Art Responding to Concerns About Ownership Fr a Biblical Perspective

Responding to Issues Raised Concerning Ownership, Biblical Governance for Christian and Nonprofits

Richard M. Biery, M.D., with contributions from Rev. David Mustine, and Olan Hendrix, June, 2005

Occasionally one hears that Policy Governance^®, as some have come to understand it after reading something about it, does not apply to Christian organizations. They sometimes raise what they believe are Scriptural issues based around God’s ownership of Creation and His Church. These observers makes several valid points which deserve being addressed, but they also have confusion or misunderstanding over other points, or at least those points need further development. Since these concerns from time to time arise, we have addressed them in this article.

Background

Policy Governance was originally developed to address and improve nonprofit governance. However, the model became increasingly recognized to be robust and applicable to all classes of governing boards. With its vital concept of ownership, which possesses legal reality in many organizational types, such as membership organizations, federations, and for-profit corporations it also provides a moral basis for understanding ownership and accountability in other nonprofit organizations and ministries that do not have clear (or any) legal ownership. This has proven to be an extremely important and powerful concept and is where everything starts.

Policy Governance has been received with interest, if not enthusiasm, by large numbers of Christian organizations, both evangelical and mainline, and by many students of management and leadership who are Christians, some having served for decades as senior leaders. Many have taken advanced training in Policy Governance to enable them to better lead their boards, or teach other boards. Policy Governance is used (or alleged to be used) by several dozens if not hundreds of Christian organizations, ranging from organizations and churches of confessional tradition to those of liberal tradition to organizations and churches of evangelical and fundamentalist traditions such as Bible Churches. Why? What features of Policy Governance make it so appealing to such a broad range of Christendom?

Students of Policy Governance have observed for some time that Policy Governance has within it (is based on) values or principles that comport with Biblical virtues, and that it enables governing boards to govern accordingly, giving clarity to their values, permitting them, as no other governing tradition has before, to achieve a rigor in governance and oversight, to govern with integrity, to diligently honor their fiduciary responsibility, and clarify their moral accountability to those counting on them to govern well, especially those investing in them with their giving, prayers and efforts. This is a remarkable achievement for a model. It is alleged that Augustine once said all truth is God’s truth. A model that has and provides such integrity seems to meet the criteria of which Augustine was talking.

Response

In fact, it is to this last point (to whom is the board accountable?) that the first, and perhaps major, objection is raised, the question of ownership. This is the concept and principle that Carver has called ownership. Ownership, in a Policy Governance context as applied to nonprofits (non-membership) and religious organizations, is the often ill defined group of people to whom the board owes some duty of stewardship and the consequent moral accountability for the organization, especially that duty to see that the organization accomplishes the purpose for which it was created and/or for which people currently support it and invest in it. Ownership, in this usage, is commonly seen as those who contribute (as investors) in some form, donations, prayer, time, etc., (but not “funders” in the usual sense of the word). These, generally faithful, contributors do so because of their support for the ends, the vision, of the organization. Ownership is not, contrary to what some mistakenly say, the beneficiaries, although people may, of course, be both beneficiaries and owners. Nevertheless, the two ideas (and the purpose and value each receive) are quite different. These kinds of owners are often referred to as the “moral ownership” when the accountability is not for reasons of legal ties. In any case, ownership in Policy Governance, whether religious or secular, is always temporal and composed of people. We’ll come back to that point because it is important.

Before we go on, in order to prevent confusion, there is one important sense that God’s ultimate and “only” ownership could be understood, and that is that Church authority derives from God. It does not derive from human government or other human organizational creation. Consequently, for example, the U. S. Constitution guarantees that the government does not have the right to “establish” or intervene in the religious enterprise of the people, their beliefs and religious practices. The Church is not subject to the political will of secular government. This is sometimes confusing because government does have certain non-religious authority over the organizational entities that the Church (people and their choice of organization) creates (discussed later).

Christian organization boards will always certainly acknowledge God or Christ as their ultimate owner (and the ultimate owner of their membership’s resources as well, of course (Luke 16)). However, the chain of stewardship and its accountability doesn’t ignore the temporal moral ownership and simply pass from God directly to a board (or worse, some leader), leaving other accountabilities out. The board is accountable to both it moral ownership and to God. If someone argues that, “God alone is the owner of His churches and their ministries,” this is a puzzling and untrue statement, either spiritually or legally. It would be true if one said “ultimate owner.” But it is dangerous to claim that God alone is the owner without acknowledging any moral accountability to some other group for the way the organization is run. It is an invitation to abuse of power, avoiding valid human investment and consequent accountability, (which happens with disturbing frequency by Christian leaders who claim to answer to no one but God and end up abusing the trust they have been given and ignoring it).

Recognizing a temporal moral ownership to which the board subordinates itself as a servant of God and steward goes far in preserving the integrity of the board and the executive. Policy Governance boards recognize this. Let abuse or fraud creep in and the board will quickly learn a lesson in temporal accountability. Dr. Carver readily acknowledges this stewardship role of the board. Because others are also stewards of what God has given them and that they give it to an organization to further steward those gifts, whatever they are, does not nullify the concept that, from the point of view of the recipient organization, the donors or “investors” are temporal moral owners as the term is used in Policy Governance.

Ownership is essentially different from being a beneficiary such as a student, patient, client, attendee, or whatever we call the recipients of organizational largess – those that receive the benefits of the “products” created by the organization. Christian leaders generally have no trouble understanding this concept. Even when ownership and beneficiary are mixed in the same person, such as in the case of church members, the two concepts can be separated. When wearing one hat the questions and concerns are different than when one wears the other hat. Church boards using Policy Governance meet with members as owner-members concerning, for example, a vision for the whole and the desired purpose of that local church, what results it should create in people’s lives and in the community, and church leadership meets with specific recipient groups for input on “products” of their specific interest such as children’s or youth programs, missions, singles group, etc.

To understand this question of ownership better, a useful approach is the idea that organizations produce two types of values, one for the owners, the reason why the owners created and continue to “invest” in the organization, and one for the beneficiaries, which may be training, medical care, inspiration, counsel, evangelism, shelter, entertainment, etc. Moral owners, such as donors, generally contribute because they believe in the purpose of the organization and want to share in its ministry. The value for them, in this case intangible, is one of the spirit and gratification regarding what the organization is accomplishing and, for Christians, an eternal investment and reward. The value for beneficiaries is often tangible, temporal, and personal. It, too, of course, could have eternal consequences, but not in the same sense. Owners tend to have a big picture and long term view of the organization. Beneficiaries experience the organization’s “product” as personal, fairly immediate, and focused. They are much less interested (as beneficiaries) in the big picture or the long term as long as their needs are met. In the case of a congregationally led church or membership organization both values are occurring in the same people. The members are both temporal owners and beneficiaries of their church’s activities.

Certainly Christians acknowledge God’s ultimate ownership of both humanity and all of creation, and they strive to live according to Biblical precepts. (We are obviously generalizing.) And Christian leadership, biblically, should strive to govern with a sense of accountability to God. Furthermore, Christian ministries are usually deemed, at least morally, as instruments of the Church at large - parachurch -, although not necessarily tied to any given church. This leads to the conclusion by many Policy Governance boards that they include a moral accountability to at least the larger family of believers they include in this group. Since Christ is the Head of the Church, they also acknowledge an accountability to Christ, while not denying their accountability to other believers. This does not mitigate the value or validity of the concept of temporal ownership. In fact, it is dangerous, as noted by many expert observers, if an organization’s leadership (either its board or its CEO) sees only God as the owner and acknowledges no temporal accountability. Such a view is an invitation to corruption and abuse of authority. History has amply demonstrated it. One needn’t look far. (C.f. for example, Churches That Abuse, Ronald M. Enroth, Zondervan, 1992) Recognizing temporal accountability to a conceptual ownership (not just beneficiaries), whatever we call it, results in responsible behavior by leadership, including the board.

Concerning the Church and churches. This is a term which is can easily become subject to equivocation. The Church Universal is one concept and the church at Main and Central is another. In fact, the word can refer to a building or a group of people who worship together and claim a common faith. To discuss the church, then, calls for careful use of terms. Although Christ is the Head of the Church (ownership implied, cf. Col 1), the most common Biblical metaphor for the Church Universal is the Bride of Christ, not something owned by Him. He called his disciples “friends” and, metaphorically, friends of the bridegroom, interestingly enough. (Of course, they are also His creatures.) Nevertheless, there must still be local fellowships called churches. Today those fellowships own property, conduct programs, pay salaries, and have legal duties besides spiritual duties. As such, they are indeed creatures of the state as well of the Kingdom. The state created the corporate category (eleemosynary) under which that church is recognized (and protected) and it has a tax number. It is not taxed, as such, but it does have certain tax requirements on it including the duty to pay payroll taxes. No more need be said. The state constitutionally must stay out of the religious beliefs and business of the church but not out of its safety (building and fire codes), the safety of its children (child abuse protections), and any abuse of its financial trust, etc. If those entities, those fellowships of believers, are congregationally based and autonomous, (though they may owe allegiance to a larger group such as a denomination), they are governed in some manner by a board in much of the western world. This board has an ownership to which it is accountable.

Concerning Ends. (Taken from RMB paper on “What is Biblical About Policy Governance?" 2002)

Policy Governance recognizes that all organizations (indeed, all designed systems) have a purpose outside of themselves. This idea of purpose is teleological, and a well-recognized term expressing the notion of teleology is “end.” (From the Greek, teleos, and used repeatedly in the New Testament in reference to purpose, or completion.) Carver purposefully selected “Ends” for this class of policy. “End” is used frequently within Christian literature. For example, mankind has an End established by God. Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes in the last chapter, tells us what that end is. We also find the term used in regard to Mankind in commonly used catechisms.

Furthermore, an additional Biblical principle is that the owner, (in the case of mankind – God), has the right to determine the purpose or end. Policy Governance recognizes this principle and builds it into the process. No other form of governance we know does this. Under Policy Governance the board is expected to find out and know the thinking of the ownership in areas relevant to ends, particularly. This is called “connecting with owners,” and the board considers it in policy formulation, since the board is steward for the ownership, albeit a wise and knowledgeable one, but neither is it an autonomous one. The board of Christian organization has a responsibility to know both the mind of its temporal owners and the Mind of its ultimate Owner to the extent it can know His Word and seek His wisdom.

R. M. Biery, M.D. 2005

(Policy Governance is the registered service mark of John Carver; the authoritative website for the Policy Governance model can be found at www.carvergovernance.com.)