# Simplified Accountable Structure (the single-board model)

A simplified accountable structure folds the four administrative committees —
church council, trustees, finance, and staff-parish relations — into a single
leadership board that does all four jobs. It is allowed by ¶247.2, which lets a
charge conference modify the organizational plan in consultation with and upon the
approval of the district superintendent, so long as the basic responsibilities of
¶243 are still met. It is not a small-church workaround; congregations of every
size use it.

A note on the sources, because it affects how you should read everything you find
on this: nearly all the available material on simplified structure was produced by
people recommending it — conference vitality offices, consultants, and the
trainings built on their books. That material is genuinely useful and this page
draws on it heavily, but it is advocacy, and it is not balanced by an equivalent
literature making the other case. This page tries to describe the model accurately
rather than to recommend for or against it. Whether it is right for your church is
a judgment your congregation and your district superintendent get to make.

## What it merges, and what it never merges

**What merges.** The four administrative bodies stop meeting separately. One board
holds the council's oversight, the trustees' property responsibilities, the finance
committee's fiduciary work, and the SPRC's personnel work. Once the charge
conference approves, those committees cease to exist as separate bodies on the date
the charge conference sets — the responsibilities and authority move to the new
board. Ministry teams are untouched; nurture, outreach, and witness work continues
exactly as before.

**What never merges.** This is the part churches get wrong, and every one of these
survives the simplification:

- **Nominations stays separate, and the pastor chairs it.** The committee on
  nominations and leadership development is composed of not more than nine people
  in addition to the pastor and lay leader, and **the pastor is its chairperson**
  (¶258.1c). This is structural, not stylistic: a board cannot nominate itself.
- **SPRC membership restrictions still bind.** No staff member, and no immediate
  family member of a pastor or staff member, may serve where SPRC functions are
  exercised; only one person per household (¶258.2a). In practice this means staff
  and staff family cannot serve on a board that carries the SPRC function at all.
- **Personnel conversations stay confidential and stay in closed session** (¶258.2),
  and the pastor's presence rules still apply. What changes is the meeting, not the
  rules.
- **Trustee qualifications still bind.** Between three and nine trustees, of legal
  age, at least two-thirds professing members of The United Methodist Church, with
  the one-third laywomen / one-third laymen recommendation intact (¶2525). **The
  pastor is not a voting trustee** unless separately elected. A board larger than
  nine cannot have every member serve as a trustee.
- **A trustee chair must be elected annually** — the board organizes within thirty
  days of the year beginning and elects officers (¶2530.1–.2). Corporate resolutions
  and property instruments need a properly authorized signer, and "the board"
  is not a name a bank will accept.
- **Financial separation of duties still binds.** The treasurer and financial
  secretary positions should not be combined or held by immediate family members,
  and no immediate family member of appointed clergy may serve as treasurer,
  finance chair, or financial secretary (¶258.4). Written financial policies are
  reviewed annually and an annual audit is provided for (¶258.4c–d).
- **The charge conference is still above the board** (¶247.1), and property
  decisions still answer to it (¶2533.1).
- **The annual property duties still happen** — insurance compared against the GCFA
  schedule and reported (¶2533.2), and the annual parsonage review (¶2533.4).

The Discipline itself anticipates this: ¶258.1 repeatedly says the nominations
committee works with "the church council, **or alternative structure**." You are
not doing something exotic.

## Four versions, side by side

There is no single right shape. These are the four the Arkansas workbook lays out,
and they are genuinely different trades.

**A. Whole board.** One board of roughly nine to fifteen, seated in three classes
of three-year terms, serving *in toto* as council, trustees, finance, and SPRC. No
sub-designations. *Strength:* the cleanest accountability — everyone owns every
decision. *Cost:* every member must be eligible for every function, which the
trustee cap of nine and the SPRC restrictions can make hard.

**C. Dual election — separate SPRC.** The board carries council, trustees, and
finance; a distinct SPRC continues and reports to the board, with three or four
people (often including the board chair and lay leader) serving on both.
*Strength:* stronger checks and balances, and personnel confidentiality has an
obvious home. *Cost:* shared membership blurs who decides what, and the pastor can
end up receiving mixed messages about priorities.

**D. Specialists.** One board, but two or three members are designated as finance,
trustee, or personnel specialists who handle day-to-day matters between meetings
inside limits the board sets. *Strength:* members know who to call when the furnace
dies, and it is the smallest change from what your church already does.
*Cost:* specialists drift back into being three-person committees with less
oversight than the committees they replaced.

One pastor's take: if your reason for simplifying is that you cannot fill the
committee slots, version D will quietly rebuild the thing you were trying to leave —
three small committees with less oversight than the four you started with. Beyond
that, this is a judgment call about your church's culture, and your DS will have
watched more of these than you have. Ask which ones held up in your district after
five years, and which ones quietly reverted.

## Officer slate

A workable board of nine to fifteen, with everyone in one of three classes:

- **Board chair** — may also be the lay leader.
- **Trustee chair** — elected annually from the board's membership (¶2530.2); the
  workbook recommends the board chair also serve as trustee chair. Must be over 18
  and, per ¶2530.2, a professing member of the local church.
- **Secretary** — keeps minutes that will be read in ten years by someone trying to
  reconstruct a decision.
- **Treasurer** and **financial secretary** — two people, not one, and not related
  (¶258.4).
- **Lay leader** and **lay member(s) to annual conference** — serve by virtue of
  office; the three-year class rotation does not bind them.
- Remaining members at large.

Who cannot be on it: paid staff, and immediate family of the pastor or staff, where
the board carries the SPRC function (¶258.2a). Two members of the same household
cannot both serve. Youth may serve on the board but cannot serve as trustees.

## Meeting rhythm

One monthly meeting replaces four. The training materials generally build that
meeting on a **LOVE + LEARN + LEAD** shape — open in worship and community, spend
time learning, then govern — with a consent calendar handling routine reports.
Whether that produces better governance or mainly moves the reporting off the
agenda is contested, and you will not find much written by anyone who thinks the
latter.

A workable year:

- **January** — Organize within thirty days (¶2530.1): elect trustee chair and
  officers, confirm classes, adopt or renew the board covenant, review guiding
  principles.
- **Monthly** — a consent calendar for reports (circulated in advance, approved in
  one motion) so the meeting itself is spent on the one or two decisions that
  matter.
- **Quarterly** — the personnel conversation, in closed session, with the same
  confidentiality SPRC has always had (¶258.2e).
- **Spring** — parsonage review with the pastor (¶2533.4); budget work begins.
- **Fall** — insurance comparison against the GCFA schedule and the report to
  charge conference (¶2533.2); written financial policies reviewed (¶258.4c);
  audit arranged (¶258.4d); nominations committee — which the pastor chairs, and
  which is not this board — brings the slate.
- **Charge conference** — the board reports as council, trustees, finance, and
  SPRC, because it is all four.

## Adopting it: the process

1. **Talk to your district superintendent first.** ¶247.2 requires the DS's
   approval, so a congregation that discerns for six months and then asks is doing
   it backwards. Great Plains, for instance, has the DS decide up front whether the
   church is even in a position to explore it — a church mid-conflict, mid-capital
   campaign, or mid-appointment-change is usually told to wait.
2. **Lead with why, and listen.** Long-time United Methodists may experience the
   loss of separately elected committees as a power grab or a loss of Methodist
   identity. That reaction is not irrational — checks and balances really are being
   restructured — and it has to be answered in public, more than once.
3. **Discern the version** (A, C, or D above) and map it. If it can't be sketched
   on a napkin, it's too complex.
4. **Write to the DS** requesting a ¶247.2 change: your purpose, which committees
   are affected, how those functions will be carried out and by whom, your model,
   your nominations plan, and your timeline.
5. **Nominations** — the pastor-chaired committee (¶258.1c) builds a slate for the
   new structure.
6. **Charge conference**, called with proper notice, votes on the structure, the
   slate, and a founding set of guiding principles the board may adapt.
7. **First board meeting** — adopt a covenant, elect the trustee chair, orient
   everyone on the guiding principles.

## A sample charge conference motion

> **Motion:** That [Church Name], pursuant to ¶247.2 of *The Book of Discipline*
> and with the consultation and approval of the District Superintendent, adopt a
> simplified accountable leadership structure effective [date], as follows:
>
> 1. A single Leadership Board of [nine] members, elected in three classes to
>    three-year terms, shall serve as the church council (¶252), the board of
>    trustees (¶¶2525–2533), the committee on finance (¶258.4), and the committee
>    on staff-parish relations (¶258.2), exercising the full responsibilities of
>    each.
> 2. The lay leader and the lay member(s) to annual conference shall serve as
>    members of the Board by virtue of their office.
> 3. The committee on nominations and leadership development shall continue as a
>    separate committee chaired by the pastor (¶258.1c).
> 4. The Board shall annually elect from its membership a chairperson of trustees,
>    a secretary, and such other officers as required (¶2530), and the church shall
>    continue to elect a treasurer and a financial secretary, which offices shall
>    not be combined (¶258.4).
> 5. No paid staff member, and no immediate family member of the pastor or of any
>    staff member, shall serve on the Board (¶258.2a).
> 6. Effective [date], the existing church council, board of trustees, committee on
>    finance, and committee on staff-parish relations shall cease to exist as
>    separate bodies, and their responsibilities and authority shall rest in the
>    Leadership Board. Ministry teams shall continue.
> 7. The Board shall operate under the guiding principles adopted by this charge
>    conference, which the Board is authorized to adapt as ministry needs require.

Take this to your DS and your conference chancellor before you take it to a vote —
conferences differ on what they want the resolution to say, and it is far easier to
adjust wording beforehand than to re-vote.

## Who this fits, and who it doesn't

**Churches that report it working** are generally ones where the same fifteen
people already sat on all four committees and the meetings had become a ritual of
reporting to each other; where the sense of mission was clear enough that a
permission-giving board didn't simply drift; and where the pastor was willing to be
genuinely accountable to a board rather than managed by four of them. Note the
selection problem in that sentence: churches that tried it and reverted don't
usually write the article.

**The standing objection**, which deserves stating in its own words rather than as
a hurdle to be cleared: the four committees are a separation of powers, and folding
them into one board concentrates authority over hiring, paying, housing, and
evaluating the same people into a single group. Proponents answer that clear
accountability and guiding principles substitute for structural separation. That is
an argument, not a settled question, and a congregation is entitled to find it
unpersuasive.

**It tends not to fit** — at least not yet — churches in active conflict, churches
mid-capital-campaign, churches in the middle of an appointment change, and churches
whose honest reason is "we can't fill the slots." That last one is worth sitting
with: a structure change will not create leaders, and a board of nine disengaged
people governs worse than four committees of disengaged people, because there is
nowhere left for a dissenting voice to sit.

It also asks more of multi-point charges, where one church's simplification has to
respect the other's structure and ministry.

See also [the four-committee structure](/models/four-committee-structure/) for how
the default works when it is actually being run — worth reading before you leave
it, since some churches discover they never had the structure they meant to
replace. And the [SPRC](/committees/sprc/) and
[trustees](/committees/trustees/) guides — under a simplified structure you still
have to do everything those pages describe.

## Elsewhere

Every item below was produced by people who recommend this model. That doesn't make
them wrong — they are the most detailed and practical resources available, and this
page relies on them — but read them as advocacy, and notice that no comparably
resourced case for the other side exists.

- **[*Simplified Accountable Structure: Unleash Your Congregation's Leadership
  Potential* (PDF)](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/gbod-assets/generic/Simple-accountable-leadership-ARUMC-workbook-online.pdf)**
  — the Arkansas Conference Center for Vitality's 29-page planning workbook: ten
  steps, four structure models, a sample agenda, and guiding principles. The most
  useful single document on the topic, and unusually honest about the cons of each
  version. Free.
- **[Single Board Model — Great Plains Conference](https://www.greatplainsumc.org/single-board-model)**
  — a conference's actual approved process, with a month-by-month timeline and the
  criteria a DS uses to decide whether a church should explore it now. Note their
  page quotes ¶247.2 as "church conference"; the 2020/2024 text reads "charge
  conference," which changes who votes — go by your current Discipline.
- **[Simple Governance Resource Guide — Mississippi Conference](https://www.mississippi-umc.org/simplegovernance)**
  — a curated list of articles and case studies from churches that have made the
  change, including congregations well past small-church size.
- **[Simplified Structure — Blake Bradford](http://www.blakebradford.org/simplified-structure/)**
  — resources from one of the authors behind much of this material; useful for the
  leadership-behavior side, which is the part structure changes don't fix.
- **Kay Kotan, *Mission Possible: Structuring Your Church for Missional
  Effectiveness*** — the short book most conference trainings are built on. If you
  want to understand why your DS talks about this the way they do, it's this.
- **Your annual conference's own guidance.** Several conferences have a defined
  process and required resolution wording. Yours may be one of them; ask your
  district office before drafting anything.
- **[The four-committee structure](/models/four-committee-structure/)** — the
  default this replaces, described on its own terms rather than as a foil.

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**This is a starting point, not legal advice.** Employment law varies by state, and your annual conference may have policies that go beyond the Discipline. Before you rely on anything here for a hiring, firing, or compensation decision, run it past your conference office or chancellor.

Paragraph references are to the 2020/2024 Book of Discipline. This document paraphrases; for the binding text, see the Discipline itself.

From Itineracy Commons — https://itineracy.app/commons/models/simplified-structure/
Licensed CC BY 4.0. Adapt it freely; keep the attribution.
Last updated 2026-07-22.