JEFFERSON CITY – Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) Executive Director John Yeats announced his restructuring plan to the Executive Board April 9-10 in a manner where it became clear that eight team leaders will now have direct access to him.
By doing away with the previous Executive Team, Yeats is flattening out the MBC’s staffing grid and empowering his new Leadership Team. He also is emphasizing concepts like collaboration (better teamwork) and networking (providing resources and services from the local level whenever possible).
Language from the 2011 Organizational Study Group (OSG) Report is being blended into the new executive director’s leadership strategy. OSG concepts like empowering and resourcing more local groups of Missouri Baptists and implementing a new structure that is streamlined and philosophically decentralized were clearly on display in the rollout of the restructuring.
Effective June 1, there will be 58 positions in the MBC job inventory.
“We have a great team,” Yeats said.
Jim Wells, Executive Board member and director of missions for Tri County Baptist Association, was announced as one of the team leaders. Wells is assigned to Strategic Partnerships, an area that intersects with the state’s directors of missions. He has resigned from the board and will be establishing an office at the Baptist Building, as well as an office at his home.
“We’re delighted to have Jim on board,” Yeats said.
One more team leader will be over Communications. Yeats said this person likely will come out of a pool of three “seasoned” candidates whom he has contacted, perhaps as soon as May.
Calling it “not so much a restructuring as it is a change in the narrative,” Yeats presented his plan first to the MBC Administrative Committee and then to the full Executive Board. He said he aims to connect his three key concepts of empowering, collaboration, and networking to the three MBC core values. He also spoke highly of the value of “over-communicating” with each other and with God. In the Baptist Building in particular, this will build trust.
Job titles are changing. All field staffers will now be known by the designation of “Cooperative Program State Missionary,” with their areas of responsibility to follow. This is a return to a more historic type of identification in Southern Baptist life and will prove to be a better representation of who we are, Yeats said. Such a designation will appear on the title line of a state missionary’s job description.
“In the field we aren’t so much interested in titles as much as we are interested in how we can assist our churches as missionary strategists supported by the Cooperative Program,” Yeats said. “We are all about cooperation.”
Under the new narrative, team leaders are working on strategies and setting benchmarks which will be due to Yeats by May 11 and fully operational by June 1. The Leadership Team will meet once a month with the executive director.
“We’re empowering this Leadership Team to set their strategies and to establish their benchmarks so that we can achieve core values that fulfill our mission statement,” Yeats said. “We’re looking at a methodology of more collaboration and strategic thinking.”
More areas like women’s ministry, men’s ministry, worship, and family ministry are going the way of networks. Consultants, not specialists, are being utilized more and more in collaboration with existing MBC personnel. This continues to result in a leaner MBC workforce. Two outgoing staffers were honored in an April 10 reception at the Baptist Building (see related story).
One Executive Board member asked Yeats how this is going to work in Disaster Relief, which in the restructuring will be minus the more direct supervision of a full-time MBC staffer. Yeats used that question as an opportunity to talk about how Disaster Relief, with all of the evangelism/discipleship opportunities that it presents, will now be immersed into the greater MBC team.
“It is important that we be on the cutting edge of helping people, especially in time of crisis, but let’s remember that our reason for doing humanitarian things is because we love the Lord and we want to introduce the gospel,” Yeats said. “So it directly ties Disaster Relief evangelism and discipleship.”
The current MBC has too many silos. In the Yeats model, grain gets mixed.
“You can’t take discipleship and evangelism and rip them apart,” he said. “They’ve got to be totally integrated, and so we’re working on that.”
He also has a vision for mentoring. He encouraged board members to be actively involved in “life-to-life discipleship” by simply bringing a younger person to the quarterly meetings. He cited Southwest Baptist University President C. Pat Taylor, who brought two students with him April 9, as a good example, and he said the MBC would cover overnight hotel costs for this type of initiative.
Concerning future staff departures, Yeats said that the latest round of cuts may have “found the bottom,” indicating that there will be a final settling. In the meantime, staffers will be busy in April and May moving to their various new locations throughout the building. The calendar of moves is scheduled to be completed by June 1.