Read Governance and Ministry Rethinking Board Leadership Dan Hotchkiss Anthony B Robinson Books

Product details Paperback 264 pages Publisher Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Second edition (January 14, 2016) Language English ISBN-10 1566997399

Governance and Ministry Rethinking Board Leadership Dan Hotchkiss Anthony B Robinson Books Reviews

• I serve on two boards and always some questions arise regarding the role of the Board. While the responsibilities of the Board and Ministry mutually serve the congregations the job of the Board and Ministry require different strategies for governance. This book provides great insight to help congregations work through issues what may or may not work and why.
• Our church used the first edition 2 years ago to begin defining governance for our congregation. We have since looked at a couple of other texts, and this seems to be the clearest and most comprehensive. We are now using this 2nd edition to continue our work with new board members. This is a difficult topic to fully grasp and to implement, but we are making good progress, thanks to this book.
• This book is excellent. The author clearly has substantial experience that he is sharing, in a clear and thoughtful way. It contains many useful suggestions, and recognizes that the readership is diverse and different solutions are required for different situations. The length is reasonable -- I would have liked it tighter, but only a bit. There is a newer edition that came out slightly after I purchased I knew the new edition was coming, but I decided not to wait.
  
  This is not a "cookbook" for governance. It doesn't lay out recipes to be followed. Rather, it offers a variety of suggestions, some very specific but mostly somewhat general. That makes it more difficult to implement the suggestions than a cookbook, but also makes it more applicable to a wide variety of situations.
• Good book for congregations that are reviewing their governance process. Our UU congregation has used it for several years.
• Excellent. Well organized. We created a governance committee at our Synagogue to redesign our mission and governance structure. This is one of the books that we bought for everyone on the committee. Not everything in the book applies to our congregation because Hotchkiss is writing so that he can be a resource for groups of different sizes and different goals.
• Having read a number of books on church governance, this is the best so far. Captures all the salient points unique to churches and discusses organizational governance in plain language.
• This book is full of inspiration and big-picture concepts about balancing the two sides of congregational leadership named in the title. Great ideas rarely get implemented as they are initially conceived, and compromises can make new initiatives even worse than what came before. I am recommending this book to anyone who will listen, especially church leaders. I am also trying to manage my expectations about how fully these ideas can manifest in a real congregation.
• If you're seeking a means of finding the path for how your church evolves as an organization, this will help. Not a rigid prescription, but a helpful framework. Dan honors the inherent tensions between some aspects of how your church functions -- you don't have to fix everything. Acknowledge, be mindful, try things, adjust! If you have a chance to see him in person, do so!