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GOVERNANCE & MINISTRY
by Dan Hotchkiss
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Excerpt
When I ask members of a governing board about their job, someone (frequently a lawyer or a banker) often uses an obscure word that speaks rather deeply to the nature of the board’s role: “The board is a fiduciary.” And what might a fiduciary be? Many people connect this word exclusively with money, but the concept is actually much broader. A fiduciary (in Latin, fiduciarius, “trust,” from fides, “faith”) is anyone whose duty is to act in faithfulness to the interest of another, even at cost or peril to himself. A parent, for example, is a fiduciary for his or her children and must care for them, no matter how much sacrifice that might require. The stewards in Jesus’s parables, who managed the master’s property while he was absent, are fiduciaries. The board of a business corporation holds the company’s assets as a fiduciary for the stockholders. Since the stockholders’ main
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