Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

When I was just starting out in ministry, I used to think church meetings were the worst possible kind of meeting, and I generally placed them into three categories:

1. The 'why did we meet?' meeting- occasionally, we'd have a meeting simply because it was on the schedule or calendar and that it's what we did on a certain day of the month. These types of meetings, however, were few and far between.


2. The 'marathon' meeting- these meetings would drag on for hours, sometimes because there was that much to talk about and other times because there was that much certain people wanted to talk about. My first years at Hillcrest I can remember council meetings going until 1 or 2 in the morning (seriously!) and church business meetings going until 10 PM (and we started at 6!).


3. The 'all in' meeting- again, these were rare, but occasionally there were 'all in' meetings where you knew big stakes things were going down. A group didn't like a program change, someone or some group didn't like the staff, someone or some group didn't like the church's direction, etc. These meetings were often loud, intense, and and filled with both shouts and tears.

For years, church meetings were my only frame of reference for how 'real world' meetings went. And bouncing back and forth between marathon meetings and all in meetings, I came to believe that church meetings were the worst, especially since the folks attending them follow Jesus.

However, sveral years down the road and much more experience with meetings outside of church, I think church meetings get a bad name. Yes, there is still no place for screaming or shouting or tearing people down, but at least there's some emotion from time to time, some sense that people care about what is happening. I've been to several different types of meetings now, most of them centered on stuff that my kids are in: meetings for coaches, meetings for schools, meetings for clubs, meetings for fundraisers, etc and I've really come to believe that meetings, regardless of whether it's for a church, a school, or a club, run better with a few simple tips:

• have a simple agenda- let me know where the meeting is going, and if possible, let me know ahead of time


• cover the important stuff first- if a meeting is going to last an hour or so, doesn't it make sense to cover the important stuff right away, when everyone is at full attention?


• less reading information and more Q and A- one of the mistakes I see with informative meetings is that we give you a bunch of information, read it to you, and then ask for questions. This makes meetings go longer than they need to and insults people's intelligence. Why not provide the information ahead of time, allow people to read it, and use the meeting time to answer questions?


• end meetings with action points- meeting minutes are great, but if they don't end with a 'what am I to do now' piece, the meeting isn't as effective as it could be. Even at my kid's scout meeting last night, we ended with a take home piece, something we needed to do to be ready for the next week.

As someone who occasionally runs meetings from time to time, this stuff is just as pertinent to me as well.