How to lead
A Church Board
Church Leader Tool: How to Lead an Effective Meeting
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this church leader tool is how to lead
an effective meeting a skill that all
leaders will eventually need and I'm
especially glad to offer this one
because it's by request and I love to
offer tools that folks will actually
need and use so I hope that this will be
a blessing
I should highlight that there's a
handout to go along with this a one-page
printout that you can take into meetings
and use as a resource and I'm gonna
break how to lead an effective meeting
into three parts first the purpose of an
effective meeting second that dynamics
of an effective meeting and third the
detail but before I jump in let's just
offer a little bit of scriptural support
in the form of the golden rule you could
take Matthew 7:12 and say lead every
meeting as you would want meetings you
attend to be led we've all sat through
bad meetings and we've sat through good
ones so think about how you can lead
your meetings as effectively as possible
so let's jump into the purpose of an
effective meeting first it should
advance the mission of the church you
should be able to connect your meeting
with accomplishing the mission of your
particular congregation second there
should be good communication you're
gathered together to get feedback to get
group wisdom to brainstorm I've always
said that all of us are smarter than any
of us so it's to use that communication
forum third it's to plan the ministry of
your church so that things are actually
accomplished that further again your
mission and forth it should be faith
building the people who are part of a
meeting part of a team should feel like
that grows their faith advances their
sense of being used by God so some basic
purposes next let's jump into some of
the dynamics of an effective meeting and
most of these are on a continuum we
float back and forth and really leaving
a good
meeting is kind of an art it's an art we
can learn but it does take some
experience and some awareness to the
dynamics that are going on so one of
those is that you bring your own
personal leadership to a meeting as well
as leading the flow and the
effectiveness of all of those gathered
at the meeting that's a dynamic that's a
play a second one is the social task
oriented people often grow friendships
and grow relationships in a meeting and
also get the task done and you want to
do both not totally social and not
totally task a fourth dynamic is you
want good decisions to be made by the
group as well as being efficient one way
to think about this might be how can you
get the best from the group in the
shortest period of time that way you're
not wasting people's time but also not
rushing through it and not getting the
best from the people who are on the team
yet a fourth dynamic is teamwork that is
how people work together and also the
individual gifts that people bring there
should be a sense of camaraderie and
working together and yet you also when
someone leaves a meeting should feel
like it wasn't good that you were there
that you brought something of yourself
to that meeting another dynamic is to
challenge to go in new places to to
challenge each other with new ideas and
new perspectives and also to be able to
leave a group with some harmony with the
feeling of we came together we may have
been challenged and and win in some new
directions but ultimately I appreciate
the people I was at the meeting with
it's especially important that a group
leave with a common commitment you need
to keep discussing it until everybody
can leave the meeting and say I will
stand behind what the group decided and
then a sixth dynamic is
very important and that's to involve all
equally to make sure that folks that
share too much that maybe dominate the
conversation are a little quieter and
folks who don't as often share are
encouraged to speak out a leader can
easily say to somebody who dominates the
conversation thank you
we've heard from you now how about from
some others and it's also appropriate to
someone who's more quiet to say now
we've heard from some who are more
outspoken how about some of you who have
not yet shared but to lead a meeting is
to get everybody to bring their best to
that meeting and then seventh is you
want to generate multiple ideas when
you're dealing with a problem or
something you want to work on to
brainstorm sometimes we tend to latch on
to the first idea and go down that
direction and that might be the right
answer but it's always better to
generate multiple ideas and to maybe
attack a problem in two or three ways or
to at least draw out the very best
answers before we move on so those are
some dynamics that you want to be aware
of now let's move on to some details of
an effective meeting G these are just
some of the specifics that will help
create an effective meeting first
meeting invitations we live in a busy
world and it would be nice to think that
everybody has it on their calendar and
they're excited about your meeting but
sending out an email or a phone call or
a contact to make sure people are coming
is always effective and consider the
size of your group usually smaller is a
little bit better say four to seven is
ideal when you start to get to 10 or 12
people it's hard to have everyone to
share and if there are that many
stakeholders maybe break it into two
separate tasks and two separate meetings
in order to get the best from everybody
and then second and probably the most
important thing for leaving an effective
meeting is to have a written agenda and
send it out
in advance this does multiple things
first it lets you be well-prepared to
think through what the meeting will
accomplish and that is communicated to
those who receive the agenda lets them
start thinking about the topics that
will be part of the meeting you might
even want to send along a links or
documents that are to be discussed at a
time again to give people time to think
about it you want to make sure that you
include the start and end time and
usually never more than two hours or at
least without a significant break and
you might even in your agenda or for
your personal use script out the time so
that you well use it for the most
important topics speaking of which you
can include the more important topics
toward the beginning maybe not the first
conversation but while people's energy
is still high move important topics to
the beginning of course if it's a church
meeting you want to make sure that you
begin with prayer and I'm a big fan of
ending with the Lord's Prayer and
holding hands communicates the harmony
of the group and most agendas also have
a review of previous decisions and new
directions in which you plan to go and
then I'll also introduce the idea of a
consent agenda which for a busy team
like a church council is often helpful
there is a separate church leader tool
on training for church councils but I'll
tell you that the general idea of a
consent agenda is to have people review
all the documents that are a part of the
meeting and in one vote they can consent
to approve those documents the goal of
that type of meeting is so that only
certain items are brought out for
discussion and so rather than reviewing
items that don't need discussion you
spend time on the three or four items
that need the most care that's called a
consent agenda
so again make sure you have that
advanced written
agenda some other details start on time
that helps communicate to people the
importance and if people are late then
they're gonna miss out so start on time
also use the agenda work your way
through it
let that be your script for what you're
going to accomplish some folks even
bring a clock or make sure that they
have one within their eyesight so that
they can keep on the target of what they
have planned fifth somebody should take
minutes yourself or someone else that
way there is a record of what's been
decided you usually keep track of who's
there
so that if people are late that are kind
of called out in that form and people
know who made what decisions I'm also a
big fan of minutes that block out maybe
even at the top of the minutes decisions
that were made and the person who is
responsible and a deadline I used to
attend a meeting where the minutes
always had that right at the top so you
could quickly look at it and know what
tasks came from that meeting and then of
course minutes should be distributed
especially if they're useful like that
out to the team including of course
people who are not able to be there so
that they're clued in on what was
decided six just a couple of ideas one
of them is the parking lot we've all
been at meetings where there's a good
idea that comes up but does not further
that particular discussion and many
groups call that a parking lot they'll
even take a sheet of paper and write it
on there and say let's just hold that
for another conversation we don't want
to lose the idea let's just put it over
in the parking lot another thing that's
often helpful is to form a task force
there's a separate idea that maybe is
not a particular need of that group but
a good idea form a separate task force
to go and do the research or the work on
a separate idea eight another idea is to
leave some space in your meeting for
conversation brainstorming question and
answers just some free
to think while you have good leaders
together and tackle new ideas number
nine of course you want to limit
distractions especially with technology
I know a number of meetings where folks
just ask please do not use your devices
during this meeting so that everybody's
attention is fully there ringing phones
conversations out in other rooms closed
doors just try and limit your
distractions so you can Welk focus on
what you're doing a lot of folks find a
conference call helpful I've used them
numerous times and they often are much
faster and more structured conversations
because there aren't the little side
conversations and it's great if the
distances are long for folks if there's
somebody away and you want to have them
be part of a meeting there are a number
of free conference call services that
you can use or when there's poor weather
just consider that a conference call
might be a helpful thing to have I'm
also a fan of having collaborative tools
that let teams work together such as
Google Drive which stores documents
online and that way all of a team can
have access to them as an example of
that when I have a team that is
searching for a new staff person we use
Google Drive to make sure that the
documents that we've created a job
description and interview questions and
stuff are available online and that way
everybody can work together another
helpful tool for some groups is to have
a yearly calendar sit down at one of
your meetings and work out things that
you do on a yearly basis and that way
you you can use that to guide the
patterns of that group gathering for
churches an obvious one is worship we
follow the same pattern so a planning
calendar that you can refer back to is
often very helpful that way I've also
been in meetings that ended with an
evaluation just to quick how is this
meeting for everybody that checks in on
some of those Dyne
dynamics that were mentioned and in fact
sometimes it even causes us to review
decisions and to make the best choices
in those so that's a quick easy thing to
do at the end of a meeting of course you
want to decide when your next meeting is
if that's not on a regular basis and you
want to end on time respect people's
time by starting on time and also ending
on time and then last you want to have a
way to follow up on decisions that were
made at the meeting to make sure that
the tasks you wanted to accomplish truly
are accomplished well I hope this has
been helpful church leader tool in how
to lead an effective meeting again
there's a handout which would give you
all of this information in a quick form
and as always if this has been helpful
forward it on to some other folks to
help them so they know how to lead an
effective meeting take care and God
bless
