The Nature of the Beast

It's sort of funny, I used to think that church boards were the way they were because they were church boards. However, having spent about 6 months on the board of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN), a community organization here in Denver, I've come to the conclusion that the way boards operate has nothing to do with the church, but has everything to do with the nature of boards. After all, organizationally speaking, it's really difficult to get any farther from a conservative Lutheran church than CHUN.

And yet, as I sit in a board meeting, if I wasn't paying attention to the issues, I really couldn't tell the difference. The reasoning behind the arguments is the same, there's lots of talk with little action, an general contentment with the status quo, and a desire to squelch change agents.

Now, there are some obvious exceptions and John Carver has devoted his life to developing a model for boards that don't do these things, but for the most part, when left to their own doing, boards will be boards, no matter what the organizational context might be.

With all that in mind, some prayers as I head to a "special board meeting" to deal with an "important personnel issue" would be appreciated.