I’ve never been a meeting person per se. Really like Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni. I like the title better than the book.
But I like both.

One of the seven dimensions of right-brain leadership that I’m writing about write now (intentional misspelling) is disrupting the routine. When the routine becomes routine, right-brain leaders change the routine. That’s what we’re doing with team meetings.

Toward the end of 06, I felt like we were spinning our wheels in our weekly team meetings. So we’ve moved to a monthly team meeting where we’ll focus more on vision and calendar. I feel like our weekly meetings had become more reactive than proactive.

Having said that let me say this. I only moved our all-staff meeting to a monthly meeting because of our weekly Big Idea Meeting where our creative team plans out each weekend. Big Idea is the creative engine where we brainstorm series and the weekly touch point where we nail down things like run sheets, announcements, and creative elements.

I don’t think this post is as prescriptive as it is descriptive. Every church needs to find its own rhythm and routine. But here are five meeting ideas:

#1 Start Every Meeting by Sharing Wins!

This puts you in a positive frame of mind. Don’t under celebrate what God is doing!

#2 Do an occasional Offsite Meeting

Change of Pace + Change of Place = Change of Perspective

#3 Don’t talk corporately about what can be handled individually!

If you talk about something that not everybody needs to know about you’re wasting their time. And the larger your staff the more time you’re wasting!

#4 Cut Your Agenda in Half

The more you talk about the less you accomplish!

#5 Make sure everything you talk about lands on a to-do list

Make sure someone is responsible for everything you talk about or it’ll end up on the next meeting agenda and cause twice the frustration!