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Best Practices Series: Efficient Staff Meetings – 12 Do’s & Don’ts for Healthy Ministry Teams
Best Practices Series: Efficient Staff Meetings – 12 Do’s & Don’ts for Healthy Ministry Teams
By Dale Sellers
I spent some time developing a list of best practices that we’ve included in some of our recent posts. These practices are incredibly valuable for creating a ministry culture that is healthy and sustainable. With that in mind, I’d like to highlight a few of them so you can evaluate how your ministry is currently implementing them.
Tired of long, unproductive church staff meetings?
Here are practical meeting best practices—agendas, time limits, and healthy rhythms—that protect momentum and strengthen your team.
Have you ever sat through a two-hour meeting that had about 15 minutes of real substance? I have, and I can tell you there are few things more frustrating to me. I’m an organized person who likes to schedule a set of goals to accomplish for the day. I prioritize my tasks by importance and urgency. Therefore, I don’t usually have much margin for wasting time.
I have served on a few large church staffs over the years. I’ve also had the opportunity to observe many large church staffs. The one thing I found to be the norm was the tremendous amount of time wasted in meetings. Don’t get me wrong, large teams certainly need to convene in multiple settings to ensure thorough communication. But if we’re honest, most of those meetings could be streamlined into shorter blocks of time.
Being wired this way led me to develop a set of guidelines for meetings when I served as an executive pastor. My goal was to protect our Lead Pastor’s schedule and to provide a sense of structure that would actually provide consistency for our staff.
One of the best things I established was a weekly team meeting at a set time when everyone would be available. Tuesday mornings at 10:00 worked great for us. Our gathering began with 30 minutes for prayer requests, followed by a time of prayer. Then, we worked through a published agenda with a hard stop time of 11:45. We usually had lunch together as a team afterward in our break room or at a local restaurant.
I also scheduled a one-hour weekly meeting with each individual staff member. It was a set time on both of our calendars. This meeting was designed to allow them to discuss any work-related issues. However, the main thing it accomplished was to assure them that their voice was heard regarding anything they were dealing with. It was a great opportunity for them to share their heart and also open up about any personal struggles they may be experiencing.
I really looked forward to these individual staff meetings each week. So did they. I was able to get to know each one of them on a more personal level. Many churches have adopted a more business-like approach to staffing, which has some benefits for larger ministries. However, it often seems like the majority of the staff are treated more like employees than ministry leaders in these settings. Spending individual time with each staff member can really create a healthy atmosphere where they feel valued and loved way beyond what they’ve been employed to do.
Meeting Management
Weekly meetings don’t have to be a burden that everyone dreads attending. Providing a simple meeting structure can help ensure that your meetings are efficient and effective without wasting a lot of productive time for your team.
Here are a few Do’s & Don’ts that I’ve used which have been helpful:
Meeting Do’s
1) Distinguish between meetings designed for communication versus community. Great teams have a balance of meetings that are more focused on getting down to business and those that are more relaxed. I believe you need both to have a healthy culture. But it can keep everyone off balance if they aren’t sure which meeting they are attending.
Make it a point to establish a routine with everyone regarding which meetings we need to “get in” and then “get out” of, versus the meetings where we want to get to know each other better.
Note: As the leader, it’s really important that you don’t become so rigid that you ignore ministering to a staff member in need in order to stay on schedule. There are obviously going to be times when agendas submit to ministry needs.
2) Meet on the same day, time, and place each week. Most of us are creatures of habit. Therefore, it is a good practice to establish regular meeting times. This is especially helpful for your super-organized staff personalities, as structure and planning are a source of refreshment to their soul.
3) Publish an agenda including the starting and ending time of the meeting. Having a published agenda that you hand out to each attendee accomplishes a lot. It can help to create concise communication if each person can visualize where you are on the agenda compared to the time you have left.
I’ve also found that the reality that you are getting close to the end of the meeting will encourage everyone to make sure they communicate things they have been putting off. Bad news or difficult subjects can be avoided if there’s an atmosphere of ambiguity. (It actually gives them a valid reason not to mention it because they ran out of time.)
4) Balance all team meetings with individual team meetings. Providing a set time for individual staff meetings on a weekly basis is one of the best meeting concepts I have personally embraced. Knowing they had time on my schedule to meet provided my staff members with confidence and security. They knew we would have time to work through their problems.
As I stated earlier, the individual staff meeting also gave me the opportunity to get to know them on a much deeper personal level. Many of these meetings led to powerful prayer times and counsel for teammates struggling with personal or family issues.
Another benefit was discovered after we had held a few meetings: most of the issues related to their job responsibilities were resolved in the first few minutes of the meeting. This then created space to have conversations on a deeper level, because their job responsibilities were running so smoothly.
Note: Consistent weekly individual meetings reduced tension when we needed to have a hard conversation. The staff member was much less defensive when we needed to correct something, because several pleasant conversations were interspersed among difficult talks.
I found that yearly job reviews (which I hate) were unnecessary when I had already been having weekly job-related conversations. Annual job reviews can be devastating when your employer unloads a year’s worth of issues that you were unaware of and that haven’t been addressed.
5) Save personal conversations for the individual meeting instead of making everyone in the group observe a discussion that doesn’t relate to them. It was always felt disrespectful to other staff members and me when we had to quietly sit and listen to a conversation between our lead pastor and one of our staff members. Although the topic they were addressing might have been really important, it was a frustrating waste of our time to be “a fly on the wall” of a conversation we had no responsibility for. If you encounter a conversation with an individual that can’t wait, dismiss everyone else so they can get on with their day.
6) Have a procedure in place to limit the amount of time your “talkers” can have the floor. You’ve been there, and I have too. There always seems to be at least one team member “who loves the sound of their own voice.” They love the attention they get when everyone listens to them share their opinions on every subject. When this happens, it’s helpful to already have a procedure in place to shut them down.
Some teams appoint a timekeeper. An established amount of time is given for the individual to say their piece. Once the alarm sounds, everyone, including the talker, knows it’s time for someone else to share. Having a pre-planned process in place greatly reduces the stress and tension that can come if you have to address them in the moment.
7) Honor what you’ve established. Simply put, none of this will work if you violate what you’ve established every time you meet! If you are the lead pastor, then I especially ask you to honor what you’ve established. Your staff will take their cues from you. So if you ignore the set guidelines, then they will take that as a signal that the guidelines aren’t really important.
Meeting Don’ts
1) Don’t kill productivity and momentum of motivated staffers. Unorganized, unstructured meetings can derail even the most motivated staffer. I know because I’ve been there a lot. It was common to attend a staff meeting on a day when I was energized and motivated to get my big to-do list done. However, the long staff meeting, which was filled with wasted time, literally took the wind out of my sails. It’s so hard to get momentum going again once you’ve lost it, so don’t allow staff meetings to be momentum killers.
2) Don’t leave discussions where nothing is ever finalized. Make it a point to finalize the point! Time-consuming meetings that don’t actually accomplish or resolve things are the ultimate waste of time. Your team brings things to the table because they need clarity, direction, and authority to accomplish them. Leaving a meeting where much was discussed but nothing was finalized will keep your staff off balance and frustrated.
Even if an issue needs further review, it’s so important to let everyone know that an answer will be provided by a specific date. Ambiguity in direction always creates instability in execution.
3) Don’t create friction and/or resentment between the “planners” and the “players” on your team. I once served on a church staff where some staff members intentionally tried to get our lead pastor to “chase rabbits” in our meetings. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to do. I do enjoy having fun with my other teammates, but this eventually became unbearable.
It’s obvious when you have a larger staff that there will be personalities who like to get things done, as well as those who just want to have fun. Meetings that are easily derailed by a lack of structure or end goals will always create friction and resentment between differing staff personalities.
4) Don’t waste time that will require some staff members to work late hours to accomplish their goals. There are always consequences to long, time-wasting meetings, even if you don’t personally experience it. Production teams, children’s ministry leaders, and other staff often spend a lot of time preparing for this week’s service. The things they are responsible for won’t just work themselves out.
A staff member who has time-consuming tasks to complete will pay the price when they lose precious work time due to a long meeting. Although they are often commended as great staff members for their willingness to work late hours, something in their lives pays the price. It usually comes down to their marriage, relationship with their children, or their personal health being neglected.
5) Don’t come to the meeting unprepared. Whether you are leading the meeting or just a participant, never show up without an agenda. In fact, it’s best if everyone attending the meeting has already received the agenda before you gather. This helps establish expectations and provides context for how the meeting is progressing.
It’s impossible to have team unity without meeting regularly. However, if you don’t make a plan for an efficient meeting, then you’re planning to fail by being inefficient.
What are you doing that is working well? What is not going so well? Let’s connect and have a conversation about it. At 95Network, we are here to support and serve you in any way we can. If you feel like you’re in a season where you’re stalled out and can’t see the way forward, then please reach out to me at [email protected]
