Governance Structure

We want Jubilee Church to be governed well and seek to do this as follows:

Elders have oversight of the church focusing on prayer and seeking God.   They set the vision, values and vehicles (that is the practical ways that the vision and values can be ‘done’). Elders are men of good character who pray, guard, guide and govern the church.

The elders recognise that they benefit from inviting trans-local apostolic and other Ephesians 4 ministries to help build the church.  The Elders make themselves accountable to the apostolic covering of Newfrontiers and to this end uphold the Newfrontiers values document.

With a desire to do what is right before the Lord and man, and recognising the need to comply with civic law, the Elders choose to draw alongside them other expertise into a Board of Trustees.  The Board of Trustees are responsible for the Jubilee Church Charitable Company that is the legal entity of the church and functions as set out in its Memorandum and Articles.  This group is responsible for employment, Health and Safety, finance and fundraising along with compliance with charitable and company law.

The Elders want to encourage others into eldership.  To this end they invite certain individuals who they feel have emerging gifts and anointing to form an informal group called ‘Elders +’.   This group joins the Elders to seek God for the church and provide counsel to the Elders, and has potential to emerge into eldership in God’s time either within Jubilee or in a church plant context.

In Acts the apostles (functioning as elders) recognised various ministries within the church needed servant leadership and identified those ‘full of the spirit and wisdom’ who took responsibility, on behalf of the elders for specific areas of ministry.  In a similar way the Jubilee Elders want to encourage, empower and support a variety of leadership roles within the church.  Looking for gifting and a sense of calling/faith, the Elders give responsibility to specific men and woman to lead various ministries.  Ministry leader’s are accountable to the Lead Elder, or someone designated by the Lead Elder, and within appropriate boundaries are empowered to develop teams to support them in their area of responsibility.  To aid decision making, communication and accountability a line-management structure is in place.  

As the church has grown it has been recognised that some elders and ministry leaders need to be released from ‘tent-making’ and be employed by the church as staff.  This group are not seen as ‘clergy’, ‘ministers’ or ‘professional Christians’ (although they will seek to work professionally), they are instead recognised ministry leaders who have been released to serve the church in a designated area.  As this group by definition have more time to offer the church, they are more likely to take on line management responsibility for other areas of ministry.