Is Your Organization Structured for Growth or Control?

This is well said by Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Church. This is first of all good advice for churches, but these principles apply not just to churches, but also any type of organization:

Every church must eventually decide whether it is going to be structured for control or structured for growth. This is one of the most crucial decisions your church will ever face. . . . .

Once a church grows beyond about 500 people, no single person or board can know everything that’s going on in the church. I haven’t known everything that happens at Saddleback for years. I don’t need to know it all!

You might ask, “Then how do you control it?” My answer is: “I don’t. It’s not my job to control the church. It’s my job to lead it.”

There is a very big difference between leading and controlling. Our pastors and staff are responsible to keep the church doctrinally sound and headed in the right direction, but the day-to-day decisions are made by the people actually doing the ministries of the church.