I'm not sure what it says about me or my ability to lead my church or our meetings, but I was eager to read this book as soon as I heard about it. Death by Meeting (2004) is the work of Patrick Lencioni, a business consulting guru with a number of top-selling books to his credit. There's nothing Christian about this book (though church life is referenced sympathetically), and this is certainly not the go-to book on how to do effective ministry. But most of us in the church go to meetings. And all of us probably wish those meetings were a little better. So if we can get, filtered through Scripture, a few common grace pointers from a business junkie, why not take them?

Most of the book is a fable about a video game company with really good people and really bad meetings. I'll skip over the story and get right to the take-home points.

Lencioni highlights two problems with meetings. He's talking about meetings in the business world, but I think much of what he says can apply to elders' meetings, ...