What happens in a meeting is decided before the meeting, by the process.
— John Maxwell
Two weeks before beginning a pastorate in Lancaster, Ohio, I attended my new church’s business meeting. The outgoing pastor had informed me the church would be voting on a hot issue: whether to build an activity building. So I drove to Lancaster, slipped into the church after the meeting had begun, and went upstairs to the balcony to watch.
What I saw depressed me. Christians fought and yelled like children. The ruckus began when a man named Bill, a well-known saboteur of church business meetings, stood and used a familiar ploy. He raised a procedural question that the pastor didn’t know how to handle. Bill then rattled off chapter and verse from Robert’s Rules of Order and before sitting down intoned, “I hope the rest of this meeting can be run more competently.”
That parliamentary move set the tone for a four-hour meeting that felt more like a beating.
Meetings bring out the best — and worst — in us. Egos, hidden agendas, poor planning, aimlessness, temper tantrums, and boredom can come obnoxiously into play. On the other hand, meetings can be a showcase of Christian grace, courtesy, vision, planning, enthusiasm, and hope.
Depending on which carries the day, a pastor’s ministry purrs along or screeches to a halt in board meetings, business meetings, staff meetings, committee meetings, training meetings. They either multiply your time, like a compact car getting 50 miles to the gallon, or devour time and energy, like a gas-guzzling, exhaust-belching, old bus.
Here’s how to “adjust the carburetor” of your church to get more done, in less time, in a positive manner.
A Conspicuous Absence
What pastor hasn’t sat in a committee meeting thinking, How can I get out of attending this every month? If I quit coming, they’ll think I don’t care or that I’m negligent. But I’m wasting my time!
When I came to Skyline Church in San Diego, the church had fifteen committees, and I was expected to attend every one. I quickly discovered I didn’t need to be at any of them. Here are principles I followed to reduce to zero the number of committees I attend.
• Report your new policy in person. I attended every committee meeting in the church — once — and told them I would not be back. Obviously when you stop attending a meeting, committee members may feel unimportant. That feeling would have been heightened if I had just sent a memo or phoned the leader about my change in policy. I wanted to show the participants I respected them enough to talk face to face.
• Explain your reasons. Once people see the big picture of a pastor’s schedule, they understand better. To each committee I said something like this: “I won’t be attending this committee for two reasons. First and most important, I have complete confidence in your ability to get the job done, and so I’m turning you loose. Second, my time is limited. If I attend fifteen committees every month, my preaching, administration, leadership, and family life will suffer. It’s a matter of priorities.”
• Delegate decisions and problem-solving to the lowest level possible. Many churches do the opposite, with the church board deciding everything from what light bulbs to buy to who should screw them in. Giving committees real authority makes their work important. Most members appreciate not having to work in my shadow.
Each committee chairman is on the board, so as I develop a close relationship with my board through discipleship sessions and personal lunches, I also develop a close tie with their committee efforts. The committee chairpersons are always aware of their place in the scheme of things and of their importance to me.
• Anticipate diverse reactions. When I made the rounds of our fifteen committees, I found that the activist committees, those anxious to get something done, felt great about my not attending. They were free to get on with their thing. More relational groups were upset; they saw meetings as a time to be with their pastor.
• Don’t overrule committee decisions. Our Christian education committee has the authority to recommend personnel in their department. When we needed to fill a position several years ago, they submitted the name of one of our volunteer workers. The person recommended was a hard worker but not, in my and the board’s judgment, leadership material. The board was unanimous in opposition to the name submitted.
During my eleven years here, however, our board hasn’t overruled a single decision of a committee. If committees have their decisions overruled by the board, members soon realize what they do doesn’t matter.
So we asked the chairman of the Christian education committee, who is on the board, to go back, explain our thinking, and ask the committee to consider overruling their decision. When he did, the members of his group recognized the wisdom of the board and withdrew the name voluntarily.
On rare occasions when the board resists a committee decision, we keep the authority in the hands of the committee, asking them to reconsider, rather than just rejecting it. By not overruling their decisions, I communicate they are important.
• Show the committee you’re up on their work. We’ve whittled the number of committees from fifteen to four, and have the four committee chairpersons on the board. So I have a lot of contact with these leaders. But I also take the time to read the minutes of each committee. I also jot notes to the chairpersons to tell them the good things I see happening in their committees.
Meeting of the Minds
More than any other group on this planet, church members meet just to meet. That’s natural considering our bond in Christ. That’s wonderful for relationships, but it’s murder on schedules and priorities. Churches are infamous for scheduled meetings that have no objectives, no announced purpose, with people invited for the wrong reasons. The result is a fleeting of the minds.
To counteract this tendency, our board meetings must have three clearly defined purposes.
1. Information and empowerment. I start board meetings with five to ten minutes of reports on good things happening in the church: “Last month fifteen people dedicated their lives to Christ. Two of those people were a husband and wife about to file for divorce, and they decided to stay together.…”
I empower people with vision, motivation, enthusiasm, and faith. We celebrate that, through Christ, our church is winning and that each person in attendance is part of the reason why.
I recently invited to my house our building steering committee of forty-eight people. When we sat down in the library, I said, “Four years from now we’ll be in the new sanctuary. Four thousand people will be praising God in that building, but you forty-eight will be able to appreciate the Lord’s goodness more than anyone else.”
Then we called the leader of the relocation committee forward, laid hands on him, and prayed for him. He called the office the next day and said, “I’ve never had an experience like that. It has changed my life. If you had any doubts about whether I’m completely involved in this project, I just want to say, ‘Aye, aye, aye, yes, yes, yes!’ “
Discipleship is another necessary part of empowerment, but we don’t take time for it in our regular board meeting. I meet for discipleship once a month with my board, on Saturday morning from eight to ten. We eat breakfast for the first half-hour and then move to Scripture study, prayer, and discussing our personal lives. Last year our theme was intimacy with Christ, and this year we’re studying Psalms.
2. Brainstorming, information gathering, and discussion. What I call “study items” take about an hour and fifteen minutes of our board meeting. We make no decisions on study items. Some issues will remain study items for months.
Regular board meetings don’t provide enough time for everything that needs attention. At our board administration retreat, we take board members and their spouses for a day and focus on two to four big issues. I throw a question that needs brainstorming on the table and let everyone have at it. Last year the question was whether we should add a fourth service. We’ll often break for thirty minutes into discussion groups of four, then come together and relate the ideas generated. This isn’t a decision-making day; it’s just a gleaning of ideas.
3. Decision making. This is my last priority at board meetings. We end with two to five minutes of what I call “action items.” These have been study items in previous meetings that we’re ready to vote on.
Voting is not a big deal at board meetings because I know before I go in what the vote will be — unanimous. I know ahead of time because of the “people process.”
The People Process
As they try to bring about change, church leaders tend to be event oriented: they focus on board and congregational meetings as the turning points of the church. They put all their eggs in the basket of one sermon or presentation to rally the congregation behind them. That outlook fosters frustration, crises, surprises, and power plays.
Viewing leadership as a process of moving people in a desired direction is more realistic and effective. Change takes time.
Three factors are critical to the people process.
• Consensus. After that four hours of horrendous congregational debate I mentioned in the introduction, the church in Lancaster voted by a two-thirds majority to build a new activity building. The third who lost the vote felt like losers, and a split resulted. They didn’t leave the church physically, but they did emotionally and financially.
When I came, I knew we had to bring them back on board. I also wanted to delay the building project because the church was planning to build on a spot where I foresaw a new sanctuary (once the church was growing again). So I told the leaders, “This activities building is important. It’s obvious there are strong feelings on both sides. I suggest we form a study committee and come back to the issue later.”
They agreed. I appointed phlegmatic personalities to the committee and instructed them, “I want a detailed study. Take your time. Don’t come back until you have the whole picture for us.”
The church began to move and grow. Nine months later, when the committee reported their findings to the congregation, we reconsidered whether to build an activity building or a new sanctuary. Only one person voted against building a sanctuary.
That congregational meeting, however, wasn’t the turning point. The church changed direction because of a process of talking to people one-to-one, changing little things here and there, building vision piece-by-piece, bringing one group on board at a time.
Actually, when it comes to decision making, meetings should hold no surprises. You can only do this if you have the right decision-making process. In our board meetings, the simple mechanism of dividing issues into study items and action items not only processes issues but people. By barring an immediate vote on study items, we take away the political pressures — people don’t have to take sides immediately. In fact I’m careful to lead discussions in a way that keeps people from declaring their position on an issue.
Once a person takes a stand and raises her flag, she feels obligated to defend that position even if she eventually sees the wisdom of doing otherwise. Changing your mind is like saying you were wrong, and most people don’t like to do that. So we discuss issues not in terms of “What do you think we should do?” but with questions like “What are the pros and cons of doing this?” and “What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of these solutions?”
Weighty issues can remain study items for months. Along the way I get a feeling where everyone stands. Only when I sense consensus do we move a study item to an action item for the next month’s meeting.
Six years after the church in Lancaster built their new sanctuary, we addressed the issue of what to do with the old one. I wanted to make it an activities building (it had a rectangular shape and a high ceiling throughout, perfect for a gym), but I knew how tradition-conscious members of the congregation would react: “The foul line of the basketball court will be at the altar where I prayed to receive Christ.”
So I began with a study item. “We’re not going to vote on this tonight, next month, or the month after. But let’s think about what we could do with the old sanctuary. Any idea will be fine. It can be far-fetched; it can be stupid. Let’s just get them on the table.” We wrote down all the ideas on a blackboard and then left it at that.
We left that as a study item for eight months. Every month we talked about it, and I watched as the process of communication changed minds one by one.
• Leading leaders. After the sanctuary-use question had been a study item for eight months, I took the vice-chairman of the board out for lunch, as I regularly did, to discuss the meeting. He had led the anti-gym wing, but I sensed he had softened. At lunch I asked directly what he felt.
“Well,” he said, “I think it should be a gym.”
“I think you’re right,” I responded. “But I’ve kept this as a study item because I wanted you to be with me on it. And the only way I’ll move it to an action item is if you’re ready to lead the way with a motion.”
He agreed. The next month the board voted unanimously to convert the building to a gym, and in the congregational meeting people voted 98 percent in favor.
The key to leadership is influencing those who influence others. Influencers are in every congregation, and they determine much of what happens in meetings. You have to know who they are. They are the ones whose opinions matter most, whose views others listen to and respect. When they are ignored or overlooked, or when a pastor does an end-around, they lead the opposition and make a pastor’s life miserable.
A grim church member presented a pastor with a six-page list of misdemeanors. The letter criticized him because his car was too expensive, he didn’t visit one individual at home, he didn’t preach enough from the Old Testament, he didn’t support Sunday school by teaching a class himself, his wife set a bad example by missing church several Sunday nights a year.… A list of complaints like that is often nothing more than an influencer left out of the “power loop.”
Likewise, you can trace many major church conflicts to a prominent influencer who doesn’t like the pastor. The dissenter’s beef isn’t doctrinal. It’s not cultural. Often he or she has felt left out of a critical decision.
Consequently, I prepare for meetings by preparing the players. I spend five hours preparing for every hour of a meeting, praying, getting the mind of the Lord, making decisions, planning the agenda, and preparing people.
For instance, when I went to one conference, John, the vice-chairman, who actually moderates the board meetings, traveled with me. During the trip we discussed every board member, their strengths and gifts, the keys to their lives, what fires their engines. We were exploring people’s interests and motivations to better understand how they would respond in a meeting. In addition we talked about who influenced each board member.
Then I suggested, “Of our sixteen board members, you need to keep in good relationship with these four. You need to know that they’re with you on any issue you think we ought to present for a vote. If they’re with you, the others will go along.”
The pejorative word for the people process is politics. If a leader’s motives are selfish, if he or she is working the process for the sake of power, if ego is the moving force, then this is politics in the negative sense. It’s manipulation.
If, on the other hand, a leader is motivated by love for Christ, love for the church, and love for the individuals in the process, then the people process simply recognizes how people make decisions. If a leader respects others’ freedom to choose and the time it takes them to choose, and if the leader refrains from twisting arms, then we are fulfilling our call to persuade and influence others for the sake of the kingdom. If our motives are right, we only have as much influence as people grant us.
Developing trust among influencers, then, is critical. On our trip to Atlanta, I told John, “I will never disagree with you in a meeting. We’ll disagree before or after the meeting behind closed doors. I’ll never embarrass you. I’ll always build you up. Also, I will always pave the way so that motions you bring forward will pass. My goal is to make you look good; your goal is to know my heart and be loyal to that.”
Not only do we need to give influencers influence, we need to give them credit. I tell John, “Great meeting. You did a good job leading us through the whole process.”
Influencers either are or they aren’t. You can’t make someone into an influencer. One characteristic of all leaders I’ve met is an instinctive awareness of their influence in a group. Leaders are sensitive to power, they know who the other leaders are in a group, and they adjust to that. It doesn’t mean they necessarily “love to be first,” but they know where they stand.
My recognizing who is sensitive to influence is the first way I pick a leader and the first way I prepare for any meeting. If you understand who the influencers are in any meeting, and if you can relate well with them, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your church, General Motors, or the United States of America, you can run that meeting and that organization effectively.
• Understanding people. Leaders don’t have bad meetings because they’re inept with meetings; they have bad meetings because they’re inept with people.
Someone who doesn’t understand people can read all the management literature and apply the techniques for leading meetings but still have problems. The greatest leaders are not necessarily technically efficient at running meetings, at following step one, step two, and step three; they usually are artists.
Good meetings are based on the art of influencing people. I assume people are biased negatively against change. Most people will resist a new idea. Therefore if I’m going to lead in a new direction, it will take time. I know how long each member of my board takes to process information and make decisions. Some people are ready to act in five minutes. Others take two months.
Never pluck fruit before it’s ready. If I pressure people, they may do what I want, but they’ll resent it. That resentment becomes a wall between us, causing them to hold back whenever I try to influence again. When I wait for the fruit to drop, however, trust builds. People sense I won’t take advantage of them or violate their integrity or emotional make-up.
The better I know the participants in meetings, the better I can lead those meetings. I spend time individually with board members, annually taking them to lunch or dinner, getting a feel for their hearts, their family lives, their jobs. I also get to know them in our monthly discipleship meetings, at the board social events we hold several times a year, and at our annual all-day retreat. I take board members on trips with me whenever possible.
Certain situations have higher potential for us getting to know one another. When we pray together, I learn people’s hearts for God and their chief concerns. When we go through crises together, I see how they respond to pressure, and they see how I treat them under pressure. We develop a one-for-all and all-for-one feeling. When we win together, mutual confidence and trust develops.
Reducing Drag
Paul Henri Spaak was president of the first General Assembly of the United Nations. After presiding over the first General Assembly meeting, Spaak closed with these words:
“Our agenda is now exhausted. The secretary general is exhausted. All of you are exhausted. I find it comforting that, beginning with our very first day, we find ourselves in such complete unanimity.”
I am a mortal enemy of that kind of unanimity. If there’s one thing I want, it’s to finish meetings more energized and motivated than when I walked in. The only way to do that is to be brief. As the saying goes, work expands to fill the time allotted to it. If everyone assumes a board meeting should last late into the night, that’s exactly what happens.
There are many reasons that meetings drag on, but one big one is when a few individuals dominate. They may not dominate maliciously, but they are too verbal, or they’re emotionally troubled and want attention, or long-winded, or egotistical. Sometimes, the only way to get control of meetings, is to beat them at their own game.
Sitting in the balcony, watching the Lancaster church business meeting ruined by one man, a man who had a history of thwarting meetings by his supposed adherence to Robert’s Rules of Order, I determined I would not let the same thing happen to me.
One year later I prepared for my first congregational meeting by spending three days studying Robert’s Rules; I virtually memorized it.
Sure enough, Bill stood in the meeting and tried to get a motion passed, saying that a simple majority would do. I knew, though, that his motion required a two-thirds majority.
“You can’t do that,” I told him. “If you would read page thirty-seven of Robert’s Rules of Order, you would find halfway down the page that you need a two-thirds majority.”
He got up twice more suggesting procedures that were out of order, and because I knew my Robert’s Rules, he had to back down both times. The congregation did everything but stand up and yell their approval. I could feel the emotional release as this congregation was set free from a man who had bound the church for fifteen years. In my ten years at that church, he never again disrupted a congregational meeting.
“If you want to kill any idea in the world today,” said well-known engineer and manufacturer C. F. Kettering, “get a committee working on it.” More than likely, Kettering had been on a few too many church committees.
But meetings don’t have to be counterproductive. Church meetings graced by the presence of the Holy Spirit and led by influential leaders with people skills can be some of the most meaningful, rewarding times in church life.
Copyright © 1993 by Christianity Today
