How to Keep Those Leadership Meetings Alive

How’s the leadership team going these days? Are you having trouble finding time for each other? Is getting the business of the fellowship out of the way a burden? Do you find yourself at the end of your executive committee meeting every week with little time left to pray? Do the team members know each other? Trust each other? Love and serve each other?

Facing questions like these in an honest, realistic manner can be hard. This article shares how the structure of exec meetings at Rhodes Christian Fellowship (RCF) in Memphis, Tennessee, has promoted an efficient and open-ended way of handling business items, encouraged community, and given us time for Bible study as a team.

It’s important to consider the structure that we operate in because the very context of our time spent together will shape all the details of the event. You know this because you put so much effort into a healthy, energetic, Christ-centered structure for each of your large-group meetings and small-group Bible studies. We need to apply the same thinking towards our leadership team meetings.

It’s hard for leaders, just as human beings, to stay focused for long meetings. This is especially true when they seem to ramble on and on. What can we do to promote community in the exec and, at the same time, get all the business items taken care of?

The first variable is time. Each member of the executive team needs to see the fullness of their responsibility in leading a Christian organization. They cannot squeeze in leadership of the chapter amid a dozen other commitments. Each of us needs to begin with the understanding that leading a chapter requires a significant time involvement.

But second, we need to honor the time that each leader is committing. How can we avoid squandering that time? One way is to schedule the business items concerning the fellowship at a different time from a meeting focused on the communal needs of the executive team.

At Rhodes Christian Fellowship we have set aside Sunday lunches as a time for us to meet and talk about the business items of the fellowship—planning an upcoming dance party, checking up on how small groups are going, delegating a person to plan a social event for after our large-group meeting. Sunday afternoons are a time when the Rhodes College campus is fairly quiet. The burdens of assignments due for Monday still seem distant yet we are awake and energized from being at church.

This is also the perfect time for other members of the fellowship to come join us and contribute their input. Let me list just a few positive changes their input has led to:

Displaying worship lyrics via Powerpoint®. This gives greater visual appeal and flexibility.

Production of humorous, Scripture-based, well-liked skits at large group.

A dance party in November themed “The First Christmas Party of the Year.”

A discussion time the day after large group to reflect on the talk from the night before.

As new ideas are suggested, we almost always respond with, “That’s a great concept! How would you like to help put it into action?” This keeps the leadership team from being burned out with more to do and gives away significant ownership to the rest of the body of Christ in RCF. Having an open business meeting has placed the leadership team on an equal playing field with the rest of the fellowship.

We hold our Bible study and sharing time later that night. A real advantage is that we can focus on developing community without the burdens of the fellowship on our shoulders; they’ve already been discussed. To return to the idea expressed earlier—that being on the exec requires a significant commitment—we have agreed to set aside two hours each Sunday night to spend with each other.

The first hour is spent sharing about our past week. With only six of us, we’re able to go fairly deep in that time frame. And after we have spent time sharing with each other, supporting each other, and developing more authentic community we are at a prime place to move into our Bible study. (We take a short break between the two elements of this time for snacks. Two hours is a long time to remain focused, so a break in the middle makes the whole time more enjoyable.)

This common time together, studying issues of leadership, community, service, social justice and other crucial biblical issues, has helped us not only become emotionally integrated as a team but also to be on the same page spiritually. Each of us has learned to appreciate this time in God’s Word as crucial to the functioning of our team. Without periodic correction from the Bible, we are likely to get into dysfunctional dynamics as a team; with biblical teaching we are motivated to grow both individually and collectively.

Hopefully your leadership team can benefit from the way that we at Rhodes are scheduling our meetings. Scheduling business items, personal sharing, and Bible study into three distinct times has benefited us in profound and significant ways. We hope the method we have stumbled upon may be of use to your leadership team as well.

—Carson Weitnauer is a junior philosophy major at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. He loves to participate in Ultimate Frisbee, hike, read, write and play guitar.