Restoring Kingdom Builders

What were you attracted to as a teenager?  Sports?  Some cute guy or girl?  A cool car?  An athlete or rock star?

I was attracted to church business meetings.

I know that sounds really strange, but let me tell you why I was drawn to those meetings.

The church I attended had a business meeting periodically on a Wednesday night after prayer meeting.  While my peers played in the parking lot or went home to watch TV, I sat in the back of the worship center and watched “mature” Christian men and women act like kids.  Arguments usually broke out.  Tempers almost always flared.  It was quite entertaining at times, especially since I knew so many of the players.  On one famous occasion, after disagreeing vehemently with someone, the church secretary stomped down the center aisle, opened her office door, and slammed it – hard.  That was the last time anybody saw her at that church for years.

There was something inherently destructive about those meetings – and yet they were exciting.  If you were a church member, you were expected to attend.  As the years went on, I moved closer to the front of the auditorium so I could be in the middle of the action.

When I became the pastor of a small church in Northern California, our church had business meetings once per month after the Wednesday night service.  We voted on nearly everything.  Those meetings made me nervous because the unexpected usually happened.

When our church later merged with a sister church five miles away, I became the pastor of that new body.  Soon afterwards, at another infamous business meeting, a board member yelled across the room at the wife of another board member.  It was embarrassing for everybody.

I began to ask myself, “What is it about these meetings that brings out the worst in everybody?  Why do people’s personalities flip when they come to these meetings?  Why do we even have these nefarious meetings in the first place?”

The meetings seemed to be patterned more after the American town hall model than anything we find in the New Testament.

So I began talking to pastor friends, and in the fourth year of my ministry, I hit upon an approach that minimized the conflict in those meetings.  Here’s what we did:

*We changed the terminology.  A “business” meeting sounded like it was only about money.  We replaced that term with “congregational” meeting instead, a term that many churches use.  It said who should attend (the congregation) and the ultimate process used (congregational voting).

*We decided to hold an informational meeting one week before every congregational meeting.  We introduced every issue at the informational meeting that would be decided upon at the congregational meeting: potential board members, budgets, and any other pertinent matters.  And we let non-members attend the informational meeting (after all, they served and gave offerings, too) although only members voted at the congregational meeting.  For a biblical example of holding two meetings to make decisions, look again at Acts 6:1-6.

*We never used Robert’s Rules of Order at the informational meetings.  Different leaders of the church, including me, made presentations to the congregation.  Then at the congregational meeting the following week, we used Robert’s Rules exclusively for voting.  Since hardly anyone in the church knew the rules that were originally created in 1876, those who did ended up controlling the meetings.  So we just eliminated the confusion and encouraged people to talk in an orderly fashion.

*We presented simple etiquette before each meeting, such as, “Use the microphone if you want to say something” or “Feel free to be open and honest but don’t say anything you may later regret.”  While participants had strong opinions – and we wanted to hear them – the way the leaders handled matters up-front usually kept everyone at peace.

*People relaxed at the informational meetings because they didn’t have to vote that day.  They had time during the next seven days to think and pray and talk to others first.  And if conflict broke out at the informational meetings – and it rarely did – church leaders had an entire week to listen to people’s concerns and answer their questions before any vote took place – and if need be, the meeting could be cancelled before anything ominous happened.  By the way, I believe that church leaders should always know the outcome of any churchwide vote in advance, and this system allows leaders to do just that.

*When we met at the congregational meeting to make a decision, we always voted by written ballot.  We never accepted motions where someone called for a voice vote and said, “I move we make it unanimous.”  If God’s people are to vote their conscience, they need to be able to vote “no” as well as “yes” – and most people are uncomfortable voting “no” if they are in the minority.  These meetings typically lasted only ten minutes and were held on Sundays after worship.

*We encouraged a thorough discussion of the issues.  I’m a firm believer that churches should have few secrets.  While pastors cannot ethically discuss what people say in counseling sessions, and church leaders should never share confidences that ruin the reputations of others, I wanted us to be open about everything else.  Even salaries?  I took a class from Leith Anderson where he said that if a person at his church really wanted to know the salary of a pastor or staff member, that person had to first sit through a one-hour presentation so the numbers could be shared in context – and only then would they be given the amount.  I can live with that.

*This system worked beautifully for 24 years of ministry.  During that time, the churches I served as pastor went through some great adventures, like selling our property, relocating, and building a new worship center.  The leaders made well thought-out presentations and asked God’s people if they had questions and concerns, and sometimes people had plenty of input.  The leaders stayed as long as necessary – and no one called for the question, tabled a motion, or recommended we be dismissed to end the proceedings.  Non-anxious leaders tend to produce a non-anxious church body.

If you’re in a church where the public meetings produce conflict rather than harmony, I suggest you implement the above process into your church’s life.  While too many meetings can be a waste of time, it’s better to have two meetings and enjoy peace than it is to jam everything into one meeting and leave people anxious, confused, and upset.

1 meeting for discussion + 1 meeting for decisions = an informed, calm, and united church family