Video Transcript: Meetings

We are now in number 19 of the 36 lectures in this practical ministries course,  and we're talking today about meetings. It is from chapter 12 of pastoring the  nuts and bolts before I get into that. For some reason, I was thinking last night  about what I said about leaving a church, and I think I left out something  important, and that is when I went through that whole list of all the reasons that I was moved from church to church. I want you to know that I never felt like a  failure in any of those cases, even though the people sometimes felt like they  just would do anything to get rid of me, I always felt like I was doing what God  wanted me to do. I had prayed through it, and I was confident about that. And I  remembered when Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. He told them, if you  go into a village and people don't listen to you there, they can shake the dust of  that village off your feet and go to another one. He didn't say, you failed if they  don't listen. He said, Go someplace where they will so you have to balance that.  You can't blame everything on the people, because sometimes you will make  mistakes. But I just wanted to pass that along. Don't feel like a failure if the  people don't necessarily go along with your ministry. All right, we are talking  today about meetings, and our key verse is Acts 15:6, the apostles and elders  met together to resolve this issue. This is again, the Jerusalem Council deciding  whether or not Gentiles, non Jewish people, had to be circumcised and follow  the the Old Testament law in order, in other words, become essentially Jews  before they could become Christians. And they decided that, as we said in the  lecture about authority and decision making, they decided that by having a  meeting, calling a council, getting a bunch of people together and talking it out  and seeking God's guidance, that's what meetings are for they are for getting  different people together and communicating. Now, sometimes there are issues  that you can deal with with a text or an email or a phone call, and if that's okay,  you don't need to get together face to face, but there are a lot of issues where  it's good to have all the people involved face to face, where they can hear and  see the reactions of each other and share different ideas and work together. So  that's what meetings are about in college, I studied engineering, and there was  one course that I took that was taught by the Dean of the engineering school,  and he taught us that in a big company, people from different departments talk  different languages when they were all speaking in this case, America, they  were all speaking English, but still, they don't understand each other. The design people don't understand the finance people, the manufacturing people don't  understand the marketing people, the legal department. Nobody understands  what they're talking about. They all think they're speaking the same language,  but they don't understand each other. And the problem is they all have to work  together, and that requires communication and planning and problem solving,  and those things require meetings. So the goal of this particular course was to  learn to interpret all of those languages to where we could explain each to the  others. And sometimes it's even funnier than that. I had a summer job working 

construction, and one of the engineers was from India, and one of the foreman  came from the part of the country, way out in the country, up in the mountains,  where he spoke with an accent that I could hardly understand. And of course,  the the engineer spoke with an accent from India, and they could not they were  both talking English, but they could not understand each other at all. And when  they. Needed to communicate. They would call me over, and Sri would say  something, and Billy would look at me and say, What did he say? And then I  would repeat the same words in English, in the same language, but Billy could  understand it. And then Billy would answer back, and Sri would look at me and  not understand it, and I would have to repeat it again in English so that the same language Billy spoke, so that Sri could understand it. Churches ministries also  have different kinds of people, not the different I mean, you may have people  with different physical languages, but but people who think differently, people  who who use different kinds of words to express what they're saying, and the  pastor, the ministry leader, the Minister is often the one that has to interpret so  that is a big part of your responsibility in a meeting. Now, a couple lectures ago,  I think when we were talking about decision making, we talked about the  difference between vision and management, just a little bit the strategy versus  tactics, big picture people versus detail people, the dreamers versus the  planners. Different kinds of people think in different ways and get things done in  different ways. You have vision people, and you have management people.  Visionaries are impatient with the details of managing. They have a big picture.  And they have this great idea in their head, this vision of what they want to get  done, and they put it out there, and they just kind of expect that it's going to  happen hands on. People want to know the details. They want to Okay, how are  we going to do this? What are the nuts and bolts of how we're going to get this  done? And they can sometimes feel like visioning is unrealistic nonsense. And  you can have this in a church and the pastor can get stuck in the middle of it.  The pastor's on the phone with his secretary. He's climbing out the window, and  he has a sign up, a list of proposed budget cuts, and he's on the phone, and  he's saying, Mrs. Simmons, the program people are at my East door, and the  building people are at my West door, the visionaries in the East and the  management coming in on the west I'm going to lunch. He's going to lunch. Out  the window. He doesn't want to run into either of them. One of the first things  you need to do is recognize which kind of a person you are. Are you a visionary  or are you an operations person, a detail person, recognize which kind you are.  Neither one is better than the other. All are necessary, but you need to make  allowances for the other kind. You need to recognize that not everybody thinks  the way you do, and people who don't think the way you do, people who don't  approach problems the way you do, are not wrong. You just need to learn how  to work together, and knowing which one you are will help you make sure that  you make allowances for the other kind, because you'll just automatically make 

allowances for the kind of people that think the way you do. Different kinds of  meet of people, different kinds of goals for meetings trying to figure out the  direction. The big picture is one kind of meeting, trying to figure out the details of how we're going to do it. That's a different kind of meeting. I call them vision  meetings and management meetings. You could look at them as where to go  versus how to get there, or what to do versus how to do it. Figure out which kind of a meeting you need to do to have, which kind of people, what kind of problem are you going to solve? Is it a direction problem, or is it a detail problem? And  structure your meeting accordingly. Invite the people who need to be there, and  if possible, don't invite the people who will get it off track. And either kind of  person can get the other kind of meeting off track. If you're having a vision  meeting where you're looking for the big picture and a detail person is there,  they're constantly going to be interrupting and asking. How do we do that? But  what about this? But what about that? Those things are important, but you have  to wait until you get the vision hammered out and finalized, the operations  meetings, the management the detail meetings are also just as necessary and  just as important. But if you have a visionary, a big picture person, in that  meeting, they will either fall asleep and interrupt everybody with their snoring  because they're not interested in the details, or they'll constantly be saying, Hey, wait, I've got an idea. What if we go off in this other direction, and that will just  throw the meeting off. So don't try to combine the different types of meetings.  And that is just a an example that's one of the most important ways, or one of  the most common ways, combining different kinds of meetings, inviting the  wrong kinds of people to the wrong kinds of meetings is one of the most  common ways to violate one of the most important rules about working with any  kind of volunteer organization, any kind of people who are giving their time and  actually in a business, it doesn't make sense to pay people to Do things that  they shouldn't be doing either. But don't waste people's time. Don't waste  people's time. Don't ask people to come to a meeting where they're just going to sit there and feel like, Why in the world am I here? Or get frustrated? So that  kind of raises a question, Should you then have your meetings only when they're needed, or is there value to having a regularly scheduled meeting? Most  organizations, I think, have at least some meetings on a regular schedule. They  have a monthly board meeting, or whatever it might be. And these can be good  and they can be bad, depending on the problem to be addressed, depending on  the the purpose, what you're going for, what, who's going to be there. Vision,  people may need a scheduled meeting to get some thinking and drinking,  thinking and dreaming, thinking and dreaming. You're gonna have to get a drink  here. Vision, people may never even think about some of these big questions  until you get them all together and ask them the question in a meeting. So they  may see the meetings as where the work gets done. And if you don't call a  meeting, they never think about those issues. And so the visioning doesn't 

happen. Management people, on the other hand, operations people, detail  people generally, should only meet when it's necessary to get them together for  communication, to let them know something in a way that can't be easily  communicated some other way, or where you think there will be a lot of  questions for clarification or alterations, consultation when they need all ask  each other certain things to help each other do their particular part, cooperation  so they can schedule, okay, how can I help you Do this and that? Management  type people tend to see meetings as interruptions to their work. Here I was  getting this done and it was important stuff, and I was I was getting it done, and  you stopped me and made me come sit in this meeting. That's how they tend to  look at it. So know which kind of people you have and which kind of meeting you need, and try not to waste people's time. Okay, have you ever been in a bad  meeting? The odds are if you've been in more than one meeting in your life,  you've probably been in a bad meeting, because most meetings, quite frankly,  are not run very well. But there can be excellent meetings. Some meetings can  be very, very worthwhile. And after 38 years of experience, I've put together  what I think are the elements of a good meeting. These are in more detail in the  book, but make sure that people know, the people who need to be there, the  people who are involved should know that the meeting is there. When and  where and why and what they need to be prepared for attendance. Who's going  to be there, who needs to be there, who doesn't need to have their time wasted,  leadership, who's going to be in charge of the meeting, who's going to be  running it? The Minister should not always run the meeting. Very often it's it's  best if they don't different forms of church government, which is polity, is the  word for a form of church government, the way that you do things, different,  different polities do different have meetings in different ways. And in some of  them, there are at least certain meetings where the minister is in charge of it. In  my denomination, there was one particular meeting where the minister was in  charge. That was the meeting for choosing the people, the church officers are  nominating slate to be elected for church officers, but not any others. Other  polities do it differently. So if you are not leading the meeting, be careful about  who it is that is going to be leading the meeting, because sometimes you can  get people who just like to hear themselves talk. The pastor is the one there  looking shocked, and all the other me members are asleep, and the leader  standing up there saying it's been moved that we adjourn. Is there a second? In  other words, the pastor suggested, isn't that time we quit this meeting and look  at the clock. It's 11 o'clock at night, but they're going by Robert's Rules of orders, which we'll talk about in a moment, and that requires somebody else to say, Yes, I agree, and they're all asleep. So the leader goes on and says, No, the motion  dies. For lack of a second. Let's continue with my report. You don't want to be in  the position of that Pastor saying, oh my goodness, look at this. How am I going  to get out of this? We're going to be here all night. And so Robert's Rules of 

Order is a set of called parliamentary procedures, rules for how to have  appropriate discussions and voting and all of that kind of thing for a meeting of a very large number of people. It's used in or something very similar, used in  Congress in America, used in Parliament, I believe in anyway, it's called  parliamentary procedure in various different countries. The problem is a lot of  people try to bring those rules down to a very small meeting. And you can see  this meeting had eight people in it. I've known meetings with three people where they tried to follow Robert's Rules of orders and one seconds and points of  orders and substitute motions and amendments and all kinds of stuff. And if  you've got a meeting that is the size that most of your meetings probably ought  to be, you don't need to be nearly that formal. Just let people talk. Have  somebody in charge to keep people in line. Not let the the somebody go off on a red herring, get off of, off track of what you're there for. But in general, you can,  you will find that in general, most of you will wind up agreeing on most of the  points in your meeting. Pretty much everybody there, if it's a really contentious  point and you need to take a vote, and it comes out to be a very close vote, it  may be better to just put off the decision for another time if you possibly can,  rather than have half of your leaders opposed to what you're doing and therefore maybe not even supporting it, not even working with you on it. So leadership is  important. God presence. Once you the first three things notice, attendance,  leadership happened before you get to the meeting. There, there. Once you get  into the meeting, you already know who the leader is, who's there. So the first  thing you want to do once you're there, and it begins with prayer before hand, is  invite God to be present in a special way, recognize that he is there, recognize.  that when two or three of you are gathered in His name, He is there in their  midst. And that doesn't just apply to a worship service. If you're gathered for  ministry decision making, you are certainly in his name. You are certainly there  as his followers. And so invite God's presence and seek God's guidance in your  meetings. An agenda is usually a good idea. It doesn't have to be real formal,  but an agenda is a list of the things you're going to talk about, the decisions that  need to be made. Sometimes it will list a person who's going to who's been,  been doing something, and is going to give a report on it, and so you have the  name of that person next to the item on the agenda. It's good if that can be  distributed ahead of time so people know what to be prepared for. It should go  out as part of the notice or the invitation, actually, or at least some form of it.  Meetings can be structured in different ways. There's kind of a standard  structure, at least in American church meetings, I don't know about others, but a  standard structure where they start with reading the minutes of the last meeting,  and we'll get to minutes is just the records, the notes that were taken to make  sure that everybody agrees that that's correct, then getting a report from the  finance committee, then going down a list of old business that was left over from a previous meeting, and then asking if there's Any new business that's not on 

the agenda or dealing with any new business it is, and then asking if there's  anything else, and then setting notifying the next meeting, and then moving on,  that can generally work pretty well, but it's not set in stone. There's no place in  the Bible that says you have to have the meetings starting off with approving the minutes, so structure the meeting according to what you're trying to do. The kind of meeting I just said, is much better for a an operations kind of meeting, or a an official these are going to be the official notes that go in the records in case we  need to look at them 10 years from now. Kind of meeting that may be a very bad structure for a visionary meeting. Decision making can be done by a number of  ways, the most popular, I think nowadays, probably is voting. But as I already  said, it's it's best if you can just keep talking it out and then wind up with the  person in leadership saying, at some point, it sounds like this is what we're all  saying. As a matter of fact, if you look in Acts 15 in the Jerusalem Council, that's  what James did. He listened to the whole thing, and then he stood up and he  said, This is what it seems like we're hearing here. It seems good to the Holy  Spirit, and to me that that this is what we're all agreeing on, and he stated it, and everybody in a nice, clear way. And there was opportunity, if anybody it's not  stated there, but I'm sure there was opportunity. If anybody wanted to object and say, No, I don't think that's what we said. Then to modify the statement, but the  leader should feel free to say, Okay, I think this is what we're hearing. Have I got this right? Does everybody agree that this is what we're we're agreed on that  can save a whole lot of time if you just do that instead of waiting for it to go all  through a bunch of Robert's Rules of Orders. Now, voting is can be a good way  to get a decision done, but it can be more of a means of revealing where the  splits are, revealing the divisions, the things that need to be dealt with. I think I  put in the book The story of the pastor's in the hospital, sick, and the chair of the of the board comes and says, Pastor, we I want you to know that the board  hopes that you're going to get well soon, by a vote of five to four, meaning four  of the people hope he doesn't get well soon. So decision making, figure out what works best for you. And it may be that in your setting, your culture, there some  other way that works. Go with it. Record keeping is very important. I don't know  how many times I've gone into a meeting and we said, Well, okay, it's time for  our annual such and So how did we do that last year? And nobody could  remember, or we said, last time, we said we were going to do this, and I think  we said we were going to do that on July 23 and somebody else said, No, I  thought it was June 23 and then they get back and forth, and nobody knows,  and the only way those can be resolved, other than having a whole previous  meeting all over again, is to look at the records. So it's important to have  somebody appointed to write down the records of what goes on in the meeting,  and then that's the the purpose of getting the minutes approved the at the  beginning of the next meeting, so everybody can agree. But for corrective, if the  Secretary got something wrong, record keeping, my goodness, we're running 

out of time. Okay, assignments. Make sure that people know who is expected to  do what and when, and that they're willing to do it. Make sure you have plans in  place for whatever needs to happen next, if you need to, if this is a  subcommittee that needs to go to the whole church board to get approved or  needs to get approved by somebody else, set that up. Make sure you you are if  you need some kind of approvals for this kind of decision, make sure you get  that and oversight of who's going to be, making sure it all follows through the  way that we agreed. Report to the congregation, let the people in your ministry  know what's going on, what you're planning to do, and then set a time to  evaluate later on. Did this go the way we wanted it to? What are we going to do  about it? One quick word, there is the meeting, and then there is the meeting  after the meeting. In America, we call those parking lot meetings. People are in  there the meeting, and they all go through everything. And then they meetings  over, and they go out, and as they're going to their cars, they stand around in  the parking lot in little groups, and they rehash the whole thing. And sometimes  it can be very important to know what's going on in there, because sometimes it  can be a little group of dissatisfied people who are making plans for how to  undermine and undercut and make sure that terrible decision that the whole  group made doesn't actually happen. So pay attention to the parking lot  meetings. And of course, start in prayer, end in prayer, soak the whole thing in  prayer, and I will see you next time