One of the responsibilities of a board is to approve policies. Policies are the next level of documents after bylaws that guide decision-making in the congregation. Bylaws need to be changed by a congregational vote. Policies need to be changed by a board vote.

So what are policies and why do we have them? I was a little confused by them the first time I encountered the need for policies, and the advice back then was just go through the board minutes and see whenever there was made a decision, and then turn that into a policy. And a policy manual kind of collected all those decisions together into a policy manual. Well actually, that's a kind of a way of capturing board decisions. 
But I want to offer some more nuanced advice and suggestions about policies and how to think about them, how to create them, and how to let people know about them -- communicate about them. So one way I think about policies is capturing your best thinking today, to help guide decision making tomorrow. So at their best policies have had a lot of thought put into them. You've kind of thought through all of the different possibilities: What you want the policy to refer to, what kind of decisions you want the policy to guide. 
In another video I'll talk about some helpful practices about how to create good, helpful policies that have a lot of input. But for this video we're just going to talk about the policies in general. 
One thing to understand about policies is they don't necessarily have to be created by the board. I like to think of policies as a conversation, not an edict. They're an opportunity for not just the board to put their best thinking, but whatever teams or committees or staff people that are impacted by the policy -- to get their input, to make sure that the policy has considered all sorts of different considerations, taken into account different scenarios, that sort of thing. Again, it's really important to get your stakeholders input.
There's common wisdom out there that says: if you have a current issue going on, that's not a good time to create a policy -- and that is true. However you do need to be able to think through -- your best thinking at the moment -- at the time of whatever the issue is. It's still good to write a policy, so that you can capture the thinking that you had at that moment in time. But if a policy has been created during this kind of moment, it's really important to circle back around after the crisis is over -- after things have sort of settled -- and revisit that policy, so that you can put the same kind of care and consideration into it that you would have if you had come up with that policy before the crisis happened.
One example of this is safety-related policies, where you come up against a safety issue, and you are trying to fix a certain thing with that policy. And you're really hyper-focused on whatever that topic is, so the policy may not be as broad as you need it to be.
As I said earlier a policy is a conversation, it's not an edict. It's also in relationship. So it's really important that we understand that we don't communicate through policy. Policy just captures what we're communicating in other ways. The policy has the details in it, but it's really important to find different ways to communicate policy, especially if it's policy that impacts the work of other teams in the congregation, or even individuals in the congregation.
Sometimes congregational leaders play “gotcha” with policies. It's like, “Oh our policy says you can't do that!” Well, you're slapping someone's hand after the fact rather than letting them know ahead of the fact, of what the rules or what the parameters are. One way of doing this is making user-friendly communications based on the policy -- that point back to the policy -- that but that give the lay person an “at a glance” view of what the policy encompasses.
So for example for a membership policy -- who's a member, who's a friend, who's a friend that maybe is a pledging friend who maybe can't vote but you want to give them some other benefits of membership -- you might offer a table that shows: a member has these responsibilities and these privileges, a pledging friend has these responsibilities and these privileges, a friend has these responsibilities and these privileges, everyone else is a visitor, or you know. Anyway, something “at a glance” where people can look at it and refer to it quickly without having to read through a whole bunch of text.
You might also have some sort of infographic around safety issues, so if there's a policy around doors being locked, make sure you put signs on all the doors so that the last person out the door knows that they're supposed to lock the door. You know, help people to follow the policies. Again don't play gotcha. You really want to have people be successful in following your policies.
It's important to also have your policies readily available, preferably on your website, so that people can go and look up a policy. Or if they're looking at one of those infographics, they'll have a link so they can -- if they need to -- read the policy in detail.  They can go and look at the policy in more detail -- that's super helpful.
Again, policies are there to guide -- guide people to make decisions in the congregation. You want people to be successful in following your policies, and you want them to feel included when the policies are being crafted.