Kia ora everyone.
With the shortage of pastors available and the changing structure of churches now to what has been in the past, the Search Committee and Leadership Team, in seeking a new Senior Pastor, have looked at the leadership structure in other churches and realised that we need to broaden the scope of possibilities and enable more variation in the appointment of our senior pastorate.
Broadening the scope from the appointment of ONE Senior Pastor allows for the possibility of a shared role as happens now in many churches, e.g. husband and wife, co-pastors with different responsibilities, a retiring pastor mentoring a younger pastor, etc.
The attachments (see below) incorporates the formal resolution for the church meeting to adopt changes that are the (hopefully) uncontroversial changes needed to accommodate a more flexible senior pastors' role.
The Constitutional review team have not made any substantial change to clause 6.3 (g) even though it may conflict with current employment law. We would in any event need to address this when we complete the review process which we are currently undertaking in updating our constitution, in comparison to a model constitution provided as a guideline for churches by the Baptist Union of NZ.
We propose that we draw from the model constitution cl 5.3.2 and add a new clause 6.3 (h):
- "The relationship between the church membership and the Senior Pastorate and any persons appointed to paid pastoral roles will not be an employment relationship but a relationship of spiritual service. The church membership delegates the management of the employment relationship between the church and the Senior Pastorate to the Leaders and between the church and other paid pastoral staff to the Leadership."
This to be incorporated in the present amendments which would be clear guidance as we employ new pastor(s). The whole section dealing with structure, appointment of staff, termination of appointments, dispute resolution has yet to be discussed by the Constitutional review team.
Should anyone wish to ask questions relating to this notice of motion please phone Alan Calvert, chairman of the committee at 021 528 144 or come with your queries to our next meeting on Thursday 23rd May in the church café at 7pm.
There will be a church meeting on the 26th of May after the Sunday service to vote on these proposed amendments.
In His service,
Faye Snook
Link Attachments:
Notice of Amendments to FBC Constitution - May 2024 updated
Explanation of Proposed changes to to constitution
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