Four Easy Ways to Prepare and Equip Your Nominating Committee for Success

The “nominating committee” is often one of the most underutilized committees in churches. This is both in expectations, historical understanding of their ministry focus, and the amount of time the committee typically invests. Let’s take a look at some easy ways to prepare and equip this committee for deeper ministry success.

Scope & Duration of Work - How many months out of a typical year is your Committee on Nominations and Leadership Development active? Are the members of this committee active for two or three months or year-round? Are the expectations and commitment only for the fall season of nominating work? Or is it a culture where the expectations and commitment of these committee members lasts throughout the entire year? For true “success” as a vital committee and for the purpose in which they were intended to serve, the Committee on Nominations and Leadership Development is a year-round role and responsibility.

Shift from Specialists to Disciples - Historically, the nominations process has focused on selecting people who possess expertise in certain areas such as finances, facilities, and human resources.  While this often provided the skill set, it did not always bring the needed mature disciples to the leadership table. Because of this practice of nominating experts, the church’s purpose in fulfilling the Great Commission is often not the focus. Having holy conversations with potential leaders helps them discern their current ministry call (i.e., where they are in their spiritual formation journey, why they feel called into leadership in this season, spiritual practices, etc.). During this holy conversation, it is also a great time to cover the job description, role expectations, and the current leadership covenant of the board/council. Sharing this information ensures the potential leader has clarity about the role and allows more discerning conversations with the nominating committee members. 

Distinction of Elected and Selected - There are polity requirements for certain people to be elected by the church/charge conference. These are the administrative leaders who mostly serve for three years. However, many churches have practices of electing people into ministry positions for three years that are not required by polity (i.e., worship committee, children’s ministry committee). The result of this well-intentioned practice is disengagement. Having every ministry position as an elected position created too many elected positions, unnecessary term requirements, and people unwilling to serve to just fill a slot on a required form without seeing any real ministry impact. Committee members are elected (i.e., nominations, council/board), but teams are selected (by pastor and ministry team leaders) and serve as needed. For example, rather than having a three-year standing committee for Children’s Ministry, a person can step onto a Vacation Bible School team for just a couple of months.

Leadership Development - It is the role and responsibility of the Committee on Nominations and Leadership Development to create and implement a leadership development pathway. Leadership development includes both elected and selected leadership. What is your church’s leadership development process? How are people being invited into leadership development? How is your leadership development pathway preparing and equipping leaders of all ages and stages of life? If you are seeking a resource to get you started, check out Launching Leaders.

Using these four tips can set your leaders up for success.  Empowering and expanding the scope and responsibility of this committee can be a game-changer for your church. Gone are the days of begging people to fill slots on a nomination form. Coming will be the days once again where the church is raising up leaders and sending them to lead in the community rather than expecting the community to raise up leaders who will serve the church.