Several years ago, I worked with a congregation in a very upscale community, in which one of the leaders was a retired airline executive in his late 70s. In every meeting, he made clear that he was hoping for a document that gave the church a set of Best Practices on all sorts of tasks and subjects. Best Practices is a common business term, where industry consensus has formed around certain protocols which may be different than protocols a generation earlier. Often these practices relate to customer service, to corporate organization or to a changing legal landscape.