The Process - Lesson 3

I. Overview of Elder & Trustee Teams

Welcome to session number three. In this session, we’re going to talk about our elder team and our trustee team at Christ Community Church. Let’s start by making sure that we’re all using the same word. Elders, well, they’re elders. In the New Testament, they’re called elders. I don’t think there’s any confusion there. Our elders are responsible for the spiritual health of the church. We’ll talk more about that in later sessions.

We also have what’s called a trustee team. The biblical word for our trustee team is deacon. The reason that we have chosen to call our trustee team trustees and not deacons is first because the word trustee carries with it a financial sense, which is what our trustees do. They oversee; they protect the financial and legal health of our church. The second reason that we have chosen to use the word trustee team is that in a variety of churches, the word deacon is used in a variety of ways.

When people maybe transfer from one church to our church, and they see that we have a deacon team—if that’s what we called it—they might erroneously conclude that they know exactly what that team does. We have chosen to use the more contemporary or modern term trustee. We wouldn’t make a big deal about that, but that’s the reason behind why we have an elder team and what we call a trustee team.

We have two teams: elders and trustees. Our elders are responsible for overseeing the spiritual health of our church, for protecting the spiritual health of our church. In a later session, we’ll talk about exactly what that means and how we train them to do that. Our trustee team is responsible for the financial health of our church.

II. Annual Budget Process 

Here’s a working example: every year we set an annual budget. I work on the annual budget. Our senior director of finance works on that budget. All of our different ministry teams are given templates to create their budgets for the year. We put it all together, and then we bring that proposed budget to our trustee team. Our trustee team are qualified. These are sharp financial minds, sharp legal minds. We’re looking for the kinds of people that are good at these kinds of things. We work on that budget with the trustee team, and we get to a place where we agree on a proposed annual budget. 

That budget gets taken to our elder team for final approval. The truth is our trustee teams do such good work that it is almost never—actually, it has never happened—that the elders have looked at the budget and said, “Well, this is bad work; let’s change some things.” By the time it gets to the elder team, it’s really well-done work. You can see in that small example, the trustees are working with us on creating the annual budget and approving it. Then it gets an extra set of eyes on it by our elder team. By the time that we set our annual budget for the next year, it has had so many qualified and mature eyes on it.

Then the staff, once that budget is approved, has the freedom to do their thing. They have budgets. None of us can exceed our given budgets for the year, but we have the freedom to work inside of that budget. Once the budget’s set, the trustees aren’t making any more decisions about the budget; and the elders aren’t making any more decisions about the budget. It’s the staff functioning within the parameters of that budget that gives them the freedom to execute ministry. What you see there is a small example of what we mean by staff-directed and elder and trustee protected. The staff at the beginning of the process are suggesting what they need in their budgets, in their departments, to do good ministry for the year. They’re at the beginning of the process. Then the trustees are taking a look at it, and we’re massaging things. The elders eventually take a look at the final proposed budget. You can see there that you have a layer of protection where the trustees are protecting the financial health of the church. The elders are protecting the church by giving a second set of eyes on it, but it is really staff-directed where the staff are suggesting what they need to do effective ministry. Then they have the freedom to function the entire year within the parameters of that annual budget.

III. Communication Structure 

A question might come to your mind, which is, “So then do the trustees contact various department heads and ministry leaders to ask them specific questions about their budget proposals?” The answer is no—we think that would create a lot of confusion, and it’s unhealthy for a variety of reasons.

Just imagine (we’ll use round numbers here) you have 10 trustees on your trustee team and 10 lead elders on your elder team. If all 20 of those people felt at liberty to contact anyone on staff whenever they wanted to ask whatever question they wanted, imagine the amount of frustration or confusion where you could have staff members wondering, “How many bosses do I have?” In an effort to avoid all of that, we have what we call staff liaisons. In our context for the lead elder team, the lead elders communicate with me; and they communicate with our lead teaching pastor. We are also on the elder team. If there are questions or things that they’re wondering about, they know to directly contact us; then we communicate with them. Sometimes that means I might go to a pastor of a particular ministry area and ask a question; then I relay the information back to the elders. Once again, that’s just to avoid frustration and confusion.

Same thing with the trustee team. When we’re in the process of creating the budget, if there are some things we want to dig into, maybe we say, “This ministry department’s asking for $40,000 for the year. Do they really need $40,000? Or can we knock that down to $35,000?” The trustees don’t go directly to the ministry staff. They would ask our senior director of finance or me; we go and have those conversations then bring it back to the trustee team. Once again, this is all just to avoid frustration and confusion, because we are a staff-directed and elder and trustee protected church. We want the leaders on our staff to be able to lead.

As I answer that question, it leads to one more question, which is, “Can the staff ever talk directly to the elder?” What if the lead pastor or the lead teaching pastor or someone in high levels of leadership starts going off the rails a bit, maybe they’re becoming abusive or they’re mishandling money? The staff needs to be able to report this to somebody. Of course, in that situation, our staff would know that they could either go to our human resources department or directly to a lead elder and report something. This is another way that our elders and trustees protect the health of our church.

IV. Leadership Model Options 

I’m sure you’ve picked up by now that we have two leadership teams in our church. We have the elder team and the trustee team. Once again, we’re using my church as your case study. The goal is not for you to do things exactly the way we do it, but to take the principles and the learnings and apply them to your particular context. You could decide that you want an elder team – spiritual protection and oversight, and a trustee or deacon team – financial health and oversight. Or you might decide that you have one leadership team.

If you have one leadership team, you need to make sure that you know who’s on the team for what reason. For example, let’s say you decided that you’re going to have one team, and you want this team to be a combination of elders and deacons (or what we call trustees). Let’s say, just for using round numbers, you say there’s going to be six people on the team, three of them are going to be elders, three of them are going to be deacons. The elders’ particular role, their particular lane, is going to be the spiritual health and oversight of the church; you’re going to train them in a particular way. The deacons or the trustees are going to be responsible for the financial health of the church; you are going to train and use them in a particular way.

We have to remember that the Scriptures are our ultimate authority. The reason I bring this up is if you have one team, and there are elders and deacons (or what we call trustees), the Scriptures have something to say about what qualifies them to serve in those particular roles. When people are functioning in the role of deacon or trustee in your church that they are biblically qualified deacons. As leaders in the church, the Scriptures are our final authority, and we pay attention to what God has already said. These qualifications are important for a thriving, healthy church, and we should not move past them quickly. In a future session, we’re going to talk about how to vet and select elders.

I spent some time talking about the difference between our elder team and our trustee team at Christ Community Church, because I think context is important if you’re going to extract the principles and apply them to your setting. We’ve talked about elder team and trustee team. Going forward in the next session, we’re going to remove the trustee team, and we’re only going to talk about the vetting, selecting, training, and deployment of elders in the local church.

V. Reflection Questions

Here are your two reflection questions for this session. Remember, it’s really a good idea to take some time and write some things down.

1. How does the current size of your church affect how you are hearing this training so far?
2. If you didn’t continue with any of the future sessions in this training, what would your next step be based on the first three sessions?