I got a great email the other day from a Pastor in Virginia. I plan on addressing this in the near future, but I figured that I could post it and see what kind of comments you guys would recommend.************************************

Hello Terry, I'm a church-planting Pastor in Virginia and a recent reader of your blog.

Our church started 7 months ago with about 10 people and we've been fortunate to be able to grow to about 65 on average right now. With the growth, we've recently hit some snags with organizational structure. We've had people come and go. More recently causing a stink as they left. The snags have been the ongoing pull from people who come to a new church expecting to become leaders and direct policy. They basically come in charming but have a history of pastoral rubble in their pasts. I haven't been the most accommodating for those folks so they've found other bodies to join. I spoke to a Pastor of a larger church last week that recommended I read the business book "The e-myth". I picked it up on Saturday and finished this morning. One of the central themes is that new 'businesses' need to have an organizational chart that sees the future. Instead of planning for 'what's next', we plan for what we're expected to become. Upon completion of such a structure, the current leadership (usually only 1,2, or 3 people) of the new organization fills their names in all of the blocks to assign responsibility until hiring another person for that task.

My thoughts are that we should project us 10-15 years out and use a large-church guide. By doing this, the thought would be to settle in stone the fact that our leadership must be thinking large-scale when making growth decisions. By doing so, we hope to avoid the chill that sets in on most growing churches.

Not wanting to just blindly create a meaningless structure on paper but unrealistic in the real-world, I do not know the best way to layout an organizational structure from which I can make wise decisions for the future of our staffing needs. I expect that if we continue our growth, we'll be hiring a second full-time person before the summer and this will be vital to the hiring decision. While I have a few months to figure this out, I want to do it right. I'd prefer to add a person I could see take over a more major role in the future.

Is my thinking on track? If so, do you have any suggestions for a leadership structure (top 2 or 3 layers at FC or something you think would be better?

Please post your comments.