Get the Most Out of Leaders Meetings

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Follow these steps to lead meaningful and effective leaders meetings.

by Doug Patch | posted 11/14/2003

Topics:	Discipleship, Guidance, Leadership, Management, Teaching
Filters:	Director, Pastor, Train
Purpose:	Discipleship
References:	Philippians 2:2 , 2 Timothy 2:20-21 , Hebrews 10:24
Date Added:	November 14, 2003

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5. Prior collection of agenda items (see above).This is not a "have to" but it does facilitate getting more accomplished in the shortest time, as well as insuring people are thinking about and giving input into the meeting agenda.

6. Leadership teams need to be in agreement on the mission of the home group. If they aren't, the group will go nowhere, conflicts will be more likely, or total disengagement will occur because of no sense of purpose. How could Philippians 2:2 be a reality without a clear understanding of your group's mission?Â Linking the mission of your group to the mission of the church is logical and certainly biblical.

Keeping a group conscious of and focused on its mission is essential to the home group, and not always easy to maintain. Communicating this to your workers regularly in quarterly workers meetings and groups is equally necessary. This can be done explicitly by discussing the mission, or implicitly by talking about how the group is doing in those arenas (reporting numerical growth over the past year, spiritual commitments made by individuals, etc.). In a discussion format, have the workers talk about the link between your structures and the mission. This revives their sense of purpose and helps maintain their outward focus. It also minimizes legalistic involvement in these structures when they remind themselves how God is using them to do his work.

7. Leaders meetings are agonizing if there isn't consensus on the overall health of the group. Stated another way, instrumental to effective meetings is regularly committing time to evaluating the health of the group. There is no simple way to describe how to do this but the leadership team's discernment on this must be developed.Â

8. Your leaders meetings should train one another and sit-in trainees HOW to lead. Don't just make decisions without talking about how to make them, what factors should be considered (ask for these, don't just lecture), how the issue fits into the priorities of the group, and what biblical principles are at play with the discussion. In other words, you should be helping one another develop wisdom so that all are better able to make solid decisions in the future even when you aren't there, when the next leadership team has been planted with their group. Does this reduce how much you accomplish in this meeting? Yes, absolutely. You can accomplish much more by flopping the issue on the table, argue briefly about each others' opinion, and then the senior leader just decides. The shortfalls of this are obvious, and there are times as mentioned above, that the senior leader needs to make a decision in the absence of consensus so that the issue can be resolved. However, multiplication of groups requires multiplication of leaders who understand the biblical and relational principles that are foundational to directing a home group.

Adapted from "Effective Leaders Meetings," at www.xenos.org.

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