Staff Meetings
May 13, 2004
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Staff meetings. What are your staff meetings like? Do they make your church feel more like a business…? A ministry? A safe place? A to-do checklist? Do you just do calendar stuff? Or talk about ministry? Pray? Discuss theology…?
Tags: Church, Meetings, Ministry, Staff-Meetings
Posted in Ministry
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
May 13th, 2004 at 10:01 am
The staff meetings at my church are the “anti-Yaconelli” model. All speed, no need. My favorite part is when we get to go around and share how we’re feeling/doing this week/in our walk with Christ, oh yeah, we can only say 1-2 words as a descriptive. The pastor calls it a “thermometer” method. I love that! (can you smell the sarcasm?)
May 13th, 2004 at 1:08 pm
I enjoy our staff meetings. We open with a devotional (we rotate through the staff on who leads it) and significant prayer. Then we get to the business. Calendar is a big part of that. More than just getting things on the calendar, though, it’s a time to hear what the others are doing and see where we can help and where we are just getting in the way. It’s business, but it’s also very relational. We finish with more prayer.
May 13th, 2004 at 5:49 pm
Our staff meetings are ok, but we are trying to make improvements. It used to be, that by about halfway through, most people would get all quiet as if they had already kind of checked-out. We went to the Willow Creek children’s ministry conference in March, and one of the speakers was Patrick Lencioni - he talked a lot about improving team dynamics, especially at meetings. We are kind of at the point now where we want to make some changes, but aren’t really sure how. At this point, we mostly go through an agenda, we never have time to cover everything, and then we barely have time to pray at the end, so one person just says a quick prayer to cover everything.
We definately have room for improvement. . .
I remember how much I loved RA meetings at Whitworth. We definately got stuff accomplished, but we spent good time in prayer, also. I like the type of meeting Kevin described.
May 13th, 2004 at 7:51 pm
Here at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, “staff meeting” is the term seminarians use to refer to our get-togethers at the local pub. We talk about theology, of course, especially after the third pitcher has been drained.
May 13th, 2004 at 10:18 pm
Well, I am in a very unusual position. I am paid to be a youth and associate pastor. Those staff meetings aren’t bad, yet aren’t the best. I haven’t had a ton of experience with staff meetings, but they are usually good.
With the church we are planting, the staff are volunteers. Half the time our meetings take place on AOL IM. But those meetings are usually quick and to the point. And a lot of goofing around!
May 16th, 2004 at 1:52 am
So, i’m not “in ministry” right now, but i loved the staff meetings at the church i worked at last year. they were usually monday (not in the morning because we were all the-sleep late when ever possible cuz we were out to late “ministering”-kind of people) so we could share discussions we’d had with our people at church the day before. the meetings started with “love attacks.” we’d call up a couple of people from the church randomoly and sing some cheesey song to them on the phone and tell them how much we loved them and ask what we could pray for or about something we’d been praying for. then we’d let them get back to work and we’d pray. then we’d pray over all the requests that people wrote down the day before (yeah, we had roll cards, sort of, even in our “pomo” church, people could fill them out if they wanted to, and most of the people were totally “unchurched” so they thought it was awesome that we cared and usually 40% of them gave us requests). then we’d BS for a while and share what was going on with us for real, definately not like Chris’s pastor’s “thermometer”. we’d pray more. then figure out our calanders and how we could help each other out with all of our tasks. then off to In and Out. man, i miss those meetings… tons of love and realness there.