DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE UNITY FACTOR, CHAPTERS 1-3
Chapter 1, “The Missing Ingredient”
What is the cause of your greatest frustrations experienced from serving on a church board or in church leadership?
How has your time on a previous church board or in church leadership hurt or helped your spiritual growth?
Chapter 2, “Removing the Road Blocks”
Do you agree or disagree with the four roadblocks Osborne noted? What would you do to remove these roadblocks?
What are some of your thoughts on steps a board could take to build better relationships between each other? How might this contribute to greater unity?
Chapter 3, “Guarding the Gate”
Write out your thoughts on the pros and cons of a board that sees its primary purpose as representative and one that sees its primary purpose as leadership:
- Representative Board:
- Pros:
- Cons:
- Leadership Board:
- Pros:
- Cons:
What are your thoughts on Larry Osborne’s discussion of “What are we looking for”?
What do you think about Osborne’s statement that “it’simportant to have philosophical and relational qualifications as well as spiritual ones”?
What are your thoughts about the process for selecting board members that was outlined in, “How one church does it”? What do you like and dislike about this approach? How does the process work at Gateway?
What can we learn from these chapters and our discussion that would help us to build healthy and unified boards?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE UNITY FACTOR, CHAPTERS 4-5
Chapter 4, “Developing Three Key Traits in Your Board”
According to Osborne, “One thing every teamneeds is a clearly defined leader. Teamwork depends on it.” What do you think about that statement?
In your opinion should a Church Board be involved in initiating and designingministries for the church or to evaluate, critique andmodify ministries that are designed by one or two individuals?
Discuss the contrast of ; “The more people involved in the decision-making process the better” versus “our board never asks the congregation to debate a number of options”? (Page 56)
Chapter 5, “Clarifying the Pastor’s Role”
What would be your general description of the major roles of the Pastor? Specifically concerning Gateway? How would those roles changebased on the size of the church?
Osborne gives three guidelines that have helped him to “allay the fears of those who aremost suspicious of a strong leader” (p.69). What are your thoughts about those guidelines?
Discuss your thoughts on the paragraph on page 76 that begins with “I’ve found the more successful and experienced we become as leaders, the easier it is to ignore those who disagree.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE UNITY FACTOR, CHAPTERS 6-9
Chapter 6, “Equipping the Saints to Lead”
Why is it important to train leaders within the church?In addition to no lobbying, flexibility and repetition, what other ingredients might contribute to conducting leadership training effectively?
Chapter 7, “The Shepherd Meeting”
Describe Osborne’s concept of a Shepherd Meeting?What are your thoughts on his three goals for a Shepherd Meeting?
Chapter 8 and 9, “What Does the Board Need to Know?”
From the seven paradoxes discussed in these two chapters:
Which one did you find mostparadoxical (running contrary to conventional wisdom and common practice)?
Which one made the most sense to you?
Which one do you believe is most important for us to learn if we aregoing to be a healthier, growing church?
What would you say is a weakness in our church that we might be best off ignoring?
When it comes to “form follows function” in designing our church ministry, what are the essential purposes or functions around which Gateway’s ministries should be designed?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE UNITY FACTOR, CHAPTERS 10-13
Chapter 10, “Change Diplomacy”
What idea did you most agree with in the author’s discussion on his 4-step process
when introducing change? Why?
Can you recall a time when a change was proposed at our church and it failed perhaps
due to a lack of following these strategies for effectively instituting change? What was
the proposed change and how might it have been introduced differently?
What changes in the near future do you see Gateway needing to make and how might we implement the strategies presented in this chapter to avoid opposition as much as
possible?
Chapter 11, “Creating Successful Performance Reviews”
Do you think it would be wise and beneficial for the pastors to open themselves up to
performance reviews on a regular basis? Why or why not?
Chapter 13, “What Game are we playing?”
What are some of the opportunities as a church grows from a Track star to a golfing buddy, to a basketball team, to a football team?
Discuss the principle: As a leadership team grows, day to day decisions need to be pushed out to the frontline while decisions about direction and vision need to be made by an ever narrowing group at the top.
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