Christian Leadership Interviews

The Church I pastor, Central Baptist, is really starting to hit stride and do some great things. At this point the culture of the Church has changed enough that people are beginning to see that the structure of our Church doesn't match who we are or what we've been called to do. This is an exciting time for me, as I sometimes wondered if we'd survive the journey to this point! The problem with restructuring is, however, that 90% of the people at Central have never been part of a Church that was set up any differently than the structure we have (think, "business"). This creates a problem because the danger is that we'll just change the names of things and keep doing what we've always done (which we can't afford to do). To give people some more "tools" to work with in the coming year I'm hoping to bring in a dozen or so Pastors/Church Leaders to Central Baptist so we can have a conversation with them about the nature of their communities - especially about how their communities are structured around the mission they are trying to accomplish.

Part of this process will be an "interview" I'll being doing with our "guests" each month. Here's the questions as they exist right now - can you think of others you'd like to ask?

1. How does your community designate who is a “member?” Is there anything that “members” can do in your community that “non-members” cannot?

2. How does your community make decisions which affect the whole? How are those with dissenting points of view addressed? In what ways does the community ensure that decisions are carried out?

3. Are there any specific qualifications to be a ministry leader in your community?

4. In what ways do you keep ministry leaders focused on the mission of your community?

5. Can you give an example of when your community was faced with a ministry opportunity, or a negative ministry issue, that couldn’t readily be fit into the way you were structured? If so, how did your community flex in order to deal with the new reality?

6. Does your community have boundary markers? If so, what are they? If not, why not?

Tags: Church, Structure, Interview