The Model

People live and work within relationships. Relationships are the human operating system. It follows that in order to make our lives and our work successful and fulfilling, we need to copy God's own design of relationships, the operating system we were intended to us.

In the Relationship Model™, values, structure and processes form the basis of governance, leadership, management and service delivery. The roles of governance, leadership and management differ, but the principles that underlie them are the same. There is a continuity of design from the source of authority to the point where everyone benefits from the services of the church.

A successful working environment is one in which there is a balance between the fulfillment of the individuals doing the work and the fulfillment of the members and others for whom the work is done. The church itself is like the fulcrum of a seesaw that supports the dynamics of the process of maintaining this delicate balance of fulfillment of members serving and members being served.

Putting emphasis on healthy relationships means investing a great deal of attention on the values, the structures and the processes that make up relationships. We have all observed that healthy and fulfilled men and women are more productive than are unhealthy, dysfunctional people.

Understanding how to build and maintain healthy relationships in the workplace is critical for the successful management of human and financial resources. We will see that the basic design of relationships is disarmingly simple. Yet the application of these values, structures and processes is a lifelong learning experience, and a complex one at that. It is necessary to maintain a focus on the design of relationships in order to succeed at living out the Relationship Model™.

Our values determine our behavior. In order to have an effective management team there must be shared values. When values are shared there is a built-in tendency to be able to work with the same operating system -- within the same structure and with the same processes.

Our Christian faith is the basis of all our values. The creeds describe the faith we share and on which our values are based. There are many levels of values and many values in each level. The list of our values is as long as we want it to be.

In the Relationship Model™ we have identified three core Christian relational values that flow from the most basic of all values - Christian love. Christ Himself is our primary role model for all three of these values. They guided his management of the team of twelve disciples.

Affirmation is the most elemental of all Christian values. It is God's affirmation of us that motivated Him to come into our history in person to redeem us and bring us back to Himself. Affirmation is the basic value that is expressed in love and forgiveness - love when we are working in a positive relationship and forgiveness when we are working in a negative relationship. It encourages calculated risk. It enables mistakes to fuel a learning culture instead of a blame culture. Affirmation is fundamental to healthy and productive relationships. It encourages, builds, enables, empowers and ensures the fulfillment of each individual in the organization.

Involvement: The two most significant examples of involvement in God's relationship with us are His decision to involve us in procreation and in the Great Commission. It is obvious that God could Himself have done a better job creating more human beings or communicating His love, so why did God involve us in His own work? Making us in His own image means giving us a share in what He is and has - ownership and control over things that affect us. Ownership requires involvement.

When the members of one senior management team were asked to express in one sentence the meaning of relational management, sixteen of eighteen who answered spoke of involvement. They referred to "team decisions", "decision making involving all personnel", "taking others with you", "consultative environment", "active participation", "not making unilateral decisions", "joint ownership", "team consensus", "sharing responsibility", and "making things work by using all the gifts of a team". More than any other single value, the team thought of involvement as the one most closely associated with relational management!

Servant Leadership is the value that takes involvement to the next important step. It is the desire to support the staff and volunteers in the church by delegating authority and responsibility. It is servant leadership in action. The empowering church rejoices in the personal development of its staff and volunteers and in their success. It produces a culture that seeks to lift up the success of others and to enable them to reach their full potential. Servant leadership places as much authority and responsibility at the point of service delivery as people can handle. Servant leadership includes programs of personal development and a learning culture throughout the church.

Limitations are the element of a relationship that define the boundaries of authority and thus the limits of our freedom in fulfilling our responsibility. Like the Ten Commandments that limit our moral authority, limitations are normally expressed in negative terms. Defining limitations of authority eliminates the need for returning to the source of authority repeatedly for permission to act.

Responsibility, the second primary component of a relationship, is the broad description of the purpose for a position within the church. It is usually contained in the terms of reference of a group or the job description of an individual. Responsibility is further defined by the expectations of the responsibility.

Expectations are the adjusting component of responsibility. In a relational church, expectations of an individual's responsibility are negotiated, not imposed, in order to achieve a balance with the authorization and resources that are available. They are usually quantified in the form of strategic or tactical goals. The minimum quality of expectations and the quality to which we aspire may be expressed in standards.

Accountability, the third primary component, is the measuring component of a relationship. Accountability is a neutral concept. The first role of accountability is to confirm that the authority and responsibility delegated to a person or a group are in balance with one another. The second role is to confirm that expectations of responsibility were achieved within the limitations of authority. The annual review is the primary opportunity for accountability. Often given a negative connotation, accountability in a relationship-oriented church gives an opportunity for recognition and learning as well as correction.

• Communication
• Decision-making 
• Conflict Resolution 
• Planning 
• Delegating
• Monitoring and Measuring 

These processes take place in governance, leadership, management and service delivery. The church culture is healthy and productive when the manner in which these and other processes are handled are consistent at every level.