I second North-East Quine's excellent post, with different titles that is the model the United Church of Canada operates under. To think that a congregation can get by with a "management committee" of three is in my experience very naive. This might work in theory for the smallest chapel but not for any congregation large enough to support itself. And under the United Church Acts in Canada, legally wrong.
Again, per the United Church Acts there has to be a Church Council/Official Board and a Board of Trustees. The latter holds the real property under reversionary title, essentially a congregation cannot sell its property without permission, cannot leave with it and if property is sold the proceeds go to the Region/Presbytery.
I have sat on church councils and committees and you cannot delegate everything to the minister. The minister is a spiritual leader who is there for a time. She's just a somebody who comes and goes. The elders are the ones who are there for the long haul.
To give an example at my present congregation we have two paid full-time ministers, a half-time pastoral minister and an organist. All employees. We have a budget of a half-million dollars and an aging building in Ottawa. We are considering redevelopment options as high property values mean the land is very valuable.
Management Committee? Sorry. Won't work. You need much more than that.
I wondered if you are separating management and leadership as different roles or gifts?
Historically the Church of Scotland and its offshoots had Elders, responsible for spiritual oversight and strategic leadership, and the Board of Managers, responsible for the practicalities of running the church.
It’s a little different in American offshoots of the Kirk. Here, congregations have traditionally had the Session (elders) and a Board of Deacons/Diaconate. The Session exercises governs and has overall responsibility for the life of the congregation. The Board of Deacons leads in ministries of compassion, witness and service
Depending on the time and place, the responsibility of the deacons anmong American Presbyterians has focused more on areas of care and concern for others care on one hand or care of property and finances on the other. (At ordination, deacons promise to “be a faithful deacon, teaching charity, urging concern, and directing the people’s help to the friendless and those in need.”) In our congregation, deacons do a mix of the two, and do have responsibility for the building and grounds. The deacons work under the oversight of the Session, and the Session must approve spending of money for maintenance and the like.
Congregations can choose not to have a board of deacons, in which case the responsibility that would fall to them is with the Session.
Congregations also have trustees, whose sole role is for legal purposes. In our congregation, the Session plus the church treasurer and the chair of the Board of Deacons comprise the trustees.
The Session operates much as @North East Quine describes, with a few differences. The Session is chaired (“moderated”) by the minister, not the clerk, who is essentially secretary.
And maybe 50–70 years we moved ago from lifetime service on the Session and Board of Deacons (absent retirement) to terms. The norm is a term of three years, with one-third of the Session and the Board of Deacons being elected each year. In many congregations, serving a second three-year term is the norm, but at least in the PC(USA), a break of at least one year must be taken after two three-year terms. The youngest member of our Session is in her late 20s or early 30s.
But as NEQ says, ordination is for life, so even if not on active service on the Session, elders can be asked to fill other roles, such as serving Communion or being a commissioner to (or moderator of, or filling some other role in) presbytery, synod or General Assembly. Likewise, deacons not actively serving on the Diaconate may be asked to fill roles appropriate to that office.
FWIW, our Session has seven committees: Administration, Christian Formation, Congregational Care, Stewardship and Finance, Mission, Personnel and Worship. (I chair that last one.) Our diaconate has at least these committees (I know I’m forgetting some): Building and Grounds, Hospitality and Fellowship, and Memorials. They are also responsible for things like ministries to unhoused people, and they act as ushers at services.
Session and Diaconate committees are chaired by members of those two groups, but anyone can serve on the committees.
Sorry for the long post. And just to echo @Sober Preacher's Kid, a three-person management committee will come nowhere hear adequacy.
Many churches have to cope with increased bureaucracy these days, in some cases due in part, at least, to the dreadful abuse scandals which have come to light in recent years.
The C of E now requires all PCC members, as well as clergy and lay ministers (and other people too, I daresay), to undergo various safeguarding training courses and modules. I know from my own experience how time-consuming these can be, especially when those concerned are often the people who are most active in their church anyway!
Don't misunderstand me - safeguarding is vital, and should not be neglected under any circumstances. My point is simply that it places an extra burden (necessary, alas, given the sinfulness of human nature) on those who already have a lot of work to do.
I don't know how far all this applies to churches other than the C of E, but it is well known that other denominations have been involved in these scandals. I expect they have their own rules as regards safeguarding.
Yes Ordination is for Life, you can even no longer be a member of the denomination and still an elder. The URC has used that glitch to have me in a role which no one else wanted to do for a number of years. Membership requires to be enrolled with a local church of that persuasion. I am not.
In Presbyterian Church of England had Elders and Deacons. The Elders looked after matters spiritual and the deacons after matters practical. URC worked slightly differently with the Elders more a senior committee with subcommittees running specific areas of life, in particular a Fin and Fab* committee or a Buildings Committee. These all reported to Elders.
Sorry for the long post. And just to echo @Sober Preacher's Kid, a three-person management committee will come nowhere hear adequacy.
The difference seems to be where the buck stops legally. There's no way that the legal Corporation of an Anglican parish can manage all aspects the parish all by itself, but it has legal authority and responsibilty for decisions made by the parish. The inner parish leadership team will typically be larger (adding the Deputy Wardens and the Treasurer for a total of 6), and Advisory Board larger still. Then there may be various working groups that will typically be represented on Advisory Board. And finally Vestry, which is the entire membership of the parish, whose powers include electing the People's Warden and approving (or not approving) the budget annually.
The Manual was revised a decade ago but each congregation is required under the Manuaal to have a Ministry and Personel Committee to handle HR affairs of all staff.
Sorry for the long post. And just to echo @Sober Preacher's Kid, a three-person management committee will come nowhere hear adequacy.
The difference seems to be where the buck stops legally. There's no way that the legal Corporation of an Anglican parish can manage all aspects the parish all by itself, but it has legal authority and responsibilty for decisions made by the parish. The inner parish leadership team will typically be larger (adding the Deputy Wardens and the Treasurer for a total of 6), and Advisory Board larger still. Then there may be various working groups that will typically be represented on Advisory Board. And finally Vestry, which is the entire membership of the parish, whose powers include electing the People's Warden and approving (or not approving) the budget annually.
And all this turns on the organization of a particular church or denomination, and on applicable laws. For example with regard to the former, in the Episcopal Church, the vestry is more or less the equivalent to what might be called the parish counsel in other churches, and is under canon law the legal representative of the parish with regard to corporate matters.
With regard to the latter, what you describe with regard to the legal buck-stop, as well as what I’ve read from some in England, doesn’t really sound to me like it matches up with the legal landscape where I am. In the US, the laws are going to vary from state to state—in some states churches can incorporate (as nonprofits), in other states they can’t. Some states have a distinct legal status for churches/religious organizations, some states treat them like any other nonprofit corporation or unincorporated association. In states where churches can incorporate, that doesn’t mean they’re legally required to. And then denominations will have different requirements. The PC(USA) requires congregations to incorporate if allowed to do so by state law. The situation may be quite different in, say, Baptist churches, each of which is independent and can make that decision for itself.
And much of what falls under the umbrella of church “management” or “administration,” at least in my experience, isn’t really connected at all to any legal responsibility or requirement.
That is why the the United Church of Canada is organized under the United Church Acts (plural). There is both a Federal Act and an Act in each province, each with a uniform text. This is something we very rarely do in Canada, a single national law across federal/provincial jurisdictions; it allows the United Church to sidestep questions of constitutionality and property and ensure uniform application of the law in all parts of Canada.
I should add this discussion illustrates why Calvinists make the best Communists: we form committees as a second nature and already believe there are two classes of people: those who are saved and those who aren't so much.
Sorry for the long post. And just to echo @Sober Preacher's Kid, a three-person management committee will come nowhere hear adequacy.
The difference seems to be where the buck stops legally. There's no way that the legal Corporation of an Anglican parish can manage all aspects the parish all by itself, but it has legal authority and responsibilty for decisions made by the parish. The inner parish leadership team will typically be larger (adding the Deputy Wardens and the Treasurer for a total of 6), and Advisory Board larger still. Then there may be various working groups that will typically be represented on Advisory Board. And finally Vestry, which is the entire membership of the parish, whose powers include electing the People's Warden and approving (or not approving) the budget annually.
And all this turns on the organization of a particular church or denomination, and on applicable laws. For example with regard to the former, in the Episcopal Church, the vestry is more or less the equivalent to what might be called the parish counsel in other churches, and is under canon law the legal representative of the parish with regard to corporate matters.
With regard to the latter, what you describe with regard to the legal buck-stop, as well as what I’ve read from some in England, doesn’t really sound to me like it matches up with the legal landscape where I am. In the US, the laws are going to vary from state to state—in some states churches can incorporate (as nonprofits), in other states they can’t. Some states have a distinct legal status for churches/religious organizations, some states treat them like any other nonprofit corporation or unincorporated association. In states where churches can incorporate, that doesn’t mean they’re legally required to. And then denominations will have different requirements. The PC(USA) requires congregations to incorporate if allowed to do so by state law. The situation may be quite different in, say, Baptist churches, each of which is independent and can make that decision for itself.
And much of what falls under the umbrella of church “management” or “administration,” at least in my experience, isn’t really connected at all to any legal responsibility or requirement.
To your last point, I think it may depend on where legal responsibility lies. If a dozen or a hundred (or more) people are legally responsible for the parish’s decisions then factually no particular individual or individuals are really responsible. If legal responsibility lies with two or three people acting together it tends to focus the mind (notwithstanding indemnification etc.). And quite apart from the legalities probably it influences the overall perception in the parish of who is going to be blame if things go sideways.
To your last point, I think it may depend on where legal responsibility lies. If a dozen or a hundred (or more) people are legally responsible for the parish’s decisions then factually no particular individual or individuals are really responsible. If legal responsibility lies with two or three people acting together it tends to focus the mind (notwithstanding indemnification etc.).
What I was trying to get at is that where legal responsibility lies is an irrelevant question to much of the management/administration that goes on in churches, in my experience. My experience as a lawyer serving on the Session of a Presbyterian church, which has responsibility of governance and oversight, is that a relatively low percentage of what the Session does on a regular basis relates in any way to legal responsibility.
There may be some difference going on here in light of the separation of church and state in the US. Under the First Amendment, government generally cannot interfere with or dictate anything about how a church/religious organization is run. While it can get a bit complicated, that inability to interfere with religious activities can extend to things like employment. What laws in the US tend to focus on are things like the entity capable of entering contracts, conveying and receiving real property, suing and being sued, etc.—whether that entity is a nonprofit corporation, a corporation sole, a religious association, or whatever. Questions like that will turn on denominational structures (congregational churches vs., say, a Catholic diocese) as well as the laws of a specific state. And churches must know and follow the laws and regulations on things like payroll taxes and property zoning. But legal responsibility (except under church law) just isn’t part of the equation for much if not most of the day-to-day running of a church.
RC parishes are supposed to have parish councils. It is up to the priest to decide everything about how they are appointed and what they do.
In our place members are picked by the PP. They wear specific hats - pastoral, Liturgy, Admin, Yoof etc. Members tend not to be the people who do most of the heavy lifting in the parish .... so as a body they are not that popular. More of a sounding board for the PP than effective managers. Decisions are reached and handed down.
The PP has been seriously ill since January and therefore absent. The place is being run by our part-time deacon (a bit of a martinet) and the guy who does the admin (excellent, hard-working, but he is more in favour of some areas of parish life than others.)
Its all a bit unsatisfactory.
In states where churches can incorporate, that doesn’t mean they’re legally required to. And then denominations will have different requirements. The PC(USA) requires congregations to incorporate if allowed to do so by state law. The situation may be quite different in, say, Baptist churches, each of which is independent and can make that decision for itself.
English and Welsh Baptist churches are usually non-incorporated, with the buildings held in trust by a denominational Trust Corporation. Most function as charities under the "umbrella" of the Baptist Union; they are not individually registered with the Charity Commission but are considered "excepted". However larger churches with a turnover in excess of a certain figure now have to register as charities in their own right; the Commission would ultimately like all churches to do this but keep kicking this can down the road as they can't cope with the administrative load. In Britain we have something called "Charitable Incorporated Organisations" which sit half-way between charities and companies; some larger churches are choosing to register as CIOs as this means they are incorporated and can own their buildings. (NB There are some independent non-Baptist Union churches, these would have to have their own Trustees).
For us it is the diocese that is registered with the charity commission. That is where a lot of the corporate management stuff happens.
In the UK there has been a growing trend to replace salaried lay people with clergy to save money. This leads to some very stretched clergy who are parish priests as well as wearing diocesan hats. Our man is vicar general, managing the admin for the diocese - everything from fuel contracts for all the parishes up to safeguarding. A young priest who was ordained just four or five years ago is now diocesan chancellor and runs the entire legal department as he was a lawyer in a previous life, as well as running a parish at the other end of the diocese from the offices.
That way leads to burn-out.
I find Kirk Session minutes, and it is my practice, before reading historic minutes, to pray. I try to read these committee minutes as the way in which, for hundreds of years, my church has attempted to do God's work in this corner of North East Scotland.
Early kirk sessions are often portrayed as having an unhealthy obsession with sex, as they subjected people to church discipline for fornication / ante-nuptial fornication / adultery. Kirk Session records are often full of this, and cases in which the man named as father denies it often go on for pages, with lists of where and when the couple met, witnesses who saw them together etc etc. It all seems quite prurient.
A few years ago I wrote an article on one woman in our parish, Anne. In the 1820s she was widowed in her early 20s, with a toddler. The church, of course, provided her with poor relief. She fell pregnant, the church disciplined her, ordered the father to support the child, and provided poor relief when he did a runner. She fell pregnant by another man. Same story. She fell pregnant by another man, but this time couldn't identify the father as "it was dark." She could, however, describe his pony. The Session Clerk, who must have had a FML moment, circulated the description of the pony round neighbouring parishes, and the father was identified. But Anne needed more poor relief. The next father did help out, but the child died, ending his responsibility, and Anne was back to poor relief. She was earning some money by taking in washing, but made a bad business decision. She reduced her costs by swapping sex for a bucket of bleaching agent. That father provided for his child, but Anne needed poor relief for the rest. Then her son started work and helped his mother and half-siblings, until he got his girlfriend pregnant, married her and had a family of his own to support. And so it went on. Anne was always at least partially, and occasionally wholly, dependent on poor relief from being widowed until her death 60 years later. She must have been a good mother because her many children and dozens of grandchildren were a close family. The son who was conceived in the bleaching-agent trade off become a highly respected member of the church.
The Kirk Session quite desperately wanted to head off this sort of potential sixty year commitment of time and money by strongly cracking down on extra-marital sex.
A fascinating story @North East Quine - no wonder the Kirk tried to crack down on extra-marital sex...
With social services in the UK declining ever further, many churches are finding themselves still providing relief, perhaps in rather different ways...Food Banks (for example) don't run themselves, though this is often an area in which non-church people assist as volunteers.
I know of some clergy who are fed up with the directives from higher up the chain, exhorting them (and their faithful few) to make even more efforts to get bums on pews - rather like a firm's managers bullying the workers to be more productive, but without providing them with straw with which to make the bricks.
Interesting to hear about the (I assume) Church of Scotland and parish poor law.
In England the Parish Guardians ran the workhouses and poor relief on behalf of the civil parish after the Poor Laws in the (I think) 1820s.
I've not looked into it, but I assumed that this was different to the ecclesiastical parish by this stage and that there was moreorless separation between the church and the state. I know, for example, that in the early 1800s there was a big bunfight in my area with regard to compulsory schooling because the first schools developed from non-conformist churches. If I remember correctly the first state funded British schools were set up because some didn't like the idea of younger kids being educated by pesky non-conformists rather than working in the mill. Related I think to new regulations about children's hours and education but I don't remember the details.
Anyway, the point is that I'm not sure those who qualified for Poor Law assistance in England would have been considered the responsibility of the church parish.
I find Kirk Session minutes, and it is my practice, before reading historic minutes, to pray. I try to read these committee minutes as the way in which, for hundreds of years, my church has attempted to do God's work in this corner of North East Scotland.
Early kirk sessions are often portrayed as having an unhealthy obsession with sex, as they subjected people to church discipline for fornication / ante-nuptial fornication / adultery. Kirk Session records are often full of this, and cases in which the man named as father denies it often go on for pages, with lists of where and when the couple met, witnesses who saw them together etc etc. It all seems quite prurient.
A few years ago I wrote an article on one woman in our parish, Anne. In the 1820s she was widowed in her early 20s, with a toddler. The church, of course, provided her with poor relief. She fell pregnant, the church disciplined her, ordered the father to support the child, and provided poor relief when he did a runner. She fell pregnant by another man. Same story. She fell pregnant by another man, but this time couldn't identify the father as "it was dark." She could, however, describe his pony. The Session Clerk, who must have had a FML moment, circulated the description of the pony round neighbouring parishes, and the father was identified. But Anne needed more poor relief. The next father did help out, but the child died, ending his responsibility, and Anne was back to poor relief. She was earning some money by taking in washing, but made a bad business decision. She reduced her costs by swapping sex for a bucket of bleaching agent. That father provided for his child, but Anne needed poor relief for the rest. Then her son started work and helped his mother and half-siblings, until he got his girlfriend pregnant, married her and had a family of his own to support. And so it went on. Anne was always at least partially, and occasionally wholly, dependent on poor relief from being widowed until her death 60 years later. She must have been a good mother because her many children and dozens of grandchildren were a close family. The son who was conceived in the bleaching-agent trade off become a highly respected member of the church.
The Kirk Session quite desperately wanted to head off this sort of potential sixty year commitment of time and money by strongly cracking down on extra-marital sex.
// End tangent
That’s really interesting and maybe not a tangent after all… I think it shows how moral principles (that you might expect to be associated with religious leadership) can have a strong overlap with practical management concerns.
I wonder if people feel that moral and practical principles are inevitably tied together in the management of church affairs (or should be, as a kind of ‘responsible management’), or can / should be held apart?
Either position could leave the priest or minister in a tricky situation, trapped in a position where whatever lay management there is continually seeks their guidance… or alternatively, looking on at overly pragmatic management that drifts from expected values.
(But maybe having a detailed and relatively rigid rule-book avoids these issues…)
Anyway, the point is that I'm not sure those who qualified for Poor Law assistance in England would have been considered the responsibility of the church parish.
Anyway, the point is that I'm not sure those who qualified for Poor Law assistance in England would have been considered the responsibility of the church parish.
That is why the the United Church of Canada is organized under the United Church Acts (plural). There is both a Federal Act and an Act in each province, each with a uniform text. This is something we very rarely do in Canada, a single national law across federal/provincial jurisdictions; it allows the United Church to sidestep questions of constitutionality and property and ensure uniform application of the law in all parts of Canada.
I should add this discussion illustrates why Calvinists make the best Communists: we form committees as a second nature and already believe there are two classes of people: those who are saved and those who aren't so much.
Comrades of all Presbyteries: Unite!
Nah, I was always told that Catholics made the best Communists.
Most full-on Calvinists I've met have been very right-wing and reactionary. More 'moderate' Calvinists less so.
All the former neo-Calvinist types who are becoming RC or Orthodox in the US - and their are more than a trickle - appear to be to the right of Atilla The Hun.
Anyway, the point is that I'm not sure those who qualified for Poor Law assistance in England would have been considered the responsibility of the church parish.
I've no idea what this has to do with what I wrote.
It's because you wrote this, apparently contrasting church and civil parishes.
!n England the Parish Guardians ran the workhouses and poor relief on behalf of the civil parish after the Poor Laws in the (I think) 1820s ....
Anyway, the point is that I'm not sure those who qualified for Poor Law assistance in England would have been considered the responsibility of the church parish.
Nah, I was always told that Catholics made the best Communists.
Most full-on Calvinists I've met have been very right-wing and reactionary. More 'moderate' Calvinists less so.
All the former neo-Calvinist types who are becoming RC or Orthodox in the US - and their are more than a trickle - appear to be to the right of Atilla The Hun.
This is going very off topic at this point; but how much of this is over-determined, and more a result of where Communists and Calvinists come from rather than their particular religious bent.
It appears that's not the case in Scotland if there are notes in the Kirk Sessions about poor relief.
Scottish Poor Law was reformed by the Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845, and became largely secular. However churches continued to have some responsibilities for the poor. For example, my church continued to pay school fees for poor scholars, and I think (can't find anything in my notes offhand) that medical bills for poor parishioners were still church poor fund, rather than state poor relief. Plus the church was more responsive to e.g. a snap of severe weather resulting in the elderly poor needing extra fuel.
Interestingly the Constitutional Act of 1791 which split the old Province of Quebec into Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario) explicitly established the Common Law of England as the law in Upper Canada but explicitly did NOT establish the English Poor Law. Ontario was always parsimonious that way.
IIRC there are quite a few advantages to being a CIO with regard to property and liability. @North East Quine the story of Anne and her clan would make a fab historical drama!
Comments
(I will also cherish the phrase “Pewnic Wars”! I expect the wars continue unabated, in various forms, in a scattering of parishes around the country).
Again, per the United Church Acts there has to be a Church Council/Official Board and a Board of Trustees. The latter holds the real property under reversionary title, essentially a congregation cannot sell its property without permission, cannot leave with it and if property is sold the proceeds go to the Region/Presbytery.
I have sat on church councils and committees and you cannot delegate everything to the minister. The minister is a spiritual leader who is there for a time. She's just a somebody who comes and goes. The elders are the ones who are there for the long haul.
To give an example at my present congregation we have two paid full-time ministers, a half-time pastoral minister and an organist. All employees. We have a budget of a half-million dollars and an aging building in Ottawa. We are considering redevelopment options as high property values mean the land is very valuable.
Management Committee? Sorry. Won't work. You need much more than that.
Depending on the time and place, the responsibility of the deacons anmong American Presbyterians has focused more on areas of care and concern for others care on one hand or care of property and finances on the other. (At ordination, deacons promise to “be a faithful deacon, teaching charity, urging concern, and directing the people’s help to the friendless and those in need.”) In our congregation, deacons do a mix of the two, and do have responsibility for the building and grounds. The deacons work under the oversight of the Session, and the Session must approve spending of money for maintenance and the like.
Congregations can choose not to have a board of deacons, in which case the responsibility that would fall to them is with the Session.
Congregations also have trustees, whose sole role is for legal purposes. In our congregation, the Session plus the church treasurer and the chair of the Board of Deacons comprise the trustees.
The Session operates much as @North East Quine describes, with a few differences. The Session is chaired (“moderated”) by the minister, not the clerk, who is essentially secretary.
And maybe 50–70 years we moved ago from lifetime service on the Session and Board of Deacons (absent retirement) to terms. The norm is a term of three years, with one-third of the Session and the Board of Deacons being elected each year. In many congregations, serving a second three-year term is the norm, but at least in the PC(USA), a break of at least one year must be taken after two three-year terms. The youngest member of our Session is in her late 20s or early 30s.
But as NEQ says, ordination is for life, so even if not on active service on the Session, elders can be asked to fill other roles, such as serving Communion or being a commissioner to (or moderator of, or filling some other role in) presbytery, synod or General Assembly. Likewise, deacons not actively serving on the Diaconate may be asked to fill roles appropriate to that office.
FWIW, our Session has seven committees: Administration, Christian Formation, Congregational Care, Stewardship and Finance, Mission, Personnel and Worship. (I chair that last one.) Our diaconate has at least these committees (I know I’m forgetting some): Building and Grounds, Hospitality and Fellowship, and Memorials. They are also responsible for things like ministries to unhoused people, and they act as ushers at services.
Session and Diaconate committees are chaired by members of those two groups, but anyone can serve on the committees.
Sorry for the long post. And just to echo @Sober Preacher's Kid, a three-person management committee will come nowhere hear adequacy.
The C of E now requires all PCC members, as well as clergy and lay ministers (and other people too, I daresay), to undergo various safeguarding training courses and modules. I know from my own experience how time-consuming these can be, especially when those concerned are often the people who are most active in their church anyway!
Don't misunderstand me - safeguarding is vital, and should not be neglected under any circumstances. My point is simply that it places an extra burden (necessary, alas, given the sinfulness of human nature) on those who already have a lot of work to do.
I don't know how far all this applies to churches other than the C of E, but it is well known that other denominations have been involved in these scandals. I expect they have their own rules as regards safeguarding.
In Presbyterian Church of England had Elders and Deacons. The Elders looked after matters spiritual and the deacons after matters practical. URC worked slightly differently with the Elders more a senior committee with subcommittees running specific areas of life, in particular a Fin and Fab* committee or a Buildings Committee. These all reported to Elders.
*Finance and Fabric Committee
The difference seems to be where the buck stops legally. There's no way that the legal Corporation of an Anglican parish can manage all aspects the parish all by itself, but it has legal authority and responsibilty for decisions made by the parish. The inner parish leadership team will typically be larger (adding the Deputy Wardens and the Treasurer for a total of 6), and Advisory Board larger still. Then there may be various working groups that will typically be represented on Advisory Board. And finally Vestry, which is the entire membership of the parish, whose powers include electing the People's Warden and approving (or not approving) the budget annually.
With regard to the latter, what you describe with regard to the legal buck-stop, as well as what I’ve read from some in England, doesn’t really sound to me like it matches up with the legal landscape where I am. In the US, the laws are going to vary from state to state—in some states churches can incorporate (as nonprofits), in other states they can’t. Some states have a distinct legal status for churches/religious organizations, some states treat them like any other nonprofit corporation or unincorporated association. In states where churches can incorporate, that doesn’t mean they’re legally required to. And then denominations will have different requirements. The PC(USA) requires congregations to incorporate if allowed to do so by state law. The situation may be quite different in, say, Baptist churches, each of which is independent and can make that decision for itself.
And much of what falls under the umbrella of church “management” or “administration,” at least in my experience, isn’t really connected at all to any legal responsibility or requirement.
I should add this discussion illustrates why Calvinists make the best Communists: we form committees as a second nature and already believe there are two classes of people: those who are saved and those who aren't so much.
Comrades of all Presbyteries: Unite!
To your last point, I think it may depend on where legal responsibility lies. If a dozen or a hundred (or more) people are legally responsible for the parish’s decisions then factually no particular individual or individuals are really responsible. If legal responsibility lies with two or three people acting together it tends to focus the mind (notwithstanding indemnification etc.). And quite apart from the legalities probably it influences the overall perception in the parish of who is going to be blame if things go sideways.
There may be some difference going on here in light of the separation of church and state in the US. Under the First Amendment, government generally cannot interfere with or dictate anything about how a church/religious organization is run. While it can get a bit complicated, that inability to interfere with religious activities can extend to things like employment. What laws in the US tend to focus on are things like the entity capable of entering contracts, conveying and receiving real property, suing and being sued, etc.—whether that entity is a nonprofit corporation, a corporation sole, a religious association, or whatever. Questions like that will turn on denominational structures (congregational churches vs., say, a Catholic diocese) as well as the laws of a specific state. And churches must know and follow the laws and regulations on things like payroll taxes and property zoning. But legal responsibility (except under church law) just isn’t part of the equation for much if not most of the day-to-day running of a church.
In our place members are picked by the PP. They wear specific hats - pastoral, Liturgy, Admin, Yoof etc. Members tend not to be the people who do most of the heavy lifting in the parish .... so as a body they are not that popular. More of a sounding board for the PP than effective managers. Decisions are reached and handed down.
The PP has been seriously ill since January and therefore absent. The place is being run by our part-time deacon (a bit of a martinet) and the guy who does the admin (excellent, hard-working, but he is more in favour of some areas of parish life than others.)
Its all a bit unsatisfactory.
In the UK there has been a growing trend to replace salaried lay people with clergy to save money. This leads to some very stretched clergy who are parish priests as well as wearing diocesan hats. Our man is vicar general, managing the admin for the diocese - everything from fuel contracts for all the parishes up to safeguarding. A young priest who was ordained just four or five years ago is now diocesan chancellor and runs the entire legal department as he was a lawyer in a previous life, as well as running a parish at the other end of the diocese from the offices.
That way leads to burn-out.
I find Kirk Session minutes, and it is my practice, before reading historic minutes, to pray. I try to read these committee minutes as the way in which, for hundreds of years, my church has attempted to do God's work in this corner of North East Scotland.
Early kirk sessions are often portrayed as having an unhealthy obsession with sex, as they subjected people to church discipline for fornication / ante-nuptial fornication / adultery. Kirk Session records are often full of this, and cases in which the man named as father denies it often go on for pages, with lists of where and when the couple met, witnesses who saw them together etc etc. It all seems quite prurient.
A few years ago I wrote an article on one woman in our parish, Anne. In the 1820s she was widowed in her early 20s, with a toddler. The church, of course, provided her with poor relief. She fell pregnant, the church disciplined her, ordered the father to support the child, and provided poor relief when he did a runner. She fell pregnant by another man. Same story. She fell pregnant by another man, but this time couldn't identify the father as "it was dark." She could, however, describe his pony. The Session Clerk, who must have had a FML moment, circulated the description of the pony round neighbouring parishes, and the father was identified. But Anne needed more poor relief. The next father did help out, but the child died, ending his responsibility, and Anne was back to poor relief. She was earning some money by taking in washing, but made a bad business decision. She reduced her costs by swapping sex for a bucket of bleaching agent. That father provided for his child, but Anne needed poor relief for the rest. Then her son started work and helped his mother and half-siblings, until he got his girlfriend pregnant, married her and had a family of his own to support. And so it went on. Anne was always at least partially, and occasionally wholly, dependent on poor relief from being widowed until her death 60 years later. She must have been a good mother because her many children and dozens of grandchildren were a close family. The son who was conceived in the bleaching-agent trade off become a highly respected member of the church.
The Kirk Session quite desperately wanted to head off this sort of potential sixty year commitment of time and money by strongly cracking down on extra-marital sex.
// End tangent
With social services in the UK declining ever further, many churches are finding themselves still providing relief, perhaps in rather different ways...Food Banks (for example) don't run themselves, though this is often an area in which non-church people assist as volunteers.
I know of some clergy who are fed up with the directives from higher up the chain, exhorting them (and their faithful few) to make even more efforts to get bums on pews - rather like a firm's managers bullying the workers to be more productive, but without providing them with straw with which to make the bricks.
In England the Parish Guardians ran the workhouses and poor relief on behalf of the civil parish after the Poor Laws in the (I think) 1820s.
I've not looked into it, but I assumed that this was different to the ecclesiastical parish by this stage and that there was moreorless separation between the church and the state. I know, for example, that in the early 1800s there was a big bunfight in my area with regard to compulsory schooling because the first schools developed from non-conformist churches. If I remember correctly the first state funded British schools were set up because some didn't like the idea of younger kids being educated by pesky non-conformists rather than working in the mill. Related I think to new regulations about children's hours and education but I don't remember the details.
Anyway, the point is that I'm not sure those who qualified for Poor Law assistance in England would have been considered the responsibility of the church parish.
That’s really interesting and maybe not a tangent after all… I think it shows how moral principles (that you might expect to be associated with religious leadership) can have a strong overlap with practical management concerns.
I wonder if people feel that moral and practical principles are inevitably tied together in the management of church affairs (or should be, as a kind of ‘responsible management’), or can / should be held apart?
Either position could leave the priest or minister in a tricky situation, trapped in a position where whatever lay management there is continually seeks their guidance… or alternatively, looking on at overly pragmatic management that drifts from expected values.
(But maybe having a detailed and relatively rigid rule-book avoids these issues…)
I've no idea what this has to do with what I wrote.
Nah, I was always told that Catholics made the best Communists.
Most full-on Calvinists I've met have been very right-wing and reactionary. More 'moderate' Calvinists less so.
All the former neo-Calvinist types who are becoming RC or Orthodox in the US - and their are more than a trickle - appear to be to the right of Atilla The Hun.
It's because you wrote this, apparently contrasting church and civil parishes.
!n England the Parish Guardians ran the workhouses and poor relief on behalf of the civil parish after the Poor Laws in the (I think) 1820s ....
Anyway, the point is that I'm not sure those who qualified for Poor Law assistance in England would have been considered the responsibility of the church parish.
My point is not about the geography but whose responsibility the poor were after the 1820s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_parish
It appears that's not the case in Scotland if there are notes in the Kirk Sessions about poor relief.
This is going very off topic at this point; but how much of this is over-determined, and more a result of where Communists and Calvinists come from rather than their particular religious bent.
But fun.
Scottish Poor Law was reformed by the Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845, and became largely secular. However churches continued to have some responsibilities for the poor. For example, my church continued to pay school fees for poor scholars, and I think (can't find anything in my notes offhand) that medical bills for poor parishioners were still church poor fund, rather than state poor relief. Plus the church was more responsive to e.g. a snap of severe weather resulting in the elderly poor needing extra fuel.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_law_union
@North East Quine the story of Anne and her clan would make a fab historical drama!