July 28, 2025
by Greg Henson, Kairos University President and CEO
Governance, when done well, enables a community to faithfully live into its mission. It provides structures for organizing our shared life together, facilitates trust among community members, invites broad participation, and creates the necessary space for meaningful discernment. At its best, governance is not about control or power, but about collaboration and stewardship. Yet, in my experience working with theological schools and ministries around the world, governance rarely operates so smoothly. Instead, what frequently emerges is a subtle yet persistent competition that quietly erodes unity.
While shared governance is touted as a lofty goal in the world of higher education, I would suggest it has become the source of several issues. Many of these stem from a common theme noted by Dan Aleshire while he was serving as the Executive Director of the Association of Theological Schools. In a presentation about governance, he remarked, “Schools often think about governance as control and who has it rather than mission fulfillment.” Consequently, governance within institutions tends to become a competition for power, resources, influence, time, energy, and attention.
The issue is not governance itself. The trouble arises when governance disconnects from mission and shifts toward managing power. When this occurs, individuals and groups within institutions tend to hold tightly to areas of perceived power. Time, resources, influence, and attention start to feel like limited commodities to be defended, controlled, or competed over.
As a result, efforts meant to distribute responsibility and create greater unity instead produce silos, encouraging people to narrow their focus to a particular aspect of the work and champion that one cause. While this initially seems like an effective way to boost productivity, engagement, and efficiency, history tells a different story. In reality, this approach often fosters distrust, dis-integration, silos, and battles over finances, control, and decision-making. This silo mentality ultimately causes our shared calling to unravel.
Over time, fragmentation deeply affects institutional culture. It breeds mistrust among community members and generates confusion about decision-making processes and motivations. What began as a vision for ensuring multiple viewpoints are engaged in governance quickly devolves into defensive postures, with different groups viewing one another with skepticism and caution. The resulting mistrust leads to significant fatigue and even burnout within the community. Energy that could otherwise be directed toward mission-critical work instead goes into navigating internal tensions and misunderstandings.
In my experience, this quiet, internal competition among governance structures is one of the most significant yet overlooked barriers to innovation. Institutions frequently possess genuine theological motivation, adequate resources, and sincere intentions to innovate faithfully. Yet when governance systems are shaped primarily by internal competition rather than collaborative partnership, every new idea becomes a source of further tension rather than hopeful progress. Even modest efforts toward change can feel overwhelming and exhausting before any real action begins.
Acknowledging the presence and consequences of competitive governance structures is a crucial first step. This acknowledgment is not about assigning blame but rather about honestly naming the reality we face. When we recognize how competitive governance shapes our institutions, we can begin imagining more trust-based and collaborative alternatives. From that place of honesty, grounded in a commitment to mission fulfillment rather than control, we can start taking deliberate, faithful steps toward a governance structure that truly serves the mission of theological education. In many cases, however, the lack of trust, fragmentation and internal competition tends to foster conflicting views of reality.
And that is where we will focus our attention next week!