, and he can’t automatically spend money on his ministry priorities. He does have the ability to spend token amounts on ministry for benevolence, or taking a pastor or missionary out for a meal, buy a few needed small supplies, etc., but he and our whole church feel it’s better for his integrity if he isn’t responsible for the flow of money in the church. Our pastor has also made it quite clear that for the deacons he wants thinking men, not “yes men,” who will, if done in the right spirit, be willing to disagree. So far, this has worked well for us, even though we are in “single pastor” mode.

Our church has a constitution that prefers multiple elders rather than one pastor, though at the moment, we can afford only one that is paid, and we don’t have enough theologically trained men with the time and inclination to serve as unpaid elders either. Our current seminary students would fit the bill well, but for them to stay on, we would need to be able to pay them. We have seen some continual slow growth, so we are working toward that. On the other hand, we do manage to fully support our one pastor, so he doesn’t have to be bi-vocational. I know the trend these days is to prefer smaller churches, over having one grow beyond a certain size, but the the disadvantage is then seen in the number of elders that can be afforded. In a very small church, you really need good deacons when elders are in short supply.