Meetings that Fly (rather than die)

Dear Pastors

I noted last week that meetings are work and meetings are important……….but not all meetings are equally important.

This week I want to share four ideas that can make your meetings ‘fly’, meaning they are maximally effective.

1. Determine CLEARLY the purpose of the meeting. Personally, I am not an advocate for mixing purposes. Are you meeting to pray, to enjoy fellowship, to team build, to train or to transact business? If it is to transact business then allow 10 minutes or so for preliminaries and then get on with the business.
   • Key Point. Mixing your reasons to meet quickly lands you in a cul-de-sac that could waste a lot of time.
2. Is this meeting really necessary? Related question. What on this agenda doesn’t in fact need a discussion (or another discussion), it just needs to get done. It simply needs the right person given a delegation to get on with it and report back. In my experience in church work far to much stuff is discussed when in fact the right person with the right skill set could get it done yesterday.
   • Key Point. Committee’s rarely get things done, individuals do.
3. Ensure you have a competent Chairperson. I can’t stress this enough. If you have a competent chairperson you will by definition have the following:
   • A carefully thought through Agenda
   • All necessary papers delivered to Board/Committee members on time.
   • The Chair guides the conversation and keeps everyone on track.
   • The Chair has a knack to summarise the discussion(s) and guide the meeting to make a decision.
   • Allows for some ‘breathing room’ after an intense ‘session’.
   • Ensures that all ‘Follow Up’ actually happens.
   • Key Point. Chairing a meeting requires so much more than simply reading an agenda. It requires skilful work before, during and after a meeting.
4. Self-Evaluation. I would recommend that after every third meeting you spend 15minutes as a Board honestly evaluating the quality of your meetings. Only what is evaluated can be improved. It will also avoid informal meetings in the car park or around the water cooler where the evaluation will otherwise take place.

Of course whole books are written on ‘Meeting Effectiveness’, but hopefully this blog will serve as a useful refresher to what in most churches and Christian organisations take up a lot of time.

Blessings

Alan