The Session Meeting

Why is the Pastor-Session relationship so crucial, and so misunderstood?

The leadership team of a church is dependent on a lot of variables that have virtually no standards for measurement or organization.

The agenda of a Session meeting is not a standard of organization. It is a tool for effective communication and decision-making by the Session.

The Book of Order provides a certain amount of help, but it is more a restrictive guide than a best practices guide. It is a political tool for addressing issues in both the local congregation and national church. It will keep you out of trouble. But it really does not provide a roadmap for effective Pastor-Session team work.

So, how many elders arrive at the Session meeting with an agenda, and leave with the sense that either their time has been wasted or frustrated that it rambled so much, that it lacked focus and clarity.

There are a number of issues that afflict the Session meeting.

1. The make up of Sessions. Who is on the Session.
My experience interacting with a variety of church Sessions over the past almost 25 years, is that they are made of either strong, independent business people or quiet, compliant servants of the church.

How you take this eclectic group of leaders and form them into a working, cohesive team is the challenge the pastor faces. And this is not something that can be easily taught in seminary. It is learned more through mentoring. And it is achieved by clear, intention design of the interaction and organization of the Session's work.

2. The purpose of the meeting.
Too many Sessions regard the meeting as a reporting in time. Sharing information is very important. But too much information, poorly organized, or poorly communicated doesn't help. "What am I to do with this information?" is the question that rings in the minds of many Session members.

So, busy people show up for Session meetings, and sit and listen, when what they are used to doing is making decisions.

Look at what most people on the Session of churches experience everyday in the workplace or in their home and away from it. It is constant activity. They are doing things, and they learn how to gather information and make decisions very quickly out of necessity. The Session meeting instead is often two to three hours of reports, discussion and prolonged decision making.

Before a meeting should begin, the following two questions should be asked:
a. What decisions are we to make?
b. What criteria are we to use to make these decisions? What should be the result of these decisions?

Why are meetings so often counterproductive to the needs of the Session and its work?

I think to a certain extent the weakness of Session meetings is a reflection of the lack of confidence or clarity by the Pastor or the Moderator and the members of the Session in what the meeting is to acheive. And so, they try to acheive too much. It is too unfocused, too overwhelming, and too frustrating for busy people to deal with.

So what is the purpose of the Session meeting? To make decisions that lead to actions that enable the ministries of the church to effectively serve.

This means that the preparation for a Session meeting is not preparing the agenda primarily, but preparing the actions to be taken as a result of the decisions made. In other words, the Session meeting is not the focus of Session work, but a tool for the Session to be effective in its adminstrative/leadership role.

The problem is that to acheive this goal, requires a lot more communication than most members of the Session have time to give. This is a problem that every Session has, and each addresses it in their own way.

Session members may receive a packet of material prior to the meeting. These individual reports may come without any clear sense of what the Session member is to do with it. In a sense, communication before the meeting is really about planning the decisions to be made. And making it clear that this is what is the focus of the meeting.

3. The role of the Session member
This is a two part issue. One is the role in general. I'll leave that for another time. And the second, is the role of the Session member during the meeting and when you are not meeting.

So much is dependent upon the Pastor to develop the Session as a unified, cohensive working team. It takes time, and Session members need to understand that when they are elected to serve, that it will take time. And it takes more time that just showing up for meetings, and being available to serve communion. More than your physical presence, you need to be mentally and spiritually present.

This is difficult if you live your life in 2-3 minute increments, only your physical location, calendar or work place being the unifying thread. To be mentally and spiritually present requires Session members to recognize that if they are not making progress in their spiritual lives, then they are falling behind in being able to be fully engaged with the work of the Session.

Being effective as a Session member during the meeting, actually requires being effective as a Session member when you are not in the meeting. It means that being on the Session requires the member to be committed to the communication process. If material is sent to the Session either in hard copy form or by email, that you attend to it as soon as realistically possible. If a response is do, then take the few minutes required to draft your response and send it back.

More than anything, the role of the Session member is to be fully engaged, fully informed and fully committed to making sure the Session meeting is not just an efficient use of time, but effective for the ministries of the church. Yes, this is a high standard to meet.

4. The role of the Pastor.
There are heavy expectations placed on Pastors to be effective leaders. Some are better than others, and too often churches have structured their life as the church to be dependent on the Pastor being a high performing leader, when that may not be realistic. As a result, conflicting expectations for performance collide, and frustration insues. It neither serves the Pastor nor the church for these unrealistic, often unfair, and inarticulate expectations to grow. It is vital that the Pastor's role be clearly stated and that evaluation be focused on support, nurture and partnership.

The role of the Pastor, if he or she is the moderator of the Session, is to provide whatever is needed for the Session to be an effective, deliberative body. For this to happen requires that the Pastor works with the Session to design an effective system for communicating and decision-making. This requires them to decide what the purpose of their work together as the Session of this particular church needs to be. The more purposeful each aspect of the Session's work is, the more satisfying and effective the experience will be.

One way to get at this design process is to establish a Task Force of current and past active Elders who work with the Pastor or Pastoral team to design how the Session is to conduct its business. Clarity of purpose and design, collaborative partnership building lead to the kind of focused, character led leadership that is needed.

The Pastor and the Session need to be honest with one another about what they together need to do to make their working relationship function at a high level. Once there is a mutual understanding, put it in writing and agree to it as an action of the Session. That way, it will be there to remind future Sessions and Pastors of the purpose, function and operating design of the Session meeting.

If you have specific questions about your Session and its organization, please send me an email. Or, add a comment below.

I welcome your thoughts, comments, disagreements, stories and insight.