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Ideas to Revitalize Church Board Meetings
Tips to look past the "business items."
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For instance, Steve Douglass, president of Campus Crusade for Christ, spoke at my home church. It would have been a great opportunity to have a mini-training with elders on how to turn conversations into opportunities to share ones faith. Investing in the board shows them that they are appreciated and vital. Also, board members many times find that what they learn in a training session can be helpful in their work away from the church. Encourage DiscussionYou may have heard that in a group 20 percent of the people talk 80 percent of the time. My observation of church boards is that 20 percent of the people talk all the time and 80 percent of the people don't say a thing. Yet, people in the "silent 80 percent" often have some of the wisest input and best ideas. Here is a way to get 100 percent of the board members involved and contributing—break your board into small groups of 3-4 to discuss an issue. Then everyone is sharing ideas and offering opinions. The key is to have every group report back to the whole what conclusions, ideas or suggestions came out of the group. Everyone then feels they contributed and were heard. Trinity Presbyterian in Charlottesville, VA had grown over 15 years from a church plant of a few families, into a church averaging 1,000 each Sunday. The church board also grew from less then 10 to nearly 25. The discussion dynamics had changed significantly because of the increased size. The open forum approach had become frustrating and unwieldy. Once they saw the effectiveness of the small group discussion technique modeled during a training session, they latched onto it quickly. Self Evaluation EffectivePeople are used to performance evaluations at work, whether in the marketplace or in the church. However, few church or nonprofit boards evaluate themselves. Why is that? Somehow volunteers seem to be off limits, maybe because they are donating their time. Also, many wonder who does the evaluating. And of course, what person really wants to sit down with a volunteer and tell them how they are doing. The best way to do a performance evaluation of board members is to ask board members to evaluate themselves. That's right—do self-evaluations. Here is the key (which is patterned after the board evaluation forms in the NextLevel Leadership workshops for church and nonprofit boards):
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