Letter from the Minister

A Letter from the Minister: Looking at Governance Change

Dear Members and Friends,

During the last few years the First Religious Society Parish Committee (our congregation’s governing board) has begun a serious conversation about what is the most effective way to govern our growing congregation. Recognizing that at least some aspects of our organizational structure are outmoded and have become less than effective, the Parish Committee has undertaken an exploration of and experimentation with governing by policy, an approach adopted recently by many boards, among them many mid- to large-size Unitarian Universalist congregations.

In a nutshell, governing by policy places more responsibility on staff (both paid and volunteer) to fulfill the day-to-day administration of the church, with the Parish Committee having more responsibility for carrying out the vision and mission of the congregation. The Parish Committee accomplishes this mainly through delegation to the staff after serious discernment and goal setting. In other words, the Parish Committee creates policy that the staff is then empowered to implement.

Under this policy approach, the Parish Committee takes on more of a “big picture” than a management role in the life of the church. While this change in emphasis ultimately demands more of the staff, it also frees the PC to focus more on the policies that help to guide our church toward fulfilling the congregation’s mission of building a beloved community and changing people’s lives and our world for the better.

In reality, our church has become more and more staff-driven during the sixteen years that I have served as your minister. Because of the growth of our church there already are many responsibilities (financial and personnel-related among others) that volunteers are simply no longer able or willing to fulfill.

In recent years, for example, we have created an “Executive Committee” consisting of me, our Business Administrator, and the Parish Committee Chair (currently Annie Madden) to help deal with personnel issues as well as to plan our monthly Parish Committee meeting agendas. By adopting a “consent agenda” and by delegating certain responsibilities formerly managed by the PC, such as space use requests, we have tried to streamline Parish Committee meetings to make them more effective. The Parish Committee aims to keep its focus less on micro-management of the church and more squarely on where and how we want our church to go and be.

Ultimately, the move to this policy approach may also result in changes to the committee structure of the church in an effort not only to streamline the way we currently function but also to create new and perhaps more effective and inviting ways for volunteers to be involved in the congregation’s life and work.

In the coming months you will be hearing more about this new governance model. Eventually, the change to it will require congregational approval and substantial revision of our church bylaws. For now, the Parish Committee and I simply want you to know about these probable changes to the way we do things here at the FRS. We encourage you to bring your questions to a member of the Parish Committee or to its current Chair, Annie Madden.

These are exciting times at the FRS as our congregation continues to grow in numbers and spirit! We thank you for your commitment to making the FRS the most effective church it can be.

- Yours in fellowship, Harold Babcock