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Change the Environment to Change the Meeting

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Change the Environment to Change the Meeting

Early in my ministry life, I remember a weekly staff meeting around a large conference table in a cramped room (with fluorescent lights and leather-bound club chairs). At the time, I didn’t think much about the setting or the meeting outcomes, but in retrospect, I see how the two things are inextricably linked.

It’s clear that different rooms can often produce very different meeting outcomes. Perhaps you need to create a new leadership dynamic, cultivate a different kind of interaction, or facilitate a specific team collaboration goal. And it might be useful to tweak your team culture in some specific way. Whatever the objective, environmental factors play an important role.

Consider these scenarios and the problems they create:

  • The Capacity Problem — A large group of 40 people gathers in a room with a large conference table that only seats 20 people. The result? The other 20 people become second-tier participants in the meeting because they’re not at the first-tier table. The solution? Reduce the size of the meeting or find a bigger setting.
  • The Engagement Problem — A group meets together in a room with seating in rows and a lectern up front. The result? The leader talks a lot and group engagement suffers. The solution? Circle up and plan activities to “break the ice.”
  • The Formality Problem — A group gathers in a sterile room with tile floors, harsh lights, metal folding chairs and rectangular tables positioned in a square with a head and foot. The result? The formality of the setting impedes open conversation. The solution? Find a new room with couches and lounge chairs to encourage less formality and honest, open dialogue.
  • The Collaboration Problem — A large group of 45 meets in a room filled with round tables while the leader asks for group dialogue and feedback. The result? The leader does most of the talking and group collaboration falls flat. The solution? Form smaller groups with round tables and have table leaders give feedback to the larger group throughout the meeting.

These examples show just how much the environment shapes the meeting. It also tells us that meeting purpose is the most important factor in where you meet, who you invite and what you talk about—the meeting agenda.

Recognize that different meetings have different purposes: information, collaboration, planning, execution or vision. Depending on your objective, you’ll do best when you match the environment with the meeting’s purpose.

Consider these environmental factors that impact meeting goals and purpose:

  • Space — Is there enough space for everyone?
  • Furniture — Is the look and feel conducive for the meeting’s purpose?
  • Seating — Are the chairs comfortable and configured correctly?
  • Setup — Does the room setup contribute to the meeting’s goal?
  • Technology — Does the room have adequate sound and presentation tools?
  • Lighting — Is the room well lit?
  • Composition — Are the right people in the room?
  • Food — Is the meeting long (or early/late) enough to require coffee, water, or snacks?

So what’s the Big Idea?

Change the environment to change the meeting.

Resources

Dechurched America

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Dechurched America

Have you thought lately about the people you used to see at church? They may be folks who came regularly prior to COVID-19 and the resulting closures. They could be people who spent most of their time around the edges of church life—the ones who may not have fully committed to the cause of Christ.

Even now, you may be thinking about someone specific, or even more telling, someone who’s currently in danger of joining the growing ranks of those who used to go to church.

That topic is fully discussed in The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham. Their research describes the 40 million Americans who’ve left the church in the last 25 years: dechurched people that represent 16% of the adult population. Perhaps the most significant consequence of this seismic shift are its effects on subsequent generations.

What will the absence of faith, spiritual growth and meaningful church relationships mean for them? For a broad range of personal, relational, sociological and moral outcomes, it can’t be good.

The research in The Great Dechurching offers some very Big Ideas for churches:

  • Moving — When churchgoers move to a new city, they are removed from their previous rhythm of church attendance, relationships and accountability. It’s no surprise that many fall away and never find their way into a new church.
  • Discipleship — Shallow and nonexistent disciple making structures are the single most important explanation for American dechurching. Meaningful membership and a robust discipleship process are essential in twenty-first century churches.
  • Relationships — Everyone needs deep relationships for their emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. More than a club you join, church is a family with heartfelt connections and deeper than surface-level conversation.

Discipleship matters. A startling observation about the dechurched is the strong tendency for people to decouple from a local church when they move to a new city. This speaks to the habits and rhythm we establish in our lives, but more importantly, it tells us we haven’t discipled folks carefully enough to establish sustainable Christ-centered, missional maturity in their lives.

Our Great Commission mandate is to make disciples, which translates to clarity in our disciple-making process and the church’s primary role as an incubator for personal spiritual growth. When our churches fail on this point, we invariably leave many people in a vulnerable state, susceptible to a degraded culture and worldly decoys that pull them away from God and His church.

Relationships and biblical community matter almost as much. That means loving, caring, sharing and listening. So many dechurched people have experienced some form of relationship trauma, often unforced and unintentional, and usually the result of the broader cultural trend of less social interaction. Incidentally, this coincides with a general diminishing of relational intelligence and soft skills both inside and outside the church.

What’s our best response to this grim assessment of our current reality? We should reengage the people around us with our full relational attention, armed with the gospel and God’s loving embrace of those who are lost and adrift. Graham and Davis say that: “Some people need a nudge, others need a dinner table, and others need years of patient and prayerful, consistent movement into their lives.”

In other words, dechurched people need our time, our patience, our prayer and our devoted attention to forming real relationships and deeper connections.

All of this resonates with the bigger cultural conversation we’ve having about the loneliness epidemic, anti-socialization tendencies and increasing isolation felt by a growing number of Americans. A recent survey by the Harvard School of Education reports that 21% percent of adults have had “serious feelings of loneliness.”

Among people ages 18-29 the rate was 24% and among those ages 30-44 the rate was 29%. According to the survey, a leading cause of loneliness was “no religious or spiritual life” and “too much focus on one’s own feelings, and the changing nature of work” by around 50% of those surveyed.

So what’s the Big Idea?

A strong discipleship process and healthy, biblical community are what vibrant churches do to engage Christ-centered people and help them grow spiritually. And it’s the very thing that keeps churchgoers from joining the growing ranks of those who used to go to church.

Resources


Sources

Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023), 50.

“What Is Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and How Can We Fix It?” by Elizabeth M. Ross, Harvard Graduate School of Education (October 25, 2024), https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing- our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it.

Are You a Self-Aware Leader?

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Are You a Self-Aware Leader?

Are you a self-aware leader?

Answering yes means that you recognize what you’re good at and what you’re not. It means that you understand what you know and what you don’t. Most of all, it means that you’ve learned what you can do yourself and what you should give away to others.

Self-awareness multiplies your capacity to lead and makes you a more effective manager, relator and communicator. The personal and professional implications are staggering:

  • You understand the truth about yourself. You see your own strengths and weaknesses and confidently hire team members who compensate. You readily acknowledge the strength of the team over and above your own agenda.
  • You recognize how other people perceive you. You moderate your behavior with keen situational awareness. You are sensitive to team culture, work relationships and collaborative opportunities.
  • You see reality for what it is. There’s a ready willingness to explore, listen, measure and investigate. You listen to the truth and accept constructive criticism leading to better outcomes and greater effectiveness.
  • You have clarity about your environment. Where others see confusion and get lost in the whirlwind of day-to-day busyness, you have clarity about where you are and where you’re going.

What can you do to improve your self-awareness quotient? A few ideas include:

  • Assess yourself. Plato said it well, “know thyself.” Commit to learn more about your personality—your character, feelings, motives, habits and skills. Learn more about yourself with personal assessments such as DiSC, Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinder 2.0.
  • Engage a coach. There’s a reason that high capacity leaders and self-aware people have personal and professional life coaches. It works. Engaging a coach to ask probing questions from a neutral point of view leads to increased clarity and awareness.
  • Ask a co-worker. A sure sign of leadership maturity is a willingness to engage your supervisor in frank discussions about strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and workplace perceptions. If you have a good relationship with a supervisor, direct report or co-worker, then make yourself vulnerable enough to start an introspective conversation.
  • Talk to a friend. People who know you best are uniquely qualified to provide honest feedback on your self-awareness IQ.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Awareness about yourself and how you’re perceived by others is important. Self-awareness multiplies your capacity to lead and makes you a more effective manager, relator and communicator.

Resources

#imustconfess

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#imustconfess

#imustconfess that before Christ, I was lost and confused about my purpose and my place on this earth. It’s true that I had heard (and read) the words of Jesus Christ, but I didn’t know Him in a personal way.

I was 9 years old when I made Jesus Lord and Leader of my life. In that moment, my knees shook and I was overwhelmed by my own sin and guilt. I realized I was a sinner. I opened a Bible and read Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I embraced the truth in those words and turned away from my sin and toward Jesus. My life was changed!

Since meeting Jesus, I have no doubt about my future. I know that Jesus died for me and rose from the dead on the third day. Jesus is my Lord and Leader, and my relationship with Him defines my life. I still have struggles, ups, downs and everything in between, but Jesus puts it all in perspective. I know who I am and I know I belong to Jesus. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, and it’s what #imustconfess!

Scoreboards & Accountability

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Scoreboards & Accountability

If you’ve served or led for any length of time, then you’ve probably watched a key initiative come up short. Maybe a ministry plan was doomed from the start. Perhaps it was slowly and quietly smothered by competing priorities.

What happened? The whirlwind of day-to-day activities consumed most of your time and energy, leaving little margin for important and strategic things.

Ministry 4DX is the application of Franklin Covey’s 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) to church growth and revitalization. It leads your team to execute on your most important strategic priorities in the midst of the whirlwind. 4DX includes:

  • Discipline #1 – Focus on the wildly important
  • Discipline #2 – Act on the lead measure.
  • Discipline #3 – Create a compelling scoreboard.
  • Discipline #4 – Create a cadence of accountability.

Create a compelling scoreboard. Since each ministry area or department has 1 or 2 wildly important goals (WIGs), it makes sense that each team will use a scoreboard that measures important lead measures for those goals.

The key idea is to take weekly stock of several lead measures, then show the lag measure they impact. Over time, positive movement in the lead measures should impact the lag measure (attendance, participation, etc.) in the right direction.

For example, a departmental scorecard for community might have five lead measures for new leaders and groups that point to one lag measure—attendance. The team’s time and energy is spent on the first five items with the expectation that average attendance will go up.

Create a cadence of accountability. Each ministry area or department can schedule weekly LAUNCH meetings to help create a cadence of accountability.

Typical meetings are no more than 20 minutes and include quick reports from everyone. Here’s a typical agenda:

  • Pray for each other.
  • What are the 1-3 most important things I can do this week to impact the scoreboard?
  • Report on last week’s commitments.
  • Review and update the scoreboard.
  • Make commitments for next week.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Use 4DX to execute on your most important strategic priorities in the midst of the whirlwind. Create a compelling scoreboard and a cadence of accountability.

Resources

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