Unpacking Church Structures: A New Season Begins!

Summary

In this episode of the Church Talk podcast, hosts Jason Allison and Rob Paterson kick off Season Seven by discussing the concept of church structures. They explore the importance of effective organization within churches, especially as they prepare for the fall season. The conversation delves into biblical church structures, the various leadership roles outlined in the New Testament, and how cultural contexts influence the way churches operate. The hosts emphasize the need for practical applications of these structures while acknowledging the complexities and variations that exist across different communities. In this conversation, Jason Allison and Rob Paterson explore the complexities of church governance, discussing various models of leadership and the importance of empowerment and accountability within church structures. They delve into the dynamics of church teams and the future of church funding, emphasizing the need for intentionality in leadership and the challenges faced by churches in adapting to modern needs.

Resources Mentioned:

Winning on Purpose (by John Edmund Kaiser)

High Impact Church Boards (by T. J. Addington)

The Coming Revolution in Church Economics (by Mark DeYmaz)

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Season Seven
02:25 The Exciting Start: Church Structures
06:07 Exploring Biblical Church Structure
15:08 Leadership Roles in the New Testament
21:00 Understanding Church Roles and Structures
25:37 Models of Church Governance
32:29 Empowerment and Accountability in Leadership
36:52 The Dynamics of Church Teams
40:36 Future of Church Structures and Funding

Follow us on Insta @churchtalkproject. www.churchtalkproject.com

Transcript

Jason Allison (00:00)
Hey everybody, welcome to season seven of the Church Talk podcast. Woohoo! Yes, the excitement never ends around here. We, ⁓ yeah, yeah.

Rob Paterson (00:05)
Dun dun dun dun!

Jason,

I gotta interrupt, I'm sorry. I have an immediate right out of the gate question. So we have been doing this for what, three years now? So how in the heck does, how do we have seven seasons in three years? I don't know, I mean, you're the kind of little mastermind guy. I don't know how this works. I just don't know how it maps to get to seven seasons out of three years.

Jason Allison (00:15)
Yes, go for it.

Well, because I decided it was time to start season number seven.

Rob Paterson (00:44)
So this is the beautiful thing about a podcast that you know, nobody other than you and I controls isn't we don't have sponsors. We don't generate money, you know, like we can, I guess it makes sense if you think every six months ish is a season and we've done three years that six seasons. So now at the three year mark, we're starting season seven.

Jason Allison (00:55)
Nope. Nope.

That is basically it, if there is a structure to it. But it's also on my computer when the file folder of titles for the episodes starts to get to where I'm scrolling too far. I'm like, it must be time to start a new season so I can open a new folder. That's really part of it too.

Rob Paterson (01:24)
You know,

I love that you're letting people know how the sausage is made, right? Like it's magic. Okay, so I have another question. If this is season seven, obviously it's like a TV show, right? Like, you you get so excited maybe about a show that's coming out or maybe a show you watched a number of seasons. And so it's like, like, I love this show. It's like my favorite. And everybody knows you really like the.

Jason Allison (01:34)
Yes.

It is, it is.

Rob Paterson (01:50)
first episode, the pilot or the season premiere and the last episode are like the big ones, right? Like where there's a cliffhanger or you just kind of set everything up. So, you know, do you have something in mind as we start season seven that could just be like the coolest, the sexiest like topic we could possibly talk about just for our listeners, just to give them like some gold right out of the gate.

Jason Allison (01:52)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, we exist right to engage, equip and encourage pastors and leaders. And I just thought the sexiest way to start season seven. So we got a lot of essence going here, right? The sexy start to season seven is all about you ready for this church structures. I know if that doesn't excite you, I don't know what the problem is.

Rob Paterson (02:39)
You know,

it's funny you say that because quite frankly the best preaching book I ever read had the worst title. Homiletic Moves and Structures by David G. Buttrick. And it's very technical, but man, it really helped me to think about how to organize and how communicating works and how it should flow. ⁓ so good, but again, not a very compelling title or cover for that matter.

Jason Allison (02:58)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, yes. Well, I just thought, you know what, this is is August and everybody's gearing up for the fall. They're starting to think about, you know, getting their board together again to launch stuff. Maybe they're even starting to think about budgeting and all that. And they've been relaxed maybe over the summer. And now they're ready to kind of just get back in a rhythm. And I just thought it'd be good for at least the month of August to look at some some of the different ideas of church structure.

And we've got a guest coming next week. We've got stuff where we're going to be interviewing and talking about stuff. So it's not just boring, boring stuff, you know, and not even highly technical stuff necessarily, though we'll have a little bit just especially for the nerds that want to dive into that. But I just want to make it practical. Like, what does it look like in 2025 in America? Because 90 percent of our listeners are on this continent, as far as we know.

And what does it look like to, you know, do church in a way that's not only effective, but it's also like sustainable. It's something that actually works and hopefully is legal in a way that, you know, takes advantage of the, you know, the laws and stuff that are out there that are there to help churches. I mean, one simple example, right, is property tax. As of right now, you know, in

August of 2025, churches do not have to pay property tax. Well, I just got through updating the escrow account on my mortgage company thing. And yeah, I pay a lot of property taxes for an average home in an average neighborhood in central Ohio. It's not like I don't have a mansion. I don't have property. don't have any. But man, I still pay a lot of taxes. Well, that's a big savings.

Rob Paterson (04:52)
Did things shoot

up for you last year too?

Jason Allison (04:55)
They did two years ago. had some, yeah, some levies passed and they reassessed everybody. So the new levy based on new assessments, which, you know, if you're a church building and even if you're just on, let's say eight acres of property and you've got a $1 million building, well, if it's a percentage, which most property taxes, at least in Ohio are, that's significant. I mean, you know, that's a big, and that's not.

Rob Paterson (04:57)
Alright, last year's what killed us.

Jason Allison (05:23)
You know, it's just it's not easy. And so thinking about that, there are things that I think structure is good. It's healthy to think about. And so, yeah, I thought today we just start at the top, start talking about structures of the church. And honestly, what is, Rob, a biblical church structure? That's the sixty thousand dollar question. I know you do. Yes.

Rob Paterson (05:41)
Hmm. You know, I have an answer. I have an answer to it. But

before I give the answer to your 60 whatever $1,000 or whatever million whatever question. I do think it we've got a we've got to say this to like, if we were scrolling you me anybody was scrolling through like a list of podcasts to listen to, you know, and they were like, look, that one is like,

Jason Allison (05:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Paterson (06:08)
Church structures, let's click, nobody's clicking on that one, right? But how many times have you, have I, ourselves or through an email or text message we've received or in a pastor's forum on social media or whatever, like people when they're trying to figure something out related to church structure, hey, has anybody faced this? Hey, how do you do that? Hey, what IRS form do we need for, you know, I mean,

Jason Allison (06:12)
No, no.

Yes.

Rob Paterson (06:35)
When it's something that you don't know, like it is just like worth its weight in gold to have a place where you can go and figure some of this stuff out.

Jason Allison (06:44)
Yeah, it totally doesn't matter until it does. And then it's of the highest importance.

Rob Paterson (06:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Allison (06:52)
So

is there a biblical church structure that we all ought to be doing, which means most everyone's doing something wrong?

Rob Paterson (06:58)
So I'm gonna, as I love to do, I'm gonna give a little bit of a roundabout answer to this question. So I'm gonna go back decades now to when I was in my undergraduate degree studying for a Christian Ministries degree. And one of my favorite professors of all time was teaching on the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles. And I loved that class, I could tell you.

very, very funny stories about dumb questions that other students asked in that class, which is probably for another episode. But the foundational question that we kept asking was, as we think about and study like the beginning of the church, is this the primitive church or is this the prototypical church, right? Primitive or prototype? Because how many times, if you don't have to have been in the church for that long,

to have heard someone go, we need to get back to the early church. We need to get back to the book of Acts. And when people say things like that, they're actually kind of tipping their hand that they believe what we see in the book of Acts is the prototype. Like that's what God intended. That's what we should seek to do now. ⁓ And yes, right?

Jason Allison (08:14)
because it's in the Bible.

So it's inspired.

Rob Paterson (08:19)
yeah, yeah, we could talk through the book of Acts about lots of things that happened that none of us would ever want to see or have happen in our churches too.

Jason Allison (08:27)
I got a couple people it'd be cool if they just dropped dead one Sunday, that's a whole... Exactly. And it was also tied to giving, so,

Rob Paterson (08:33)
Yeah, that's more of a counseling session maybe than an episode

You know again, but or is it just the primitive church like this was the early church and they got some things right that we ought to emulate and even try to get back to you, but there also has been some things over the last couple thousand years that we have learned and grown and figured some things out, you know that are also helpful and so

In some ways we would never want to go back to some of those primitive aspects. And it's interesting because the answer to that question over and over again was always a resounding both. What we see in the book of Acts is the primitive church, because it was brand new. And in some ways there are prototypical elements of that as well. So it's always a little bit of both.

Jason Allison (09:24)
It

is. Yeah, well, and that's the thing. The other part of this is if there was a biblical structure like, I mean, this is the way every church has to be, then how would it survive in such a variety of cultures and even governmental structures? Like, I mean, you know, the way we do church today, honestly, is more about the governmental structure under which we live than it is about the biblical structuring of church.

I mean, it's both and, but let's be honest, the way we incorporate our church, like even that word is a legal term that has nothing to do with the Bible. The Bible didn't talk about being a nonprofit charitable organization. It didn't even really talk about being an organization. It talks about being a body of believers, a community of believers, a group of called out ones. That's what an ecclesia is, right? It's a group of people called out for a usually political purpose.

And so we are a group of people called out for a reason. And then how we structure that group of people, it's going to vary from where we are to when we are. But I do think there are some things in the Bible that give us some guidance in that, right? That's where I want to make sure we at least acknowledge those things.

Rob Paterson (10:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, just as you were talking, Jason, an example that popped into my mind, because in our culture too, we usually, you know, if it works, if we see growth or numeric or, you know, financial increases, based on something we do, we tend to equate that with God's blessing. And so that must be good, right, biblical, you know, whatever, which, you know,

I don't, I don't know that it's, but just because, you know, it's not necessarily found in the Bible, you know, sometimes things work, you know, they work for a season. like a good example, I think back, you know, in the eighties, kind of at the height of this, you know, the church growth movement, you know, just successful evangelism where people literally would go door to door and knock on doors and like,

shared Jesus with their neighbors. You know, even talking about that nowadays, people like tremble in their boots and quake with fear. And it's like, do I really have to do that? Because somebody did that for me, I'd hide in my house and I would, you know, like, you know, so but back then, when it was like, highly effective, I'm sure there's lots of people that really felt like they had stumbled upon God's method for, know, like outreach and evangelism. I remember

Gosh, like 15 years later, planting a church in Indianapolis and being encouraged by a guy who was part of our church who used to be a youth pastor decades earlier in the South. He's like, you need to go door to door. You need to talk to, and so we did some of that. And again, it was not well received. So all of a sudden this God inspired approach now seemed to be completely uninspired and repelling people.

Jason Allison (12:27)
Well,

that's because you didn't pray enough beforehand.

Rob Paterson (12:30)
Probably,

probably. But I would say now, you know, again, while our world has totally moved on from that, nobody wants to do that. But for me, like I live in a small town. I've lived here, you know, for almost a decade and a half now. And people know me. So like for my for people who know me, like I like randomly show up at someone's house and knock on their door just to say hey, or give them a hug or say a prayer. Like a lot of times people love that.

You know, if I lived in a big city, even if people knew me, they'd be like, please never, ever, ever come by my house without a text or a phone call letting me know, right? But where I live, because of just the dynamics of the culture, I can do some of that now again, and people welcome it. So.

Jason Allison (13:03)
Yes.

But even that's within the context of the people you know. It's not a strange, you know, you're not just walking around a neighborhood randomly, you know, knocking on doors. You're doing it within the context of knowing people. I think that's...

Rob Paterson (13:17)
Yeah, for sure.

Right.

Unless it's

yeah, unless it's connected to a golf course and I just like totally snap hooked the ball into the neighborhood and I'm looking for it that I'm walking around a random neighborhood.

Jason Allison (13:34)
Well, that's true. Or the

time you and I ended up playing in the wrong scramble tournament, because the guy who set it up had the wrong week. And we showed up, and we're like, why are we? This is weird. We don't know anyone. Nothing's here. We go to sign in, and they're like, no, we don't have you listed. And like, wow. Well, why don't you guys just play anyway? So we ended up playing the wrong scramble.

Rob Paterson (13:57)
Yeah,

yeah, and that was like, I think it was like a men's group from a big church. And in the whole time we were playing, we actually played really well. think we came second, but the whole time we were just like, we did not, we always want to win when we're playing, but we did not want to win because we just felt like we were imposters.

Jason Allison (14:01)
Yeah, it was.

We did.

I

Yep, yes. So see sometimes that works out, but it's rare. So let's think about some of the overarching, you know, themes or ideas that are in the New Testament, you know, some in Acts and some beyond, but that are in the New Testament. And I'm thinking especially, you know, Paul, a lot of his writing was to these young churches trying to help them.

Rob Paterson (14:19)
It is rare.

Jason Allison (14:38)
get organized enough to basically not fall apart. And they were under extreme, oftentimes, persecution and pressure. So they needed some kind of structure. I know, so let me just start. I pulled up some leadership words that are used in the New Testament. And these are just words that you'll find all throughout. And there's a bunch of them. That's the weird thing. There's not like three. There's a bunch. There's

Rob Paterson (14:59)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Allison (15:02)
First of all, if you go to Ephesians chapter four, you see the fourfold ministry, right? The apes were, but apostles, know, apostolus, fivefold. Yeah, that's right. I can't count. The fivefold ministry there, you've got the apostles, know, apostolus, apostolus, which are messengers that were sent. That was what the word meant. You've got the prophets. And, you know, I would just say that's people who tell the truth from God.

Rob Paterson (15:09)
Yeah, fivefold.

Jason Allison (15:28)
And that could be a variety of ways, right? It could be the truth about God, the truth about, you know, the world in which we live as God sees it. There's a whole bunch of ways that the prophets use their prophetic gift. Evangelist is another word, and that's declaring the good news, right? And then you've got shepherds, and sometimes it's translated pastors, and the word there is poeam in us. And it's basically one who cares for the flock and leads the flock. ⁓ You've got then teachers.

Rob Paterson (15:52)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (15:56)
And that's somebody who explains pretty simply, right? So I mean, there's the fivefold ministry there of the five different types of leaders within that. But then you've got other words that are used later. You've got things like an elder, a presbyteros, right? What I did notice as I was studying that word is an elder is often talked about as being part of a group of overseers.

Rob Paterson (16:22)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (16:25)
Right.

It's usually not the elder unless you're talking to John the Revelator. Right. But like it's not the elder. It's an elder who is part of the elders should be. And then it gives some characteristics and so forth. But, you know, basically they're supposed to be overseers. They're supposed to be the wise counsel, the protector of orthodoxy within the church is often what Paul talks about. And then you've got the deacons, the deaconess.

right, which is basically they're there to serve. it's funny when you think of examples of this, you everybody goes to Acts chapter six, which is when the, you know, the apostles say, hey, we can't be serving tables. We've got, we've got to really focus on the word and prayer. Let's find seven guys who can do this and take care of this problem, you know, and the word deacon is never used in that passage, but that's what we use as the description of what a deacon is. ⁓

Rob Paterson (17:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Allison (17:19)
And yet it is, you know, basically it is someone who served. The last one that's kind of the major one would be, you know, episcopoie, which is the overseers or the bishops sometimes. And usually, like I said, there's a plurality in this. It's not, you know, one, it's a group. But they are to lead the church spiritually and practically. ⁓ So those are the words that I ran across. know, Robin, am I missing one or is there one that you think needs a little better description? What do you think?

Rob Paterson (17:37)
Yeah. No,

no, no, I think I think all those are great, but as you were saying them, you know, and we're talking about like church structures and even even how people like, you know, sometimes view biblical things or like the book of Acts, you know, where it's like, we got to get back to that's what the Bible says, you know. So you just listed all of these biblical, right?

Jason Allison (18:03)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (18:04)
terms,

Jason Allison (18:04)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (18:04)
ideas, concepts that we have, you know, that we can find and see in the scriptures. And yet, you know, we all know plenty of churches that would like, if there was like some strong kind of bishop presence that was trying to tell a local church what to do, even in our movement, right? I mean, churches would completely rebel, like, no, no, no, no, no. We are independent and no one can tell us or force us. And so,

Jason Allison (18:23)
yeah.

Rob Paterson (18:32)
even though you have these biblical structures for accountability or, you know, orthodoxy, all those great things that we all want to make sure we're sort of staying in within those guardrails. You know, we would be resistant to that. One of the, one of the things people always discuss when they talk about the apest, right? The fivefold kind of ministry or offices that every church should have. you know, people always talk about.

the prophets, you know, as like, nobody really wants a prophet, right? Nobody wants someone to come and like, thus saith the Lord, you know, you have to death and all the sins you're committing are all things you're flirting. Now, could you see why that'd be really valuable, you know, to kind of either correct or to prevent, you know, calamity? Absolutely. But man, people tend to like we tend to like, outsource prophets kind of as the

the crazies and we kind of want to be a little bit more orderly. We struggle with apostles too, right? Because they're always wanting us to go different places and do new things. And it's like, I kind of just want to stay and be comfortable where I am. And so again, we have all these biblical things where the Bible says, hey, here's at least how it was structured and we see in the New Testament. And we just resist the heck out of some of these things. So it's kind of funny.

Jason Allison (19:46)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. And even within all of these like offices or positions or roles or whatever, the structure is not really described in any kind of detail, right? Just the ideas are there. And I do think, like you said, all of these roles are part of the makeup of any individual church as well as the church as a whole. And they...

different roles and of course over the years denominations have emphasized different aspects like you said it's funny saturday i was we had a bunch of stuff from the church that we were giving away or getting rid of because the new stuff was coming in whatever and that's great well a a pastor from a local church came and i had a bunch of the stuff in my garage she came over and was looking through stuff and was going to take some of the children's ministry stuff and we just got to talking about it you know

ordination and schooling and stuff like that, you know, and she, course, had has her M.D.V. or whatever and, you know, went through the whole process and there I think she's with the United Church of Christ, which some people, a friend of mine who is ordained in the United Church of Christ says, yeah, you know, on the streets of heaven, we're the last house on the left, which I love that description. But but this this this person, she's wonderful. And we were just talking about it. And she was talking about how in their structure,

Rob Paterson (20:56)
Hahaha!

You

Jason Allison (21:05)
the denomination is the one who makes sure that anyone who wants to be ordained checks all the boxes of education, it goes through all this. And also they set the standards, right? But oftentimes they set the standards to check a box, but they don't actually know the person that they're ordaining. They just know they've checked the boxes. And in our tradition, it's kind of the opposite. The local church ordains. So they know the person.

but there is no consistent set of boxes to check. So education may be secondary in one church, like maybe they don't care. Another church may value it highly and you have to have a PhD before they'll consider it. Like there's pros and cons to both ways of doing that. And I think that's why the Bible didn't say you have to have an MD to become a pastor. That just wasn't what it was looking for.

Rob Paterson (21:47)
Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, and even as you say that, I remember my very first summer at New Hope. Every summer we always have a big baptism celebration. And so this, know, we had hundreds of people gathered to see the, I don't know, 30, 40 people go public with their faith and.

And it was super cool. Christopher was actually baptized that summer. He's five years old. So that was awesome. But I still remember this one guy, he was having his, his son was getting baptized and he came to me and I was brand new, but he knew that like I of the three pastors on staff at the time, I was the only one that had like formal theological education and had gone through like a

a very robust denominational ordination process, not like we do, where you can have a couple meetings and read a couple, write a couple and read a couple documents. And as long as you kind of seem like you got your head on straight, we can kind of do the sword thing and dub somebody and send them on their way. And so he literally was like, I want to make sure you are the one baptizing my son, because somehow that counted in his mind or mattered more.

And, you know, I think there's definitely like a fine line between like somebody who's like, God called me, so I just took my shingle out, tapped it in, and I have like no experience and no training, but I just feel this call from God and I'm like, I'd be probably pretty suspicious of that. But I also think, and this was like a very kind of John Wesley thing, right? Like he didn't want people to have to spend seven years in...

you know, sitting in classrooms getting theological education before they could be deployed as ministers and back then as circuit riders, right? ⁓ And so ⁓ there's, right, yeah.

Jason Allison (23:44)
Yeah. And most of them couldn't afford it anyway. I mean, not

that it's any more affordable now, but you know.

Rob Paterson (23:51)
Yeah,

well, but now like I think denominations trying to figure out, how do we, how do we make sure that we've got sort of the basis covered and we have like a robust kind of ongoing thing, but that we can like after, you know, three or four years of some training, get people like actually out in the field survey.

Jason Allison (24:11)
Yeah. So let's kind of transition here to basic models of how we take all those roles, shuffle them together, and create a structure that a church is built on. And again, there are a plethora of ideas and so forth out there.

I have taken a few and just kind of whittled them down to some basic stuff. We're not going to go into detail of every single thing here. But one example that I can give you is by a guy named John Edwin Kaiser. He wrote a book called Winning on Purpose, which is a really good book. And I'll put links in the show notes to each of the books that I reference here. So if people want to get them and he lists three basic models. This is very generic, but there's the bureaucratic model.

which is where basically the congregation votes on everything. And the pastor is an employee of the congregation. So they have responsibility, but they really don't have authority because everything has to go through all these checks and balances. So it's safe, right? The pastor is not going to screw everything up, but it's not effective because he can't ever get anything done. And I like how Kaiser, uses the...

Rob Paterson (25:03)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (25:15)
basically the FDA as an example, right? When they are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of a drug, a new drug, you know, so it's safe, but it's not effective. This one he would call a placebo, right? There's nothing to it. Second type that he talks about is the authoritarian. And this is where the pastor is the dictator.

Rob Paterson (25:33)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (25:34)
So he has responsibility,

but he and and he has authority, but he has no accountability. So it's effective, but it's not safe necessarily. It could be amazing. Like I have I have worked with and met many pastors who, you know, kind of function in an authoritarian structure and are really good at it because they're you know, they meet all the characteristics and the qualifications that Paul talks about in Timothy and Titus and all that. And so it's it's effective.

Rob Paterson (25:46)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Allison (26:02)
And Kaiser in this one talks about these as narcotics, right? They're highly effective, but they're not safe. And of course, he pushes the third one, which he calls the accountable structure or the accountable model. And this is where the pastor is the leader. And so he's accountable for effective leadership. So there's reporting structures in place. So theoretically, it would be safe and effective. So as you think about your church model,

Rob Paterson (26:06)
Ahahahaha!

Jason Allison (26:29)
Right. Is it more of a bureaucratic model? Is it more of an authoritarian model or is an accountable model that, you know, the pastor is able to lead, but there is some, you know, reporting structures in place so that there are checks and balances that don't keep him from ever being able to do anything or her. What do you think on those three? Like when you think about your church, Rob and churches you've

Rob Paterson (26:36)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (26:53)
served, is that a pretty good summary? Is there one or two?

missing or just maybe they're just iterations of those.

Rob Paterson (27:01)
No, actually, the tribe I started out with, they actually, lots of different districts and regions actually used Kaiser's book as a way, so forever that denomination was structured with at the very top, kind of the pope, if you will, there were three.

three general superintendents. And one of the problems with that was they were discovering is that like if things weren't effective, there was really no one to hold accountable, right? Because you had, when you have three leaders, you kind of in some ways have no leaders, right? And so they were pushing kind of at the top and actually there was a kind of a long process that kind of whittled it down and said, no, we want one general superintendent.

But for the general church, for the districts and for the local church, they really were pushing kind of this idea where you, whoever the leader is, where they have authority, they can make decisions. But, you know, like if those decisions don't work, then there's accountability, right? Because, you know, we want to empower you as the leader to lead. But if you're a poor leader or leading poorly, we either need to course correct or find a better leader who's going to, you know,

And I think in the church sometimes we almost like that first one because it becomes like a safe bastion where we don't really have to be effective. If you're an effective leader who like feels like, no, I know what we need to do, let's do this. That can be frustrating. But if you just care about keeping your job and not necessarily being effective, you know, that first one can feel real comfy. I think my church probably is more structured like the middle one where, you know,

quite frankly, I have lots and lots and lots of power and authority by our constitution and bylaws that I don't ever even come close to, you know, seizing all of that. So like you said, because I am who I am, we really function like the third, you know, lots of teams, lots of accountability, lots of conversations with difficult things, even though kind of our structure probably gives me the authority of the second.

Jason Allison (28:58)
Right.

Yeah, yes. And yet there are accountability structures in place at your church. They've just never had to use that lever. You know what I mean? And that's part of the process there. And it's a younger church. I mean, relative to, you

And the denomination that you came out of which is Wesleyan, right? mean that that and I'm very very familiar with the Wesleyan structure because the church that I was at merged with a Wesleyan church and so I read the document and all this stuff and I see it functioning in a healthy way and I see you know, so like I I actually appreciate that about the Wesleyan denomination that that accountability structure, but the local lead pastor is the lead

Rob Paterson (29:28)
Yep.

Yeah

Jason Allison (29:52)
pastor, almost the CEO of that organization called whatever that local church is, but they are accountable. You know, it's not just they're out on their own doing their thing. So I do think there's the problem, of course, is how do we build those those accountability structures without.

falling into the bureaucratic model of everything has to get an okay from everyone. And that's just, it's impractical, it can't happen. And I know pastors who operate in a church structure like that, and they're just so frustrated, like you said, because they can't even, they can't get a new office chair because theirs is falling apart without a congregational vote. And it's like, come on, there's gotta be a place where can do that.

Rob Paterson (30:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Allison (30:37)
So a second book that I want to just allude to is called High Impact Church Boards by T.J. Addington. And he talks about the areas of focus for a church board. And again, board, that's a, you know, that's a generic term that depending on the church, you could be referring to trustees, could be referring to a board of directors, you could be referring to the elders, you could be referring to the leadership council. Like there's so many variety of words there, but.

The areas of focus of a healthy church board or leadership team is going to be healthy leaders, especially investing in the pastor and the staff, making sure that they're healthy, intentional leadership. Like, do we know where we're going and do we have a plan? And then empowered leadership structures. So not only do know where we're going, but are we equipping and empowering people to go do that? You know, and not just.

Hey, wait for us. No, no, no. Let's empower them to do that. I like that concept, right? And

Rob Paterson (31:33)
Hmm. Hmm.

Jason Allison (31:37)
all of these are different aspects of a similar type structure, but there's something about having intentionality as a team, not just as one person casting the vision that everyone either gets in line or gets kicked out, right? There's a balance there.

Rob Paterson (31:51)
Yeah, yeah.

and a man I see like both extremes of this in the local church over and over and over again, right? Like people so frustrated people like as in leaders or pastors so frustrated, we gave you this job and you're just not following through. You're not you know, like you're not taking

responsibility and and you know, doing the thing. And yet, as soon as somebody starts actually leading and doing something, then all of a sudden, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, you didn't clear this or you didn't, you know, and it's like, do you not see how that you're like your two kind of frustrations like are, are creating each other, you know, like, you've either got to empower your people and let it be a little bit messy till they can get there.

Or you've got to control everything. And I don't know about you, but like talk about if I was saying like, Hey, what is a biblical structure? Man, empower the people of God to do the work of God in the local church. Like that's in my, from my heart. That's the deal. Like empower, empower, empower, and put up with some of the mess and difficulty you're going to get because of that.

Jason Allison (33:02)
Yeah, well, I mean, that's what Paul said, right? Equip the saints to do the ministry. But that's it. We need a structure that makes that happen. And so that's important. It's interesting, as I've moved now into more of a denominational, regional feel, I'm starting to just interact with some other churches that are overseas or in different cultural settings. And I'm seeing some of this play out in different ways.

Right. And there's the struggle is still how how do I empower? How do I equip within a system so that they don't run amok, you know, or so that they don't do anything because they just don't feel empowered to do it or they, you know, just all the extremes. Right. And it's interesting to see how these different cultures deal with that. Some of them create layers of bureaucracy.

some of them just say, well, they're the leader, they're called by God, so we just do whatever they say, we don't question. And so it's interesting to see those dynamics at play, you know, in this. But when you have a team of healthy leaders leading the way, saying this is not my ministry, it's God's ministry, and I'm going to equip and empower the saints to do that ministry, like Paul, you know, challenged the leaders to do.

Rob Paterson (34:08)
Mm.

Jason Allison (34:20)
all of a sudden ministry becomes very local and very impactful in that community. And so that I think that's really important in that. OK, one last book I'll reference and just give you the quick and we've had this guy on the podcast. So this is not new information, but Mark DeMauze talks about in his book, Coming Revelation in Church Economics, which is interesting that we're talking about church structure and economics, but whatever. But there are divisions within a church structure.

Rob Paterson (34:26)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (34:48)
and he identifies three and he uses the illustration of a football team. A football team is an offense, a defense, and special teams. Which says the church really has three different teams within the team that are operating. The first is the spiritual team.

And this is basically the team that serves the congregation, the spiritual needs of the congregation, evangelism, discipleship, et cetera and so forth. Then you've got the social team. And this is the one serving the community. We talk about community outreach, community impacts, things like that. And this is a nonprofit arm of the church that is not focused

Rob Paterson (35:17)
Mm hmm.

Jason Allison (35:19)
on church stuff, but on impacting the community. Then the third is the finance team, is honestly, he puts it down as a for-profit enterprise.

that is really focused on how do we generate funds to fund the ministry of the church. And he separates those into three separate organizations and then having like one board that all, you know, maybe it's made up of the executives of each of those, you know, arms that oversees the whole ministry, but they may be three separate entities that work together

Rob Paterson (35:49)
Mm.

Jason Allison (35:51)
for one common mission, you know, within a community.

And I thought, you know, that sounds highly complicated, but in the same breath, wow, I love that idea because let's be honest, we function like that. We just call it line items in the budget or ministry departments. And he you he's just kind of pushing it out, saying, let's do it to the extreme and see what happens.

Rob Paterson (36:10)
Yep.

Yeah, and for people who listened to that episode with Pastor Mark,

You know, when I probably functionally again, right, which is where a lot of our current structures come from. It's like, we tried this, it didn't work. We tried this. And then we found something at some point that was effective. And so we're going to roll with this until it's not effective. And then we'll have to, you know, figure something else out. And, and so because, and he has a fairly sizable church, but there's lots of people who are part of that church that, you know, are homeless and like just high, high needs type people.

And so the idea that, you know, the offerings were going to fully fund all of the things that God had placed in his heart, his mind, and the leaders of the church, like it just was not a realistic thing. Right. And so I think anytime people hear something like that, I think they think one of two things either, that sounds a lot more like a worldly business type structure. And that's the church shouldn't do that. Or what we do is we say, no, no, no.

Like the church is supposed to function on the tides and offerings of the people who are part of it. And I just feel like, you know, as attendance trends and engagement trends, and even culturally, you know, as, as things in the world just get way more expensive and you know, like the gap between the haves and the have nots gets wider and either become poor or rich. And there's like, you know, the shrinking middle-class, you know, the more we're going to have to as, you know, practitioners.

in the local church, we're going to have to figure out other ways to fund the dreams and visions God plants within our minds and hearts, because just the people's tithe and offering, unless you have a really small vision, probably is not going to keep getting that done.

Jason Allison (37:58)
Yeah, yes, 100%. And so, I mean, the question now is in America in 2025, moving into 2026 and beyond, is any of this useful? Is any of this helpful? Can a church actually be structured in a way that is both healthy?

and effective without killing the pastor or overworking the saints, know, the volunteers, everything, or functioning without some sugar daddy who's pumping, you know, tens of thousands of dollars into the budget to manage things. Like, can we get a healthy, regular church in all of this? Or is that just a pipe dream?

Rob Paterson (38:44)
No, it's not possible. Let's pray. no, here's the thing. think that I think that 100 % absolutely is possible, but it's it's this is the this is the thing about the local church, right?

Jason Allison (38:46)
Okay.

Rob Paterson (38:56)
And hopefully this isn't discouraging. Hopefully this is actually a hopeful statement for all of us because we all find ourselves in seasons, right, where we're like figuring something out or maybe we just figured something out. But it's like, it seems like a lot of the work of the local church is figuring something out and then figuring it out again. like, you know, my worship pastor is always talking about this. Man, I develop a great group of people.

And then somebody has two or three kids and they can't serve for years because they're, you know, being a parent instead for a while or, or I raised up a great leader and their job transfers them to a different state. And those things, he's like, that might be good for the kingdom, but that's not like super great for my, you know, scheduling people's availability. You know, when I have a team that's only so big. and, and I just like smile at him and I say, yeah.

Like, but that's the work of the church. just continue just to develop people and teams over and over and over and over again. And, you know, some of them stay and some of them get launched out to other places, which is good for the kingdom and the big church. But, you know, that's just the work. And Jason, for me, of all that we talked about, the two words that just like sear into my head, if you want to have a healthy church, are empowerment.

Jason Allison (40:01)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (40:13)
accountability. know, like we need to empower everybody. We need to give the church away to all of God's people. That's huge. And then, you know, we need accountability and we need to offer accountability to those that we are giving authority to.

Jason Allison (40:28)
Yeah, yeah, and that's where the structure of a board or elders or whatever, a plurality of leadership is important.

That's where the accountability comes in. I would add one word to those two that we mentioned through this, and that's intentional. it's really basically, do you know where you're going? Has God laid something on your heart that just you need to make happen in your community? Whether it's the gospel in some very practical, there's a group of people that have never heard about Jesus that need to, or it's a need in the community, or it's a group of people that, whatever.

Rob Paterson (40:44)
Mm.

Jason Allison (41:03)
laying on your heart? Are you listening to it? And then are you intentional about doing that while doing those things you just said, while equipping the saints and being accountable, you know, working within the constructs of leadership? And I would love, number one, I would love to hear stories from our listeners. Hey, tell us what your church structure is, you know, like I just like to hear the variety of structures, because I think almost all of them, you know, I would say are

biblical, right, in some way shape or form, but in the same breath, I just love hearing stories of how things are happening and what's going on. And second of all, I would ask, hey, what are the challenges you're facing as you either try to work within a structure or maybe you're restructuring something? You know, maybe you're in the midst of that. I've worked with a couple of churches that are doing that and there's some great stuff and there's some painful stuff as you do that. So, yeah, I would love to just hear. And if you

Rob Paterson (41:33)
Yeah.

Mm.

Jason Allison (41:57)
would like to hear any more of the study or any of the resources, whatever, please reach out to us. We're happy to provide any of our sources or resources. We're happy to share with you and help in any way, shape, or form. Rob, any last comments before we wrap up for today?

Rob Paterson (42:13)
Yeah, just that we really hope, you know, some of these super duper boring conversations loaded with lists and terms, you know, about, you know, church structure. Man, we hope that for some of you, this either scratches an itch or ticks a box because you're like, man, we've been trying to figure this out and, you know, our structure.

We don't know what to do or what we need, but we need something because it's not working, it's not effective, we're not really empowering people. Man, we hope that this conversation and some of these upcoming conversations can be a real gift for you.

Jason Allison (42:46)
Yeah, yes. So do please reach out, let us know. We're here to help. We're excited for you. Next week, we're looking forward to basically making bookkeeping sexy. It's going to be awesome. So have a great week. We love you. And we're here to support and care for you. So we just wish the best for you and can't wait to talk to you soon. Take care.