Ridgell's Originals

The elders at Southern Hills are going thru an evaluation concerning the implementation of a new leadership model and some people wonder why I am not more enthused about the change. And I do need to say I am in favor of the new model, but I am not overly excited and here is why.

... no system is going to be the answer to church growth and viability. If systems were really that important, God would have made structure much clearer in Scripture.

... I don't think the old model was a disaster, a failure, or fatally flawed. We had a lot of growth under the old model. We will have problems under the new model. And we will have growth under a new model. We have problems under the current model.

... because church growth is about people, not models.

... it's not really much different from the model we are under now. The names and on-paper structure may change, but I am not sure the congregation will notice much of a difference.

...I've been around a long time. Long enough to realize that there are no "magic bullets".


I do like...

that elders will be able to focus more on casting the vision, setting the direction of the church, and being intentional about overseeing the congregation. Sometimes we have let others do this by default. I think this has the potential to make our task much clearer.

that staff will have more structure and accountability. Like most churches I know, we have an enormous amount of our resources invested in our ministerial staff. And, like most other congregations, we communicate poorly with them, do not give them guidance, do not hold them accountable... and then shock them when we tell them things are not going well. Or they tell us that things are not good. That does not seem to be very strategic. So the new model will help in that regard.

It will free up more of our elders to focus on shepherding.

Besides making it easier for elders to oversee and shepherd, and making our staff function more efficiently, it is a model under which deacons can serve effectively.

I know there are some wondering whether we are going to respond to anything we learned from having a consultant share an outsider's view of SH. So we are working on it.

So what does the new model look like? We are still working on the details and haven't made final decisions, but we will let everyone know when we do.

So just thought I would share some of my thoughts.

And they are mine alone. They don't reflect the elder's view, or the staff's perceptions. They are just my out loud ramblings.