A radical idea for BUGB?

This week I’m at Baptist Union Council which has, so far,
been a positive experience. As I listen to the various reports and discussions
I find myself wondering whether we need to create a new role for someone to
help the Union move things on. A kind of development officer who would help the
Union to move forward with vision and direction,
facilitating conversations and taking pro-active initiative to help process
agreed pieces of work.  

The Union is not simply one large church with a church
staff, leadership team and members meeting but is a complex web of
relationships between churches, ministers, associations and others including
colleges so the person will need both intuition and the interpersonal skills to
work with Council, Trustee board, Executive Committees, Team Leaders, Senior
Management Team and others.  

This person would not simply be someone who services
committees but someone who is released to encourage, enthuse and enable the
whole Union. Clearly this person would need to be
familiar with the history of reports to Council and other pieces of work that
have been done, and have a good grasp of the theological and detail issues that
inform our common life. They would need to understand the key strategic
questions that face the BUGB: the central resource, associations, churches and
ministers.

Currently we have a General Secretary, who spends large
amounts of time being the face of the BUGB to churches and the wider society,
and a General Manager who focuses on managing the Union’s
resource centre in Didcot. But perhaps we would make more expeditious progress
with someone who had the time to develop Baptist life, building consensus and
helping us grapple with detail as well as the big picture who wasn't directly responsible to the Trustees but an extention of the work of council.