M2 Management · Lesson 2 of 4

Lesson 2 — Roles, Responsibilities, and Decision Rights

Define who recommends, decides, executes, approves, and is informed for the church's most common recurring decisions.

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Nine M curriculum version 1.0 · Nine M methodology, content, exercises and deliverables by Pastor Lee Jenkins.

Where this lesson sits

Curriculum version 1.0 · Pastor Lee Review

Module purpose: Build a healthy governance and operating structure with clear authority, accountable leadership, effective meetings, documented policies, and dependable execution.

Official outcome: Church Management and Accountability Plan

This lesson produces: Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards

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Learn

Participant study reading — approximately 90 minutes of learning and shared work.

Learning objective: Define who recommends, decides, executes, approves, and is informed for the church's most common recurring decisions.

Recommended participants: Pastor, board or elder body, senior staff, key ministry leaders

Estimated teaching time: 90 minutes

Success indicators

• Leaders can explain the difference between recommending, deciding, executing, approving, and being informed on a decision
• A Decision Rights Matrix has been drafted covering at least ten recurring church decisions
• At least three key roles have a first-draft scorecard describing their responsibilities and boundaries
• The team can identify one decision that was previously contested and now has a clear owner

Materials and evidence you will use

• Governance and Authority Map from lesson one
• Current staff and volunteer role descriptions, if any exist
• List of recurring annual and monthly church decisions
• All five decision rights named for each of the ten decisions
• At least one previously contested decision resolved with documented ownership

What you should be able to produce

• Leaders can explain the difference between recommending, deciding, executing, approving, and being informed on a decision
• A Decision Rights Matrix has been drafted covering at least ten recurring church decisions
• At least three key roles have a first-draft scorecard describing their responsibilities and boundaries
• The team can identify one decision that was previously contested and now has a clear owner

Foundational ministry principle

Acts 6:1-7

1 And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. 2 Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. 3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. 4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. 5 And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: 6 Whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. 7 And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.

King James Version (KJV) · Public domain

Draft material proposed for Pastor Lee Jenkins' review: the apostles recognize they cannot personally oversee both preaching and daily food distribution, so the congregation selects seven qualified people and assigns them clear responsibility for that operational work.

Proposed framing for facilitator use: this passage models exactly what this lesson asks leadership to do — separate spiritual leadership from operational execution and assign named people clear decision rights over specific responsibilities.

Understand the concept

Your work in this lesson focuses on this outcome: Define who recommends, decides, executes, approves, and is informed for the church's most common recurring decisions.

A decision only moves smoothly through an organization when everyone involved knows their specific right in that decision, from recommending it to simply being informed once it is made.

Why it matters for your church

Ministries frequently duplicate purchases or announcements when decision rights are undocumented.

Volunteers burn out faster when they hold decision rights informally without any recognized authority or support.

New staff and board members ramp up much faster when scorecards exist for their role.

Examine the evidence

Use Governance and Authority Map from lesson one, Current staff and volunteer role descriptions, if any exist, and List of recurring annual and monthly church decisions to compare your church's present practice with its stated intentions. Look for documented patterns, missing information, and differences between what people assume and what the evidence supports.

Your completed work should be supported by All five decision rights named for each of the ten decisions, and At least one previously contested decision resolved with documented ownership. Record uncertainty honestly so your team knows what still needs to be verified.

Prepare for the shared exercise

Assign clear, named ownership across the five decision rights for ten recurring church decisions and document two or three pivotal role scorecards. The Building the Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards produces the Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards, which contributes to the module's principal deliverable.

Before working with your team, consider this reflection: Think of a decision our church made in the last year that caused friction. Looking at today's matrix, who should have held the decide right, and what would have been different?

Key terms

Decision rights: The specific authority to recommend, decide, execute, approve, or be informed about a given decision.
Role scorecard: A short document naming a role's core responsibilities, authority boundaries, and success measures.
Approval threshold: The point, often a dollar amount, above which a decision requires sign-off from a higher authority.

What this means for a church

• Ministries frequently duplicate purchases or announcements when decision rights are undocumented
• Volunteers burn out faster when they hold decision rights informally without any recognized authority or support
• New staff and board members ramp up much faster when scorecards exist for their role

Common failure patterns

• Creating a matrix once and never updating it as roles or ministries change
• Assigning 'decide' rights to a whole committee, which usually means no one actually decides
• Failing to write down approval thresholds, leaving spending decisions to habit rather than policy

Ministry case

The Curriculum That Was Chosen Twice

One congregation's children's ministry director spent weeks researching and ordering a new curriculum, only to discover the discipleship pastor had separately approved a different curriculum for the same age group the same month. Both had genuinely believed they held the authority to decide.

Once the church built its Decision Rights Matrix, it became clear that curriculum decisions had never been formally assigned to either role; both had been informally 'deciding' for years without knowing the other was doing the same. Assigning the decide right explicitly to the children's ministry director, with the discipleship pastor holding an informed right, resolved the recurring conflict permanently.

Lesson takeaway

A decision only moves smoothly through an organization when everyone involved knows their specific right in that decision, from recommending it to simply being informed once it is made.

Discuss

Guided discussion for the leadership table.

Let's talk about which of these ten decisions felt easiest to assign, which felt hardest, and what that tells us about where our church's authority has been the most unclear.

Which of the ten decisions in our matrix has caused the most past confusion or conflict?
Is there a role in our church currently holding a decide right with no formal recognition of that authority?
What would change for a key volunteer if they had a written scorecard for their role?
Which approval threshold, if any, is missing or unclear in our current spending decisions?

Discussion notes

Practice

Applied exercise — produces the Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards.

Building the Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards

Assign clear, named ownership across the five decision rights for ten recurring church decisions and document two or three pivotal role scorecards.

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Participants: Pastor, board or elder body, senior staff, key ministry leaders

Artifact produced: Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards

Required inputs

• Governance and Authority Map from lesson one
• List of ten recurring church decisions
• Names and titles of current staff and key volunteers

Instructions

List ten recurring church decisions down the left side of the worksheet. Complete it online
For each decision, name who currently recommends it.
For each decision, name who currently decides it, ensuring only one name or body holds this right.
For each decision, name who executes it, who must approve it if applicable, and who needs to be informed.
Flag any decision where two people believe they hold the same right, and resolve it together in discussion.
Select two or three pivotal roles and complete a short scorecard for each covering responsibilities, boundaries, and success measures.
Record the finished matrix and scorecards for inclusion in the Church Management and Accountability Plan.

Complete it online

Decision Rights Matrix (Ten Recurring Decisions)

Church name: ______________________
Date completed: ______________________
Facilitator: ______________________

Decision	Recommends	Decides	Executes	Approves	Informed

Your response — Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards

Worked example

A fully completed sample using a fictional church. This is illustrative teaching material, not any church's actual data.

Northgate Community Church (illustrative example — not actual church data)

Building on lesson one's map, Northgate's leadership tackled ten recurring decisions that had repeatedly caused confusion over the past year.

Decision	Recommends	Decides	Executes	Approves	Informed
Annual budget approval	Executive Pastor	Elder Board	Executive Pastor and Finance Team	Elder Board	All ministry leaders
Part-time staff hiring	Ministry Director	Lead Pastor	Office Administrator	Elder Board (for salary over $30,000)	Elder Board, affected ministry team
Sermon series direction	Lead Pastor	Lead Pastor	Lead Pastor and Worship Director	None required	Staff and volunteer teams
Facility use requests	Office Administrator	Office Administrator	Office Administrator	Lead Pastor (for outside groups)	Facilities volunteer team
Vendor selection over $2,000	Office Administrator	Executive Pastor	Office Administrator	Elder Board Treasurer	Finance Team

How this leadership team reasoned

• The team discovered that sermon series direction had never actually been contested, but writing it down still mattered because a new worship director would otherwise assume shared decision rights.
• Vendor selection over $2,000 had previously been decided informally by whoever answered the vendor's call first, which the matrix now corrects with a clear approve step.
• Facility use requests were the most contentious item, since two volunteers had both been approving outside group requests independently for over a year.

Decisions recorded

• The Office Administrator is now the sole decider for facility use requests, with the Lead Pastor's approval required only for outside groups.
• A $2,000 approval threshold was formally set for vendor selection, requiring Treasurer sign-off above that amount.
• Role scorecards will be written for the Office Administrator and Executive Pastor within the next two weeks.

Completed artifact extract — Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards

Decision Rights Matrix Extract (Northgate Community Church, illustrative): For facility use requests, the Office Administrator recommends, decides, and executes; the Lead Pastor's approval is required only when the requesting group is not part of the church; the facilities volunteer team is informed once approved. For vendor selection over $2,000, the Office Administrator recommends and executes, the Executive Pastor decides, and the Elder Board Treasurer must approve before any payment is issued.

Illustrative exercise score: 17 of 20. The matrix is complete across all ten decisions with specific named roles, draws directly on a real documented conflict as evidence, stays aligned to clarifying decision rights, and produces three concrete near-term actions with implied owners and timing.

Score

Transparent 20-point exercise rubric: four criteria rated 0 to 5 with observable anchors.

Criterion	0 — not evident	3 — acceptable	5 — exemplary	Sample
Completeness (0–5)	Fewer than five decisions are addressed and most decision-right columns are blank.	At least seven decisions are addressed but some rows are missing one or more decision rights.	All ten decisions are addressed with all five decision rights filled in for each.	5
Use of evidence (0–5)	Decisions and rights are assigned without reference to any real past conflict or practice.	Some rows reference real past practice but most are assigned generically.	Multiple rows are directly informed by documented past conflicts or confirmed current practice.	4
Alignment to the module purpose (0–5)	The matrix does not resolve any previously contested or unclear decision.	The matrix resolves some ambiguity but leaves at least one major recurring conflict unaddressed.	The matrix directly resolves the church's most pressing decision-right conflicts with clear single ownership.	4
Actionability and ownership (0–5)	No concrete next steps follow from the matrix.	Next steps are identified but lack named owners or a timeframe.	Next steps have named owners and a specific timeframe attached.	4
Worked sample total				17 / 20

Completeness: Northgate completed all ten rows with every decision right specified, including approval thresholds where relevant.
Use of evidence: The facility use and vendor rows were both directly shaped by real recent conflicts, though a few other rows relied on general assumption.
Alignment to the module purpose: The facility use conflict, the most contentious item identified, was fully resolved with clear single ownership.
Actionability and ownership: A two-week timeframe was set for scorecards, though the vendor threshold rollout communication plan was not yet fully scheduled.

Lesson-exercise scores (20 points each) demonstrate learning and artifact quality. They do not automatically overwrite the official Nine M module assessment, which remains a separate 100-point rating of five module dimensions.

Submit evidence

What must be submitted for this lesson to count as complete.

Submit

• Completed Decision Rights Matrix for ten decisions
• At least two completed role scorecards

Attach this evidence

All five decision rights named for each of the ten decisions
At least one previously contested decision resolved with documented ownership

File upload is not implemented in this prototype. Ticking a box records that the church can produce the document; it does not store a file.

Contribute to official outcome

How this lesson builds the Church Management and Accountability Plan.

Artifact produced: Decision Rights Matrix and Role Scorecards

Feeds the organization chart and role and decision-rights matrix sections of the Church Management and Accountability Plan.

Open the module deliverable assembly

Participant reflection and notes

Think of a decision our church made in the last year that caused friction. Looking at today's matrix, who should have held the decide right, and what would have been different?

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