Large Church Conference--Governance Part 3/Cycle

Ran out of writing time while in Minneapolis.  (The previous blog was written there, but posted today.)  But, I'm back to the project at hand now.....

One of the more enlightening (and daunting) slides that the folks from Unity-Unitarian* used was an oval showing the cycle of governance steps that are make up Policy Governance.  I can't show it as a circle here, but the steps are:

Articulation - identify core values, mission and Ends
     Accomplished by Board and Congregation in collaboration with Executive
Interpretation - transform the wording of the Ends Statements to operational, measurable statements and propose a reasonable way to measure results
     Accomplished by the Executive in collaboration with Board
Planning and Design of Programs/Projects - creatively design ways to produce the Ends
     Accomplished by Executive and all those invited to join this process (staff and volunteers)
Implementation - execute programs and projects that produce Ends,
     Accomplished by Executive and all paid staff and volunteers
Assessment - review results, gain insights, ask new questions that lead to further Articulation (step one)
     Accomplished by Board in collaboration with Executive

We knew (in the backs of our minds) that this was the process, but since we know we're mired in Articulation at the moment (while the congregation is still running effectively), it was a little scary to see how much more we need to tackle.   Since we are acting as if we are doing full Policy Governance as a test, the Executive is planning, designing and implementing programs and projects (most obviously in the adult education area), but with no chance of being able to measure results compared to interpreted Ends (because we didn't do any of the "Interpretation" step this year) we don't actually know how we're doing yet.

So, as chair of the Governance Task Force, I've decided to speed up the Articulation step so that we can at least Interpret one or two Ends before Rev. Ward goes on sabbatical.  Consequently, you should be hearing about our new Ends statements by mid-April (I hope).








*Unity-Unitarian is a UU church in St. Paul, MN that is very much a leader in Policy Governance in congregations.  They and Dallas have been at it the longest, and Unity has been VERY generous in sharing their insights.  They have also created a non-profit consulting business to help other congregations along the Policy Governance path.  I have no doubt that we will be making use of their expertise at some point.