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Who Should Attend Your Leadership Meetings?

Ministry Team Meetings

If the leadership team is talking about strategic direction of the ministry, there still need to be many conversations and decisions around execution of that strategy. Those need to happen at the ministry team level rather than the leadership team level. That means each ministry team will need regular meetings that include support staff and other leaders to make execution decisions and then communicate those decisions.

All-Staff Meetings

You’ll still need to have regular all-staff meetings to share vision, information and stories with everyone. The difference, though, is that these aren’t decision meetings. Instead, they’re really designed to keep the whole staff team on the inside loop. Some churches do these meetings once a week. Others do them once a month.

Communications After the Meeting

At the conclusion of every meeting, you need to answer two key questions. The first is: What are the action steps? As decisions are made, it’s going to generate a list of next steps. Everyone in the room needs to be clear about who’s going to do what by when?

The second key question is: What needs to immediately be communicated? Patrick Lencioni calls this “cascading communications.” You need to decide what information needs to be shared with the rest of the team by when? These are two-way conversations, so you can’t do this through email. You have to share the key information and then offer opportunities for people to ask questions and get clarification about the implications of decisions.

Feeling like your team is stuck? It could be because you have the wrong people in the meeting. Are there more than eight people at the table? If so, something needs to change. Are you using ministry team meetings, all-staff meetings and communications after the meeting to close the information loop? If not, it might be time for you to rethink your meeting strategy.

Have you faced similar challenges as your church has grown? If so, we’d love to hear from you. What changes did you have to make? Are there other ideas beyond what we’ve outline above? Join the conversation by sharing your comments below.