Every XP deals with church policy. Some of you love them, others tolerate it, while others avoid it like a plague. But every church needs them. When writing policies for your church, keep in mind these suggestions:
- Keep any and all policies as short as possible. Consider that each word costs 25 cents! Being verbose leads to problems of interpretation and application.
- Live within the policy that you have or change it. Don’t say, “Well, policy says it, but we never do it anymore.” You are in trouble if you say this!
- Allow for exceptions to your policy. While an exception should only occur about one or two times out of one hundred, allow for it.
- Policy should be affirmed or approved by the highest level possible in your organization.
- Put strategic items in your policy and have everything else in “procedures.” Allow staff to modify procedures as needed. For example, don’t say in policy, “write checks on the 30th of the month.” That is a procedure. Policy should say “write checks in a timely fashion each month, as determined by staff.”
- Review your policy every three years.
