If you are a board chair or board member do you ever wonder about any of the following questions?
- How can our board move away from operational meddling?
- How do we develop a deep pipeline of potential board candidates to shepherd your mission well?
- How can we best support our Head of School as they work to advance the mission of the school?
- What is Carver Policy Governance and how can it bring clarity to the Board and Head of School roles and responsibilities?
- How can a Christian school and its founding/sponsoring church have an effective and life giving relationship?
- What is our role in strategic planning and how is this tool used to help our school grow and develop?
- Does our board understand the 3 levers of school operations and how they relate?
There are good and helpful answers to all of these questions. But before boards can learn the answers they need to ask themselves the most important question. “Do we want to practice excellence in board governance?” As leaders in Christian Schools the expectation should be that the entire organization is stiving towards excellence, not just the students. Until a board is tired of being mired in mediocrity and satisfied with just continuing to do the same things they’ve always done there is no point in trying to help them answer the other questions.
Christian School boards have been setup by God to protect and steward one of the most important missions in the world. Why wouldn’t He want these boards to strive for excellence in what they are called to. All too often these days people and organizations are just satisfied or settle for average or mediocrity and in Christian organizations nobody wants to rock the boat because we’re to show grace to each other. This “cheap” grace is the salve we put on our dysfunctional organizations in the hope that we can all just get along and make it through another school year.
Board members have got to hold themselves and the other board members to a higher standard. Just because you are a volunteer doesn’t mean you can just mail it in. Discarding the old broken ways of governing a school takes commitment and effort and it may be that not everyone on your board is up to the task. This is where the Board Chair and Committee on Trustees needs to take the lead in helping these board members to find another way in which they can serve the school.
Once the board as a whole has committed themselves to stive towards excellence the time is right to go search out the answers to the questions at the beginning of this post. There are many who have walked in your shoes, made many of the same mistakes you may be making and learned hard lessons in the midst of crises. Find somebody who understands your specific organization, what your purpose is, where you are in the growth cycle, and ask them for help. The Lord will provide help for those who earnestly seek it with a teachable spirit and your organization will be blessed.