Ep 20 | Behind the Scenes: Decision Making and Transparency at Georgetown Baptist Church

Okay , and I'm gonna start saying this more on every episode , just because we don't announce it a whole lot , but just know that this podcast comes out every Sunday at 12 , so at the end of service , on your way to lunch , if Jake preaches long , if , or if you stay in fellowship , which is pretty common or if you leave , like me , at 12 , 30 every single

week after then , this podcast is ready for you to listen to out on your way to lunch or just throughout the rest of your week .

And then we just throw that , throw that in the podcast machine and you're just so amazed I'd like to think that's what happens okay , I do got a side story that has nothing to do with this podcast so our youth is doing the strand discipleship or some , some youth and we're doing .

So you had a church of about a hundred people that grew out , grew that building and now they meet in what we call the family life center and the church has gone through many ebbs and flows through that time . So if you were a part of that entire process you've probably seen the church change in how decisions were made , how the church was organized .

And you know the message of the gospel never changes . The purpose of the church never changes . But when groups become larger or smaller you adjust the way that you're organized under the Lordship of Christ to try to reach as many people as you can . But you know a lot of people don't really get excited about some of the nuts and bolts of the church .

I mean , some people do , but you know decisions and how things are put together . You know I've never seen people just you know make loud cheers about reading the bylaws of a church .

But it's kind of like whenever you go get insurance , you don't really care about insurance until you need it and you sometimes may not care about your bylaws until you need your bylaws and you don't know how good your insurance is until you need it yeah , or how bad and worthless it is yeah that could be another side topic if you wanted to go on that , but

you know so our church just recently rewrote the bylaws for Georgetown . The last document was in the mid 90s and you know the world has changed since then . The church has changed since then and one of the biggest reasons that we rewrote the bylaws was because the the body and a lot of our leaders felt like the church just needed to reassess organization .

Yeah , and a church has to be organized . Sometimes it'll feel disorganized and God is organizing things perfectly , but I'm talking about just being able to come together as a people , make good , informed decisions with full transparency . People have different church backgrounds and they've seen poorly run organizations and you know and masterfully run organizations .

But the reality is is we are just trying to be faithful to the Lord and it's actually biblical for a church to be organized . We don't just fly by the seat of our pants . And so how are big decisions made at Georgetown ?

Well , the big , big , big , big decisions , which usually involves spending a whole bunch of money or changing the direction of the church or or voting on a new employee . You know the church , you know , voted in a new pastor About a year and a half ago we just voted in a new worship pastor .

We are a congregationally governed church , so when we needed to look for a worship pastor , we formed a committee that the church voted on . The committee did the work to locate who they felt is God's man for the job . We announced to the church that a vote would happen .

Our worship pastor candidate , ryan Cain , led worship and the entire church voted on whether to install him as our worship pastor , which , praise be to the Lord , it was a unanimous decision . Well , how did we do our bylaws ? It was actually very similar .

We sat aside a group of people that prayer and petitions through the skill set that these individuals have the way they serve in our church , and we named this group . The church voted on them .

They spent months working on rewriting our bylaws and then we came to the church two weeks before that vote and we announced we have a new set of bylaws and we put a copy of the bylaws there for anybody to grab for a two week period . And then we had a Sunday night business meeting and the church voted on whether or not to do that .

Now , the business meeting was wonderful , wonderful . We had a group of people come before we voted , people were given the ability to ask any question that they wanted to ask . We fielded those questions , we did our best to answer the questions and then the church voted . It's very important that a church have transparency , absolutely .

Why is it important , maverick , that we , as ministers , and our deacon body , our committee leaders , communicate to the body on a regular basis ?

And so if we're being just open and upfront and honest , like in this case with the bylaws , like , hey , this is what the committee that you voted on , this is what we wrote , here it is , I think it'd be kind of weird if we just like , hey , they're just here , it is during their in governance . No , we were able to let our church read it .

We got calls , we got text of like some simple stuff , like typos and grammar , like , and so we got there was a few of those , and so , like , it was just like man , like we , like our church , love to even do that , so it sounds and flows better .

And then , of course , the questions on like hey , this is written , I would like more clarity on that and so , like , there's a lot of questions that we can ask . And so , like , there's this , there's this dialogue , there's this conversation of man , how's this church being ran ?

And the reason why it needs to be in the light , because everybody me , you , church member , joe , who just became a member you know like it affects all of us and we all want to be organized , because if we are disorganized or we are not Transparent , well then that is an obstacle that gets in the way of us doing our main mission , which is Preaching the

gospel , making disciples and spreading it to all the nations . You know , yes , so like if we are organized , we're transparent , then it's a smooth flow . With that , we can focus on the main thing .

I hope people would say hold up , that is not the purpose of the local church . But the reality is , if our vision is set forth and we as ministers and pastors and leaders are working towards that vision , then you can make the case that the bureaucratic decisions are essential . Oh yeah because it helps us Better tell the gospel . Mm-hmm , you know we don't .

We don't bring everything to the church for a vote . No , and it's not because we don't trust the church , it's because there is ministry happening on a daily basis , and you know , one of the things that the church voted on last year was we voted to add a missions committee . Yeah well , the church was already doing missions before we added a missions committee .

Why did we need to add a missions committee , maverick ?

We found a ministry that we've been supporting For years and we didn't really know what it was . And then we read , then we researched it and we basically found a new Love for this , for this mission , for this ministry , because like , oh my goodness , we're so glad we want to support this and we want to tell the whole church about this ministry .

You know , like , even though we've already been supporting it , but now we get to be transparent , like , hey , this is what we're supporting , here's what it does , here's who leads it . So now we can be in constant prayer for them , all that stuff . And then it's also man , we're doing missions constantly .

It , like that committee , can help us guide and and and Learn how to utilize and and do missions more organized . Like you know , like I'll bring up last Christmas . Last Christmas was absolutely fantastic .

We did three missions in one month , which is great , and it's fantastic that missions committee now will be able to organize that more and so that we can even provide more missions , more money , more support , more prayer for all the missions that we serve .

More people can decide if they want to go on a mission trip , and it increases the capacity of what our church is doing . So you know , whatever personality you are , I'm always thankful for people that want to help us organize what we're doing and why we're doing it .

And an organization has not always been a strong suit for me , but the Lord made it very clear to me that if I don't grow in this area , then my ministry can't grow . So I just sucked it up and figured it out and now I kind of the opposite . I feel like I'm kind of a curmudgeon against this organization .

But at the end of the day , we're trying our best to communicate , whether it's updating our website , putting out an email once a week to our members that gives announcements and just a little bit of information , having a podcast .

The whole goal is that our general membership of the church would not be scratching their head trying to figure out what is Georgetown Baptist all about . But we're not perfect . We'll do it wrong , we'll miss something here and there .

It blows my mind how every year you know I'll go oh man , it's already that time of year and we got this mission coming up and I forgot to talk about it .

There's always the human element of it , but if we direct ourselves well and I went back to say this is a biblical thing you know , in Acts chapter 15 , there were a lot of Jewish people that had given their heart to Jesus , but the gospel is not something that can be harnessed amongst one people group , and what began to happen was there were Gentile believers

that were beginning to receive Christ , but there was a big struggle . The Gentile believers didn't have the historical background that the Jews did , and you had Jewish believers going . How do we reconcile this ? We have these uncircumcised Gentiles receiving Christ , but they don't have the background that we have .

Well , acts chapter 15 says in verse 1 , some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers Unless you were circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses , you cannot be saved .

After Paul and Barnabas had engaged them in serious argument and debate , paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about this issue . When they had been sent on their way by the church , they passed through Phoenicia , samaria , describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles .

They brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters . When they arrived at Jerusalem , they were welcomed by the church , the apostles and the elders , and they reported all that God had done for them .

But some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said it is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses . Well , if you keep reading , they say that the Jerusalem Council came together and began to organize how non-Jews could receive salvation .

They took off all of the extra struggles against these people and they clarified the gospel . I think that if we read that in the book of Acts , us trying to have a personnel committee , a finance committee , missions committee .

we're asking people to help us write our bylaws , having people that come together to make sure that our children's ministry is run well , our youth ministry , our women's ministry , men's ministry the word that comes to my mind and it's been the word of this podcast Clarity , that's it .

Not only do we know that they have smarts or knowledge about this , but we know that they're godly people , yes , and we know that they're going to pray about it . We know that they're going to seek God and all of this .

And , like to me , I get almost excited and it's because I'm a church nerd when we like vote on these committees , cause it's like the church basically saying like hey , we see your ministry , we see your love for Christ and we see that God is gifting what God has gifted you . We put our trust in you . And then , like , what the bylaws ?

Cause it's just most recent . Then they brought the bylaws back like , hey , you trusted us , this is what we wrote , and now we're trusting you to give us , like feedback on this . And so , yeah , it's provide clarity , it's provide organization .

So , not only that , georgetown can be the church where , yeah , we love Jesus , but we can be the church where , like , we have a mission and all of our people know the mission of Georgetown Baptist Church .

And all perspectives are welcomed and encouraged . We do have to find a way to get things done , but it's okay for people to have questions and just to give a little bit of an insider . You know we have a building team that has been tasked for several years to help us figure out how to build a new building .

I have not been a part of that team for their whole time because I wasn't here , but can I tell you that we have a group of people that , yes , they are skilled in the work of putting together a plan to build a building .

But it's an incredibly spiritual experience being on this committee because the amount of prayer that's been in these meetings people opening up the word of God the big verse that we've been focusing on is Proverbs three , five and six , that we don't want to lean on our own understanding . We want to acknowledge God and He'll direct our paths .

That's not going to happen if we don't organize these kind of groups .

And you're a better ambassador than Maverick and I , because people see us and they just see the ministers that work at the church . But when you are at basketball practice and you have the ability to share what's going on at our church , it really , really speaks to the community . So , thank you all so much .

For those of you that listen to this and our members of our church that are just trying their best to do what God's calling them to do . It takes all of us .

Love you , guys and we will see you soon . Bye , guys .