Congregational Accountability

Jay Voorhee's The Pastor's Study has a great article concerning congregational accountability in this age of calling for clergy effectiveness. Here's an excerpt:

Yes, the pastor is the appointed leader of the congregation, and as such represents the congregation to the general church. Yes, there is a sense in which the accountability of the pastor is a form of congregational accountability. However, as any pastor will tell you, there is a limit to what he or she can do in a congregation that is dysfunctional, hard headed, and simply isn’t particularly concerned with being anything beyond what they already are. Ministry for the transformation of the world requires a partnership between pastor and congregation, and there are situations all through our communion in which congregations aren’t willing to be active participants in that partnership. “What?” Us be in ministry,” they say. “Isn’t that what we pay the pastor for?”

The first guest comment is mine and I post it here for your reading:

Mutual accountability, how novel! I'm amazed at the call for greater clergy effectiveness and the heightened evaluation measuring that effectiveness. But what about the effectiveness of our laity? divdivIf I recall Wesley was BIG on the quarterly examination of the whole band. I would love to see a rekindling of such accountability with preparation. For instance, our conference is pushing the Academy for Leadership Excellence. It primary focus in its infancy has been training pastors for effective leadership. What if in the expansion of the program we began training the laity as well moving in the near future (next quadrennium) to requiring all lay leadership in key church positions (start with the council and committee chairs) to have gone through a minimal amount of training. That way pastors and laity are receiving like training for like leading.

Comments

[Scott Priestley]

In the corporate world we have instituted 360-degree feedback for quite some time. Many churches have adapted this for pastors. Lets take it down another level - the senior leadership definitely could benefit from the same sort of review and development planning.