My previous post described the problem that independent churches face in their governance structures. Briefly, we want financial management, etc., to be the responsibility of deacons, but under many current structures for administering churches, the responsibility must be taken up by the elders.

Now I want to offer up a model that may be able to provide a solution. It is summarised in the following diagram:

The main features of this model are:

1. The “church association” is split up into two separate organisations: the “church” and the “service company”.

2. The “church” is an unincorporated association headed by the elders. All ministry of the Word and prayer is done through the unincorporated association. As an unincorporated association is not a legal entity, it cannot hold property or employ staff. It does not have any finances that need to be managed.

3. The “service company” is a legal entity headed by the deacons. The legal entity can be a company, an incorporated association or perhaps a trust. The service company holds all property, employs staff and handles all the finances.

4. The relationship between the “church” and the “service company” is driven by two things:

   • Membership in the two organisations are stapled. The membership criteria within each organisation is worded so that people can only be members of both organisations at the same time.

   • The membership in the service company is divided into multiple classes. This allows the elders to retain influence over the service company through special voting rights, etc, available to certain classes of members.

   • There is a service agreement between the “church” and the “service company”. The service company would essentially agree to supply property for use by the church, second staff to work for the church, take on any liabilities of the church, etc.

I think this would achieve what we want in that:

• the elders have responsibility over the ministry of the Word and prayer, and retains influence over the service company if things go bad; and
• the deacons have responsibility over finance and administration through the service company

Future posts will elaborate on some of the details.

Are there any issues with this model that you can think of?

Before we go on describing what the model is like, I will need to explain what I mean by an independent church, and why a different model may be useful.

What is an independent church?

By independent church I mean a church association whereby its governance structure is not prescribed.

Most churches in Australia are part of a denomination of some form, which in most cases prescribe ways in which the church is to be administered. For example, most denominations would require churches to be essentially unincorporated associations. Any property needed by the church will be held by some central legal entity (e.g. a property trust). The denomination would then prescribe a governance structure on the church (usually through a template constitution).

Obviously, churches which are not independent can’t simply adopt the model described in my later musings. Nevertheless, I hope that the model may still provide useful insights.

I will assume that independent churches will be organised in a way that is similar to the “elder-deacon model”. Essentially, the governance of the church involves two groups of people:

• The elders, who leads the church and mainly deal with ministry of the Word and prayer.
• The deacons, who are the administrators of the church and deals with administration matters, including finance.

Generally the elders would be seen as organisationally above the deacons within a church association’s governance structure.

Why a new model may be useful

Note that I am not a lawyer, and this section should not be taken as legal advice.

In Australia, the ultimate responsibility for financial management of an organisation (whether it be a company, an incorporated association and even an unincorporated association) usually rests with the organisation’s management committee. For a company, this management committee is usually called the board of directors. For other types of organisations, the management committee may be called various things.

For church associations, I imagine that the elders would be seen as the management committee in this sense. This means that it would the elders rather than the deacons who would be ultimately responsible for the church’s finances, even though we would normally think that these things are the responsibility of the deacons. The fact that deacons do most of the day-to-day work in relation to finance is not likely to absolve the responsibility of the elders as the lead committee of the church association.

We end up with a rather uncomfortable situation where there is a difference between how we want the governance responsibilities to be divided between elders and deacons, and how the governance responsibilities must be divided. Can we develop a church administration model where we can achieve both? My humble suggestion begins in the next post.

Anyway, I’ve been mulling over the idea of a model for administering independent churches for some time, and it’s now a good idea to write it down.

So, over the next little while, I hope to have a series of posts on this topic. It will be organised as follows:

1. Some preliminaries
2. How the model works

Stay tuned.

• We use the same jargon to mean different things. To them, “grace” means something that Jesus does to enable people to get baptised and live a holy life. To me, “grace” just means undeserved gift.
• It is quite clear that they have a gospel++ theology. They emphasised that they are calling on people to believe Jesus, get baptised and live a good life. I explained how thankful and relieved I was that I contributed absolutely nothing to my salvation
• There was a big emphasis on water baptism as a prerequisite to salvation. They placed so much emphasis on the word “water” in John 3:5 that they seemed to have completely missed the point that one can’t be “born again” (same verse, elsewhere in John 3) by yourself.
• We had a brief conversation about the various English Bible translations. What’s interesting is that they mentioned that they have interlinear Bibles with the literal translations “placed there by the Church”. I haven’t heard a Bible translator place so much authority on his or her translation, as opposed to the authority of the Scriptures in its original language (see paragraph 1 of the AFES Doctrinal Basis)

Sadly, all of us were getting bitten by flying insects that we had to end the conversation early.

Today’s letters page in the Sydney Morning Herald has a section devoted to this topic. It’s good to see that biblical theological views of Scripture are so well represented.

He has kindly shared a copy of the presentation. Hopefully you will find it as useful as I have.

Why is this important? The main reason is that songs are a powerful teaching tool. Music evokes emotion in people, and so words attached to music in song are more memorable. There is a potential for more people to get their theology out of singing songs than from listening to talks, or doing Bible studies.

Now, to the list:

1. Is it sound? Clearly if the theology is unsound then we shouldn’t sing it.

   However, it is a bit more subtle than that. Songs are meant to be sung through, which means that the singer wouldn’t have much time to think deeply about the words and whether they are wholly correct within the context. As a result, I tend to frown on lyrics which are theologically ambiguous, or are correct only if you “add an asterisk” and say “terms and conditions apply”.

2. Does it have real content? As I mentioned earlier, songs teach. One wants to have songs that carry real, substantial content, rather than ones that only has emotional fluff.

   That does not mean one can’t have emotions in songs. Music, by nature, is emotional. But emotions should be grounded on solid truths, rather than the transient dispositions of human beings. The Psalms is an excellent example of emotions grounded in a solid knowledge of God.

   A simple test: if you replace the word “Jesus” with “baby” and the song still makes sense, then there not be a lot of content.

3. Is it understandable? Ideally the language should be understandable to the audience. This is particularly relevant to older songs, which may use language which is not familiar to contemporary audience. While having difficult language is not a “show-stopper”, people using them should be aware of the need to explain the language.

That’s what I can think of so far. Any thoughts on anything else?

So, here is a FAQ. Nothing here is particularly new, Ministry Training Strategy has been talking about the ministry platform concept for years, and I am grateful for the insight they have provided me.

What is a “ministry platform”?

A ministry platform is a set of structures which provides support to one’s ministry of the Word and prayer. These “structures” include things like:

• training
• encouragement, networking and prayer support
• accountability structures
• logistics like meeting places
• administration
• finance: having the money to pay/be paid

Ministry platforms are often provided by organisations. They can be denominations (such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance or non-denominational ministries (like Ecom and RICE).

What’s good about ministry platforms?

The good thing about ministry platforms is that you can use the use them to save time. This allows you to have more time actually ministering to people, rather than worrying whether how you should be complying with, say, the Charitable Fundraising Act 1991. Setting up everything from scratch is very time consuming and risky.

Using ministry platforms allows you to learn from the experience of others, so that you can avoid mistakes that have been done in the past.

Using ministry platforms also means that the platforms themselves can have economies of scale, which means lower costs for everyone. Larger denominations can often get special deals on logistics (e.g. telephone), which benefits everyone.

What’s bad about ministry platforms?

There is usually a “cost” associated with a ministry platform. They can things such as:

• Bureaucracy and red-tape, which can be frustrating as it takes time to get things done
• Dealing with cultural differences
• Instances where you may need to compromise on your principles, practice or finer points of doctrine
• Weaknesses of others (including politics)

I have a new idea for preaching the gospel. Should I use an existing platform or should I set up my own?

That’s the difficult question. I guess you will need to weigh up the good points and the bad points about existing ministry platforms. In some cases, it would be wise to use an existing platform. In others, it may be best to set up your own.

This is a wisdom issue. You should seek the counsel of others, and most importantly, pray.