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GOVERNANCE & MINISTRY
by Dan Hotchkiss
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Great Committees
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Excerpt
by Dan Hotchkiss In an old cartoon by Charles Addams, a man and his son walk through a park and look at statues, each of which depicts a little clutch of people. “There are no great men, my boy,” the father says, “only great committees.” (The New Yorker, May 5, 1975) We laugh. A great committee—how absurd! For quite a while, the venerable committee has been out of style. Books on how to jazz up congregations—from Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Church to my own Governance and Ministry—scorn the committee as a time-wasting fossil of the pre-postmodern era. And yet some committees accomplish a great deal—managing existing programs, generating and evaluating new ideas, and making it possible for their parent body—the governing board or congregation—to make decisions more wisely. What makes it possible for a committee to be good, or even great? Most standing committees in churches and synagogues are really not
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