The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
How to Make Church Staff Meetings More Engaging and Less Painful
Most church staff meetings lack energy and purpose, wasting valuable time and missing opportunities for team building and vision alignment. We explore six practical strategies to transform these gatherings from boring obligations into energizing huddles that your team will actually look forward to attending.
• Rethink the purpose - treat meetings as team huddles, not information dumps
• Start with energy by celebrating wins both big and small
• Make meetings interactive by engaging every voice through discussion and activities
• Use visuals and stories instead of reading reports word-for-word
• Focus on ministry impact rather than just logistics
• Build a feedback culture where team members can honestly share improvement ideas
• Consider changing meeting frequency if you're stuck in a rut
• Remember: if your meeting could have been an email, it probably should have been
Reach out to me at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com if you'd like me to speak to your team via Zoom or if you need help developing a healthy church staff culture. Our coaches and consultants at Chemistry Staffing can provide the outside perspective you need to take your next steps forward.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
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If we're honest, most church staff meetings are about as exciting as watching paint dry. What if they didn't have to be? Today we're going to talk through how to transform your weekly staff meetings from boring and obligatory to, hopefully, life-giving and energizing for your team. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders here at chemistrystaffingcom and I'm your host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We're here every Monday through Friday. For some, you get some Todd time. You get to have some encouragement and hopefully learn some new things about being on and leading a healthy church staff.
Speaker 1:All right, first of all, let's just be honest. Most of us don't like church staff meetings, and when you hear the words church staff meetings, maybe your eyes even roll a little bit. Does it feel more like a funeral than a pep rally? Maybe your eyes even roll a little bit. Does it feel more like a funeral than a pep rally? If your meetings are just long lists of updates and calendar reviews, you're probably most likely wasting your team's time and you're missing a huge opportunity for impact, and today I want to try and help you start to fix that. We can't do that in a six or seven minute podcast, but we'll get started anyway today and I'll show you how, hopefully, you can turn some of these boring meetings that you've been having into something that your team might actually even look forward to. So stick around and hopefully you and your team will say thank you for making our meetings much better.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's look at about six different things here that I think suggestions, ideas for you as you think about your next church staff meeting. First of all, it's just rethink the purpose. It's not a lecture, it's a huddle, okay. So start seeing your staff meetings as a team huddle, not a leadership dialogue, and not something that's mundane. Okay, this is your opportunity. This is your chance to align your vision and to build morale and to foster collaboration and not just distribute information. So if your meetings could have been an email, it probably shouldn't have been a meeting. Okay, let me repeat that because I think that's really good, solid advice. If your staff meeting that's regularly scheduled could have been an email, it probably should have been an email. It shouldn't have been a meeting, okay. So here's your pro tip for this area Start each meeting with a clear purpose each week.
Speaker 1:What do you need to solve? What do you need to celebrate? What do you need to decide? Okay, those are three really important things. So that's step number one.
Speaker 1:Step number two start with energy. Break the ice and celebrate some wins. And we talk about celebrating wins all the time here on the podcast, and you know why I keep talking about it? Because we suck at it. We don't do a very good job at celebrating wins in most of our churches.
Speaker 1:So kick things off with something human. Maybe it's a laugh, maybe it's a story, maybe it's a celebration. Maybe you highlight a win. Maybe it's a big win that you just had, but maybe it's a small win that nobody on your team even knows about. Maybe it's an email that you received or something that you heard somebody say that just made your day. Did a volunteer go above and beyond? Maybe that's something that you celebrate. Did someone crush their goals this past week? Something to celebrate, because this is going to set the tone. You're reminding everybody that what they do matters. And here's a bonus tip Maybe you rotate who shares the win of the week. It doesn't always have to come from you. Give somebody else a voice, because they're going to absolutely love to share a celebration with the rest of your team.
Speaker 1:All right, so that's step number two. Step number three make it interactive. Engage everybody, engage every voice. Nobody wants to be talked at, they want to be talked with. So there are tools online that you can use to gather some real-time feedback if you have a larger staff. But even if you're in person, have folks pull out their phones and you can use a voting-type app. There's a bunch of those out there. You can ask anonymous questions and you can use a voting type app. There's a bunch of those out there. You can ask anonymous questions and you'll get more honest feedback. So try role-playing some of these real-life scenarios that your staff face. It's fun and practical and it throws a curveball into everything and makes it very unpredictable, which creates some excitement.
Speaker 1:Okay, idea number four use some visual, visuals and stories to bring things to life. If you're still reading reports word for word, stop it, please stop it. Nothing can be more boring than going over the same report every week or every month or every quarter. Maybe you, you, maybe you get creative. Maybe you use some short videos, maybe you use some slides or even some testimonies from your church body to illustrate the impact that you're having. This goes back to the celebration piece. Right, visuals and narratives are going to stick in the brain, but bullet points just don't so. Do you want to discuss giving trends? Maybe show a graph. Want to highlight a discipleship win? Maybe share a personal story rather than just giving out information? And number five and we've got just one more of these. I think I've got six of them for you here today. Number five is focus on ministry impact, not just logistics. Now, yeah, you have to talk about schedules and calendars, but a lot of meetings just stop there. So maybe ask what's the why behind this event, or what's the why behind this event or what's the why behind this program, and then celebrate the impact that you have. Share testimonies we already talked about that Connect with it all back to your mission and remind your team. Sure, as staff, we have to do some of this administrative stuff, but you have to remember the administrative stuff allows us to do our kingdom work really well. Okay, and then, finally, number six we've talked about this a lot on the podcast as well Build a feedback culture.
Speaker 1:Everybody needs to have a voice. You need to ask your team regularly, even in your staff meetings, what would make these meetings better. You may not get people that want to pipe up in a public setting to say, hey, this sucks, we need to do this better. Maybe you use an anonymous forum or carve out five minutes at the end of every meeting for some honest feedback, or just say, hey, come talk to me and tell me how we can make this better, because here is honestly something that will build health into your team. It's this when people feel heard, they lean in and they feel valued.
Speaker 1:So don't just do meetings, try to improve them constantly, every time. It's so easy, particularly if you have regularly scheduled meetings, it's very easy to get into a rut. It could be that if your meetings are really boring and you're in a rut, maybe you just need to switch up the schedule. Maybe you need to not do them quite as often, maybe you need to do them more often. I don't know what your schedule is, but the bottom line is your meetings don't have to be boring. Matter of fact, they shouldn't be boring. They can't be boring. You'll lose your team. If they're boring, they can highlight your team's week. If you're intentional, okay. If you're intentional, okay.
Speaker 1:I hope this helped, because I know a lot of you are in charge of your staff meetings at your church. Any way that we can help you or if you just need a resource. Maybe you want somebody to come in and talk about Healthy Church Staffs at your next staff meeting, maybe on a Zoom call. I'm happy to do that. Reach out to me and say, todd, we'd love to have you come talk to our staff via Zoom. I would love to do that. Reach out to me anytime.
Speaker 1:Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. And if there's any way that I or anybody on my team here at Chemistry can help you either with your staff hiring or in just developing that healthy church staff culture, we have coaches and consultants that can walk alongside you and help you to get where you need to be from where you are. Sometimes it's hard to do that on your own, so sometimes an outside set of eyes and ears to say, hey, here's your next step. We're happy to do that. We do that quite often with churches. So reach out to me and we can start that conversation. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, thanks so much. Hope you have a great day. We're back here again tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you have a great day.
