Missionary Renegade: Leading Ideas: 7 Strategies for Mastering Meetings - The Good Neighbor Church for Wednesday, 24 May 2017 - Lewis Center for Church Leadership of The Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C., United States

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Leading Ideas: 7 Strategies for Mastering Meetings - The Good Neighbor Church for Wednesday, 24 May 2017 - Lewis Center for Church Leadership of The Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C., United States

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Wednesday, May 24, 2017

From the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary

Photo of church members meeting around a boardroom table

7 Strategies for Mastering Meetings by Ann A. Michel

Ann Michel of the Lewis Center staff says church meetings should be holy ground where the Spirit can act because the people of God are gathered in common purpose. She offers seven simple strategies for making meetings more positive and productive.

Most church leaders see meetings as an inevitable but regrettable part of church life. But if we really believe Christ’s promise that “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am with you,” shouldn’t our meetings be holy ground — places where the Holy Spirit can act because the people of God have gathered in common purpose? Seven simple strategies can help your church meetings be productive venues for advancing God’s mission.

1. Know your purpose

Every time you call a group together you should be clear about the objective of the gathering. The corollary of this is: don’t meet just to meet. If a group is meeting largely because the members enjoy getting together, then it has become a social group. There’s nothing wrong with a social group, if that’s the group’s purpose. But if the social group is supposed to be the worship team, it’s hard to explain to someone new why so much time is spent visiting. The essential foundation of an effective meeting is clarity about what the meeting needs to accomplish.

Perhaps the most critical meeting management skill is helping a group come to a decision. Listen carefully to the drift of conversation and be attentive to threads of agreement.

2. Create a game plan

Once you are clear about the purpose of your meeting, a well-crafted agenda is the next critical element. But a productive meeting requires more than just having an agenda. Marching a group through an opening prayer, minutes, old business, and new business usually won’t provide enough structure to support your group’s work. You need a good agenda. And a good agenda is a game plan for how the meeting will accomplish its purpose. This requires forethought and advance preparation. What information is relevant to the discussion? What key questions will help the group think through the relevant issues? Who needs to be at the table? It often means you need to consult in advance with key members of the group or other groups to shape your agenda.

3. Maximize participation

Meetings are dreadfully boring for attendees when they’re placed in a passive role — when they’re forced to endure endless reports or listen and nod as someone presents a pre-formulated plan for their approval. The consequence of dull meetings is more than just a few yawns or nodding heads. Meeting participants lulled into boredom are unlikely to surface all the issues and concerns that need to be brought to the table. The consequence can be poor decisions. So, build your agenda around some well-framed discussion questions. And allow enough time for open discussion before moving too quickly to solutions. As conversation takes shape, be deliberate about drawing less active people into the discussion. And in larger groups, it’s generally helpful to break into smaller conversation clusters for portions of the meeting.

4. Keep reasonable time limits

Regular meetings are best kept to 90 minutes or two hours at the most. If you’re chairing the meeting, it’s your responsibility to monitor the use of time and keep things moving or find acceptable ways of wrapping things up. Be realistic about the length of time it will take for a group to handle the business at hand. It’s better to spread the work over several meetings than frustrate a group with an overly ambitious meeting plan. To keep information sharing from crowding out active discussion, ask members to provide written updates in advance of the meeting or spread reports over several different meetings. Something as simple as leaving reports until the end of the meetings can keep them from gobbling up too much time.

5. Allow space for the Spirit to work

Often, the only difference between our church meetings and meetings in secular settings is a brief opening or closing prayer, but what goes on between these spiritual bookends is unaffected. What if instead we frame issues with relevant Bible study? Or stop in the midst of a group’s deliberations to ask, “Where do you see the Spirit’s presence in this discussion?” Or take time to pray in the face of disagreement or uncertainty? If group leaders do not model this type of spiritual inquiry, others will easily fall back on secular decision-making norms.

6. Drive decisions

Perhaps the most critical meeting management skill is helping a group come to a decision. Listen carefully to the drift of conversation and be attentive to threads of agreement. It can be helpful at key junctures simply to name where you hear commonalities. Even if your group doesn’t generally make decisions by vote, a quick vote can be an expeditious way of moving forward if a consensus is apparent. If you’re not sure whether a decision has emerged, a quick, nonbinding straw poll can reveal where things stand. I’m generally surprised to find there is more consensus than I think, perhaps because debate tends to center around objections, even if they are not held by the majority present. Good leaders drive commitment by extracting all opinions, ideas, and views, and then having the courage to move ahead.

7. Monitor follow through

You can have the best meeting ever, but if nothing comes of it after people leave the room, they will still end up feeling that the meeting was a waste of their time. So never leave a meeting room without clarifying exactly what was decided. A simple method of enabling follow through is to put together a written summary of the meeting — not formal minutes — but a quick summary of agreed-upon actions that can keep everyone accountable to their commitments.

Synergy: A Leadership Guide for Church Staff and Volunteers

This article is adapted from Synergy: A Leadership Guide for Church Staff and Key Leaders by Ann A. Michel. Copyright © 2017 Abingdon Press. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Synergy is available at Cokesbury and Amazon.
Related Resources:

Working with Committees and Boards by Alan Rudnick
Death by Meeting, reviewed by John Winn
A Consensus Model for Conducting an Annual Meeting by Heber Brown

Do you know your immediate neighbors?

“Do you happen to be acquainted with who lives in the houses on either side of the church, or the three houses right across the street? Your neighbors, so to speak?” The room was silent. “How about the four houses along your parking lot in back? Have you met any of them? What are the names of their children, their pets? Do they have any needs the church could care for, or any way the church could be good neighbors to them and build friendships with them? Do they even go to church anywhere?” More silence.
After further contemplation, the pastor and leadership realized it wasn’t necessary to drive miles to the outskirts of the city and invest significant funds to reach the churchless. They had a mission field immediately around their existing church building that was completely untapped. Perhaps launching a satellite campus in the upscale suburbs seemed trendier and more glamorous, but simply walking across the street or parking lot to meet and get acquainted with the church’s neighbors was intimidating yet free — with eternal reward potential.

A Good Neighbor team

A “Good Neighbors” team was formed, composed mostly of the church’s newest members. The team’s single purpose was to get acquainted with every person or family whose home was within sight of the church building, a two-block square. The Good Neighbors team would gather to prayer walk the “Neighbors Square” as they nicknamed it, introducing themselves to the residents who happened to be outside. They identified themselves as being from the church and simply asked, “How can our church be a good neighbor to you?” They also asked, “Do you have anything we could pray about for you?”
Their goal was to make friends. Sometimes they took plates of homemade cookies to share. They learned the names of children, of cats and dogs. They heard about griefs, challenges, and joys. They occasionally helped change a flat tire. One on the Good Neighbor team went to a court hearing in spiritual support of a church neighbor. Others on the Good Neighbor team decided to start a quarterly neighborhood birthday party in the church fellowship hall, and invited the church’s immediate neighbors and their families for one afternoon of celebrating every neighbor’s birthday at the same time. Many others in the congregation attended and brought cards; some even brought small gifts. A few neighbors from houses down the street — not on the Good Neighbors team’s route – heard about the party and unexpectedly showed up as well. They were immediately added.
Eventually several of the church’s neighborhood residents were spotted sitting in worship with their new friends from the Good Neighbors team. Some of the children attended Vacation Bible School. And at the fall all-church vision dinner, the pastor had two members of the Good Neighbors team share stories of their experiences. The congregational response was so enthusiastic that his church eventually developed several additional Good Neighbors teams to befriend an entire six-block square area around itself. The teams each took spiritual responsibility to help the church become a loving, relational neighbor to those living in its immediate mission field. A few months ago, the pastor baptized a mother and her four children whose home he can see from the church’s office window, and they have all become deeply involved in church life. A weekly Good Neighbors Bible study has started on three of the blocks, led by individuals serving on those teams.
Who are your church’s neighbors, literally?

This article is adapted from Sue Nilson Kibbey’s book Flood Gates: Holy Momentum for a Fearless Church (Abingdon Press, 2016). Used by permission. The book is available at Cokesbury and Amazon.

The Power of Laity in Connecting to the Community by Randy Scrivener
Your Community is Your Congregation by Joe Daniels
Connect with Your Neighbors Video Tool Kit

Engage your leaders and members

Teach that hospitality is at the core of the Gospel.
Teach your congregation to honor Christ in everyone and that God seeks to be in relationship with ALL persons.

Make a good first Impression

Convey a clear invitation and a statement of welcome in all communications directed at the external community — advertisements, banners, flyers, website, etc.
Know that 40% of visitors make up their mind about a church before they even see the pastor, according to Barna Research. Within two minutes of the beginning of a service visitors have formed an opinion about whether the congregation is friendly.
Care for your building and grounds as a way of honoring your attendees and honoring God. A well-cared-for building demonstrates a commitment to excellence and communicates that what the church does is important.
Have clear exterior and interior signage that guides visitors everywhere they need to go.
Reserve special parking places for visitors. Encourage church members and staff to park offsite or in more remote spaces. If parking lot congestion is an issue, recruit volunteer parking attendants.
Make your nursery clean, safe, sanitary, well-equipped, and visually appealing to children and their parents. Use a space that is easy to find and convenient to the sanctuary. Make sure your nursery workers and procedures inspire confidence on the part of parents.
Make sure your restrooms and neat and clean.

Be intentional about saying hello and goodbye

Station greeters at all entrances, in classroom areas, and in the parking lot or entry walks, if appropriate.
Identify your greeters and ushers with a special badge or name tag so visitors who need information can easily identify them.
Encourage friendly, out-going persons with the gift of “hospitality” to serve as greeters and ushers. Don’t expect that just anyone can do these jobs well. Provide regular training that helps them see the church through a visitor’s eyes.
Escort newcomers to the nursery, classrooms, coffee hour, etc. Don’t just point the way or give directions.
Adopt the “rule of three,” which says members will not talk to other members in the first three minutes following the service — typically how long it takes guests to exit.
Enact the “circle of ten” rule — that each member will greet anyone, member or guest, who comes within ten feet of them.
Say, “I don’t think we’ve met before. …” if you are not sure if the person next to you is a member or a visitor.
Ask outgoing church members to sit in the pews where visitors most commonly sit, often near the entrance or in the back.
Post someone at every exit to shake hands and thank people for coming. Ask worship participants (readers, music leaders, liturgists, etc.,) to do this since their faces will be familiar.

Help newcomers feel at home in worship

Accept and encourage casual attire.
Do not ask visitors to stand and identify themselves. Seventy percent of new attendees feel negatively about being recognized. However, they do expect people to be friendly and welcoming.
Provide nametags for the whole congregation and develop the habit of wearing them. Form a “tag team” to organize and promote name tag use.
Review your church bulletin and other printed material to make sure information is not “insider oriented.” Avoid church jargon and assuming that people understand the context.
Make sure your order of worship is easy for a visitor to follow. Include written or verbal explanations of what is going on and why. Print the words to all prayers, songs, and responses.
Sing at least one hymn each Sunday that is well known outside the church, such as “Amazing Grace,” “Joyful Joyful,” or “Morning Has Broken.”
Include a welcome to visitors in the open words before the service. Make sure the person speaking identifies him or herself. It is best for the pastor to issue this welcome.
Remember that visitors sometimes arrive a few minutes late. Don’t front load all the information directed at them.
Place information about your church’s ministries where a visitor can easily find it — preferably in the pew, or a clearly marked location near the entry points used by visitors. Don’t expect them to go someplace else to find it.
Prepare Visitors Packets to be handed out by greeters with information about your church programs.
Give visitors with small children a small activity packet (with crayons, pipe cleaners, stickers, etc.) as they enter worship.
Avoid all talk about money with visitors.
Keep the discussion of “family business” to a minimum in the services. Limit announcements.

Follow up with your visitors

Get the names and addresses of first-time visitors. Some churches use visitors’ cards, but asking ALL worshippers to record attendance makes it more likely visitors will sign. Visitors don’t want to be singled out.
Make a special effort to remember visitors’ names and call them by name.
Make at least one follow-up contact with first-time visitors within 24 to 36 hours of their visit — a letter from the pastor, a phone call, a hand-written note, an email message. Many churches deliver a gift, such as freshly baked cookies or a church coffee mug, to visitors’ homes. The purpose is to communicate friendliness, not get a membership commitment.
Develop a system or data base for keeping track of visitors, their contact information, and the frequency of visits. A mailing list of persons who have visited in the past is one of your best marketing tools.
Don’t overlook visitors who come to the church for the first time for an event other than worship.
Once someone has attended three times, they should be invited to join the church with a pastoral visit and/or an invitation to take part in an inquirers or new member class.
Encourage visitors to get connected with activities and groups, even if they are not ready to join.

Be more inviting

Hold an Open House Sunday at least once a year.
Organize a “bring-a-friend” Sunday at least once a year.
Extend extra hospitality during back-to-school time, Christmas and Easter, when persons are most likely to consider visiting a church.
Start a personal invitation ministry. Three out of four people attend a church for the first time because they were invited. Yet less than half of church members say they have invited someone in the last year.
Provide training to members on how to invite others to church.
Print special invitations to Christmas Eve services that people can deliver to friends.
Plan special events — concerts, lectures, etc. — that appeal to those outside the church and that members feel comfortable inviting someone to.
Have special recognition Sundays for scout groups, preschool families, or other community groups meeting in your church to encourage them to attend worship.

Become more aware of visitors and their concerns

Gather feedback on how visitors respond to your church through surveys, focus groups, or interviews.
Conduct a “welcome audit” annually.
Provide training on welcoming at least once a year.
Send your welcome team to visit other churches and report back on how they experienced their reception.