The People That Make Our Church Great - Part 2

This is Part 2 of a series of posts I'm writing about the people that make our church great.  In Part 1 I talked about the folks that make Sunday mornings possible.  In this post I want to talk about some of the people and teams that work behind the scenes to lead our church strategically and administratively.

• The Administrative Council oversees much of the administrative side of the church.  This team oversees and reports on our church's finances, prepares our annual budget, ensures the property and buildings are maintained and keeps our personnel policies up-to-date.  Over the last few years this team has worked very hard to up date our policies and create procedures designed to protect the church and allow for transparency.  I have the pleasure of working closely with this team and they make things that are difficult for me (crunching numbers) look easy.

• Our Alignment Team has an unusual name for a church team but the name fits its role.  The AT's responsibility is to make sure the church stays aligned with its mission, core values, doctrines and strategic objectives.  The Alignment Team has the wonderful and sometimes difficult job of keeping the "big picture" of the church in view.  By big picture I mean they seek to know where the church is and where it needs to be at any given time.  Forward motion is a key part of a healthy church and the AT makes sure that FCBC is steadily moving forward.

• The Family Ministry Team is a new team and has only been working together for a few months.  While we're still figuring out all the the roles and responsibilities of the FMT we do anticipate this being a "big picture" team as well.  In the past we had a children's ministry team and a youth ministry team.  Both teams led their areas of ministry in silos.  When we created the FMT we brought together leadership from our Kid and Student Ministries to work together strategically with the same goal in mind:  to partner with parents to help them build faith in their children.

• The Pastor Advisory Team is a team of four people who I meet with every three months.  They serve as a sounding board for me as I seek to lead the church and staff.  They ask great questions about my ideas or potential decisions and always provide good, candid feedback and wisdom. The team is made up of people who will tell me what I need to hear not what I want to hear.  In many ways I view them as my supervisor.  The team also helps me gauge the pace of change in the church and helps me keep check on my personal physical, relational and spiritual health.

• Our church Trustees are the legal arm of the church.  In Virginia they are appointed by the church and approved by the circuit court.  They deal with any legal matters including purchasing or selling property, long-term contracts or leases and insurance and liability issues.  Typically the Trustees are not called on very often but when they are their work is very important.

I so thankful for each of these teams and for every person that serves on them.  These folks work very hard all year to make sure our church is protected, that our staff has what they need, and that our church and ministries are moving forward in a positive direction.  Without them leading us from behind the scenes most of what we do as a church would grind to a halt.