How To Develop A Board Policy Manual

As I've studied PBG churches, I've noticed two distinct approaches to developing a Board Policy Manual:

Approach #1--Start on day one with a single policy in force, usually something like this:

"The Senior Pastor shall not act in a manner that is unethical, imprudent, illegal or inconsistent with the Constitution, Bylaws and Governing Policies of the congregation."

The Board then develops additional policies as they go.

Approach #2--Start on day one with the above policy in force, along with many, many others that have been pre-drafted for the Board. Usually this includes many pages of specific polices about financial matters, personnel, reports the pastor must provide the Board and more. The Board is free to change any of these policies at any time, of course, but they start on day one with a large number of recommended policies in place.

My congregation decided to start our journey into PBG using approach #2 and in hindsight, it probably had to be that way. The detailed draft policy manual helped our congregation understand better how PBG would work and it gave them confidence that all the bases were adequately covered. If we had tried to go with approach #1, I'm not sure our congregation would have been willing to adopt PBG at all.

However, as we've continued our journey into PBG, I've seen some definite down sides to approach #2:

Down side # 1: It tends to bury the Board in minutia and prevents them from focusing their time on the big-picture leadership that they alone can give the church. The role of the Board tends to become "policy enforcement" instead of "visionary leadership."

Down side # 2: Boards tend to be reluctant to eliminate policies already in place, even when they seem to be unnecessary. ("Let's leave it there--it must be there for a reason!")

Downside #3: It's hard to remember and follow all the policies when there's so many of them!

As I look through our rather lengthy policy manual today, I often wonder how many of these policies would still be in place if we had decided to follow approach #1. My guess is that it would be a lot, lot shorter!

Which approach did your congregation use? What upsides and downsides have you experienced?