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2009-2010 elder fitness evaluation
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For four weeks during April and May, the congregation was invited to offer their evaluation of the overall fitness of the Elders and their leadership in the three chief responsibilities as outlined in the Manual of Church Practices (the theological role, the missiological role, and the shepherding role). During this period, there were only five fitness evaluations received. No concerns were raised regarding the fitness of the Elders, but there were a few questions and a few comments.
The questions raised:
These questions were answered directly to those who asked, but here is a recap of the answers given:
To try to give some sense of what the Elders do routinely and the issues we deal with, you can see the minutes from our meetings on the website (http://trinityny.org/elderminutes). These meetings usually last 3-4 hours. The minutes are abbreviated but hopefully give a sense of the overview. Included in those minutes are references to counseling issues that we do not go into any detail on in order to protect confidentiality. Additionally, we have a conference call every Thursday (that usually lasts about 45 minutes) so that we are staying on top of everything that is going on. The Annual Report that was published prior to the Annual Meeting is another place to get information as to what the Elders have been working on and accomplishing; in it is an overview of what we’ve done over the past 12 months.
Regarding our Theological role, we talk through current pulpit ministry (i.e. Sermon on the Mount series) to insure that what is being taught is what we believe the church needs at the time and that we are being true to the truth of the scripture/gospel. Also, we are constantly trying to look ahead to try to discern where we need to go next. For instance, we spent several months thinking/praying about what we needed to study during the summer. There were several things we considered, but eventually landed on doing a study of 2 Timothy as we felt that coming off of the Sermon on the Mount it would be good to get into some practical theology, with an eye toward the importance of holding to truth, the importance of discipleship, and the importance of living life in community.
Regarding our Missiological role, one of the challenges we face in this arena is finding the time to effectively lead, interact with, envision and care for our deacons. We have tried to address this to some extent with quarterly brainstorming gatherings and the retreat we had in March. That said, we still have work to do in this area.
Regarding the Shepherding role, there are aspects of this that are contained in the other two roles (in fact, they all overlap to some degree), but significant pieces of this are counseling, conflict resolution, building community, and discipling folks within our church body. Each of the elders have people in whom they are intentionally investing time and energy to help them grow in maturity in Christ; in essence, discipling them, developing them. These things involve a tremendous amount of emotional energy, not to mention time.
It was asked who the elders are accountable to within the church organization. To quote from the bylaws, we are “ultimately accountable to God, yet with practical accountability to each other and to the Trinity congregation.” This Elder fitness review process is part of that accountability. We have solicited input from the congregation for 4 weeks as to how the congregation perceives we are doing. This could range from pastoral care issues to sermon series decisions to overall direction of the church, etc… We invite people to raise their concerns with us so that we might address them and determine whether or not each of us as individuals is fit to continue in the role.
To add to the above, in our Missiological role, the elders are constantly considering candidates for leadership for our church, including deacons, staff, future trustees and potential elders, so that our church can more fully realize God’s design and purpose for us. We have spent many hours over many years in developing the concepts of calling and character, and in canvassing the congregation for their candidates and input into our leadership formation. This does not include the time we spend with our installed leaders as we serve the church.
We met on May 27th to critically assess where we are and how we are doing both as individuals and as a group. We feel we are improving in our leadership processes, especially in the communication and relational aspects, but we recognize that there is still significant growth needed in this arena. We have experienced many challenges in the areas of conflict resolution, biblical doctrine, and competency in the last few years, with a few failures along the way and this gives us significant pause, to the point where we are asking ourselves some pretty hard questions. A sampling of those questions is:
We sense that we are not doing enough as teachers, mentors, and coaches to disciple and to develop leaders. Jesus spent most of his 3 years of public ministry “24/7” with his disciples. Jesus did not only teach principles in large group and small group settings, He also frequently employed in-your-face coaching and feedback techniques with His disciples’ and religious leaders, when they widely and frequently missed His mark. We feel that we may need to embark on some of the same.
On the other hand, the Elders realize that we are not prioritizing our time the way He modeled ministry for us. We also realize that there may be many in the congregation who like things the way they are, and that a radical rebalancing of our efforts would cause consternation and conflict, as some of our expectations and traditions would be altered. However, the Elders do not feel that we can duck this issue any longer.
It is true that we aspire for all of our leaders—whether they are a current or future elder or deacon, trustee or ministry director, small group leader or any volunteer entrusted with the people and the resources of the church—to lead more in the way of Christ, and less in the way of the world. The Elders are convicted, in our leadership selection, that we currently rely too much on worldly successes and we react to the pressure of filling vacated positions so that we can keep doing something that we were doing last year, and we give too little weight to discipleship the way Jesus modeled it for us. We, the elders, need to do this better.
While we have no grand strategy or plan to address this at this time, we readily admit that as part of our Elder fitness process, we have assessed ourselves on biblical discipleship and we find ourselves wanting. So we are praying to God to forgive us for this oversight, and to reveal what He would have us do to make things right by Him, and better for our church. We ask that you would pray for us, and share the insights that our Lord might be revealing to you about how we can make disciples better in the coming months and years.
We have also recognized that we have been less than timely in some of our actions. Case in point: there was a reconciliation issue that we were involved in that should have been handled in weeks but it took months—largely due to our lack of initiative. We must do better with this.
A few other things we agree that we need to do better include more consistent communication with Deacons and Trustees, greater acknowledgement and celebration of volunteers, more consistent vision casting, and better understanding of why people leave Trinity (aka, exit interviews). We also feel some sort of 360 evaluation of the Elders would be beneficial.
All in all, while there have been some deficits and failures, we still believe we are serving the church well, coming alongside individuals and ministries for both personal and corporate growth. And we have received no feedback to the contrary.
The sum of all of this is that the Elders believe that if we become better disciples ourselves and do a better job of disciple making, that better disciples will result in better leaders which will in turn result in a better church. We look forward to working with the members of our body in improving our leadership, which we believe to be the key to realizing more of Heaven on Earth, as Jesus prayed for us. We thank you in advance for your prayers, and your joining us on this adventure.
Sincerely,
The Elders of Trinity
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