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How can you lead a great committee or staff meeting? And how can you influence a meeting for the good when you’re not running it? Bill and I talk about purpose, organization, and most importantly, energy – with a side of fried chicken and social connection. (Plus the important question: should you forward this episode to your head of staff?)
Remember, you can scroll down for a transcript if that’s your style.
About Called – At the Intersection of Life and Ministry
For 50 years between them, Pastor Bill Smutz and musician Sarah Bereza have survived and thrived in churches big and small, urban and rural, good and not so good. With generous hearts and healthy boundaries, they share practical advice for church staff about working smart, cutting out the bs, and embracing the good in ministry. New episodes on 1st and 3rd Tuesdays.
Check out all the Called podcast episodes here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Transcript of Called Ep. 9: Great Church Meetings (Yes, They’re Possible!)
Bill Smutz: Welcome to called a podcast where we explore the intersection of ministry and the rest of our lives as church workers.
Sarah Bereza: I’m Sarah Bereza. Join us on the first and third Tuesdays as we talk about cutting out the bs and embracing the good. Between the two of us, we have ministered in churches for over 50 years and we haven’t burnt out yet.
Bill Smutz: I am Bill Smutz. I am a Presbyterian pastor, so most of my service has been in Presbyterian congregations. Though the last few years I’ve been serving as a interim transitional pastor in United Church of Christ congregations. Large churches, small churches in between churches. If they pay, I’ve been there.
Sarah Bereza: Meanwhile, if they hire organists, I’ve been there. I’m a church musician, and I’ve worked in a lot of different denominations. I’m currently working in a United Church of Christ congregation.
Bill Smutz: Today we are talking about something that seems really mundane, and yet is so crucial to the life of those who work in the churches. And that’s how to do good meetings, fruitful meetings, faithful meetings, meetings that you don’t want to stick a pencil in your eye because you’re so bored in the middle of it. Meetings that help churches move towards that future where God is calling them.
Sarah Bereza: And these meetings could be committee meetings, council meetings, staff meetings where you got a group of people with one person who’s at least on paper is the leader.
Bill Smutz: All those other task force meetings, those groups that come together just for something, some special purpose. Any kind of meeting in a church.
Sarah Bereza: But not a meeting, as in, here’s our worship service. A meeting, not a Meeting House meeting.
Bill Smutz: That’s a different kind of meeting.
Three Key Elements: Purpose, Organization, Energy
Sarah Bereza: Yes. So we’re going to talk about three main areas today. We’re going to talk about the purpose of meetings. And we’re going to talk about organization of meetings. And we’re going to talk about energy. Because that’s really important, especially if you don’t want to put a pencil in your eye.
Bill Smutz: Well it does take some energy to put a pencil in.
Purpose – Not As Obvious as It Seems
Sarah Bereza: Right? So let’s let’s start out by talking about purpose and why purpose isn’t as obvious as you think it would be. Cause I think in some ways that seems like a kinda dumb place to start. Well, don’t we know the purpose? We’re having a staff meeting, we’re supposed to talk about our staff stuff or we’re having a committee meeting. This is the worship committee. We’re going to talk about worship stuff. And so you would think that you know what the purpose is. But I don’t think that that’s really a self evident kind of thing.
Bill Smutz: I agree with you. I think we often equate purpose with tasks to be accomplished. So we need to plan a worship service, or we need to kind of plan our educational focus for the next year. And so that we think of that as our purpose of the meeting. And I think we really have to take a step back and start in a church hopefully with what is the mission and vision that’s driving this particular congregation? Where does the leadership board, or the congregation as a whole believe that the Holy Spirit is calling them. And how have they tried to capture that sense of call in writing. What are those statements – hopefully pithy, hopefully not too long – that focus on what’s this church trying to be about.
Bill Smutz: And then you can kind of take the next step to, okay, if our committee is in charge of, let’s pick on worship and education cause we’ve been talking about that this morning. Then then how do we understand our work as the worship and education committee based on the mission and vision of the congregation. And I think if we can start with that larger purpose, then hopefully the reason for the meeting and the scope of topics for the meeting or areas to be covered become much clearer. And that’s different than just here’s the programs we’re trying to figure out, or to fit some kind of curricula into. When we enter into a meeting and have that larger sense, I think it makes the meeting – it’s just going to be a better meeting. We know where we’re going or what our ultimate goal could be, should be.
Sarah Bereza: And even if you know where you’re going, that doesn’t mean you can’t take a little side trip off into whatever that little detail is that you really do have to figure out. It’s not like just because you know where your ultimate goal is, doesn’t mean that you can’t deal with the minutia that sometimes has to be done.
Bill Smutz: Correct. I mean you should never see things as set in concrete. If we’re going to take the Holy Spirit seriously, we’ve got to believe that in the midst of a particular meeting, even if we’ve got great purpose from the mission and vision of the church, the Spirit may carry the body, that collective group in a particular direction or an unexpected direction at that meeting.
Is Social Connection a Valid Purpose?
Sarah Bereza: Hmm. Yeah. One thing that Bill and I have different feelings on – but I think we’re both actually aiming in the same direction – is if we’re thinking about purpose, we’re also thinking about social connection and whether the purpose of meetings is for social connection. And so I want Bill to start for us, because I have a slightly different viewpoint. But I think ultimately we’re actually on the same page here.
Bill Smutz: I think that meetings that become social time are a waste of time. And that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t connect with one another as you’re getting into your meeting, but if the committee meetings of a church are just an opportunity for people who don’t get to see each other very often to get together and check in on each other’s lives or to get together and gossip, then I think the church has lost a great deal. And that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be personal connections, that you shouldn’t, hey, how’s so and so or, or what’s going on in your life. But if that’s really the true interest in people gathering, if they ignore what they’re there to do, just so they can talk to each other. One, you don’t get much done. Two, the committee becomes kind of clique-ish. There isn’t a whole lot of room for new people to come in, and be embraced in the purpose that they’re attempting to achieve.
Sarah Bereza: I’m thinking of two different things here. One, I’m thinking about staff meetings, and how they’re a great social point. So let’s, let’s come back to staff meetings. But I’m thinking about committee meetings. I’m thinking of one particular congregation where I worked – and we don’t really get into too many details on the congregations where we worked, cause you know, each congregation’s business is their business. But basically it was an extremely dysfunctional church, and the committee was just one dysfunctional element in a very dysfunctional system. And I was, you know, a 10 hour a week organist and I was like, well, what can I do to help this place. And I very deliberately moved them in the direction of social connection because there wasn’t social connection. Like they couldn’t even have a conversation in a committee because they couldn’t even have a, Oh, so how’s it, how, how’s it going? How are your kids doing? They couldn’t even have that basic social, you know – the kind of conversation you’d have with your dental hygienist. They couldn’t even have that conversation.
Sarah Bereza: And so it was like, well, how can you possibly talk about, “where are we going as a church?” If you can’t just say, hey, how are you? So, the first thing I did, is I got them all to come over to dinner at my house. I was like, I will make you fried chicken. Come and eat. And I was amazed at how suddenly people were very vulnerable in my little apartment living room in a way that they weren’t in the fluorescently lit room where we worked. And so then the second thing I did was I got this group to meet, not at the church – but it was a neighborhood church. So we met at a cafe that was very nearby, an hour early, and it was a place where you could drink, you could get a meal, you could get coffee, you could get tea. It was a place where you could have alcoholic drinks, but it wasn’t a bar. So it was a very nice, you could spend $2 and get a cup of tea.
Bill Smutz: So wine helps a meeting, is that what you’re saying?
Sarah Bereza: Yes. So but we purposely also met an hour early so people could come, people could not come. And so there wasn’t pressure, but most people showed up that hour early and we ended up having dinner or drinks together and then went into our committee meeting. And yeah, our committee meetings were a little bit louder because some people had a drink or two. But it did such a wonder for the baseline ability of people to talk to each other. Because that act of being in community with each other made them in community with each other. And no, it did not fix all the dysfunction in the church. The problems are ongoing. But in that little microcosm of the church, that kind of like stepping back and saying we’ve got to have the social connection first and foremost before we can even get into the committee. I think that that most committees would not need that kind of thing. But maybe some meetings really do need that.
Bill Smutz: Well, and I think you’re really pointing to a reality that’s critical for a church to function as a faith community. There has to be some knowledge of each other and some concern for each other. And I think where I get frustrated is when committee meetings are the only place that happens. And all the things you’re describing need to be part of the life of the church. And if we want our committee or team meetings to be fruitful, faithful, useful, then we need that foundation to build upon. And if it doesn’t exist, it shouldn’t really be the committee meeting. It shouldn’t be. But I understand why you started where you did it. And it makes a lot of sense. And perhaps part of, well, I know what we’re, part of what we’re saying about a committee meeting is there’s a lot of stuff that has to happen before a group of people ever comes together in a room to make a meeting meaningful and useful to that particular group and to the congregation as a whole.
Staff Meetings – What Are THOSE For?
Sarah Bereza: So let’s think about staff meetings because I have two opposing things going on when we’re talking about like social connection and the purpose of a meeting. On one hand, I’m thinking of staff meetings where I have just thought, couldn’t we just cut this meeting in half and then go have our chatty coffee time. Like I would love to hang out and have a good time with you guys but not in our staff meetings. So I’ve been in meetings like that and now in the staff meetings we have – Bill and I both work in the same church – and the staff meetings that we currently have here, we have lunch together for about a half an hour, and then the following staff meeting, which lasts an hour and a half to two hours or so, depending on what we have going on. Throughout that meeting, there is that freedom to be sociable in it. We’ve had a social time, but we’re also still, you know, something might come up, we might tell a personal story. It’s not that we can’t be chatty in the staff meeting. And I’m not quite sure what the difference is. I don’t know why, for me as the person who’s not in charge of leading the staff meeting, setting the agenda, that kind of thing. I don’t actually know why I felt so differently about the social element in a staff meeting. Maybe some of it is just general goodwill amongst staff members. It’s just easier to, you know, you want to be chatting with people if you’re getting along, but I’m not really sure like why that is.
Bill Smutz: I think there’s a number of dynamics at play here. You know, we’re four people. We’re not a huge number. And I think we share some deep interest in the wellbeing of this congregation – and it hopefully should be the case in any staff meeting. So part of it is the attitude that we bring to the table. Part of it is that we get along, that we like each other as people, and have learned to trust each other as colleagues.
Bill Smutz: And I think that makes a difference in staff meeting here. But it’s important that we bring some energy to the table.
Energy – Maybe the Most Important Relational Element
Sarah Bereza: Let’s talk about energy now.
Bill Smutz: We don’t come and say, oh, what are we going to do now? We come with some purpose. I think we try and bring our a game to the table. And that energy is important. We feed off of each other when we’re energetic. If I, as the leader of the staff team came in and was grumbling and upset about something or sleepy or whatever, you all are gonna pick up on that and reflect that at some level. And so I think it’s important for me to come in – be genuine. I mean, I don’t say come in and be fake. But to come in and be interested and, and be glad for the time together.
Sarah Bereza: Curiosity!
Bill Smutz: Curiosity, love that. Say more.
Sarah Bereza: Yeah. Well, I think that if you’re genuinely interested in what other people have to say, it does perk you up. Like it wakes you up, it engages you, even if it’s not your best day of the week, even if you’re tired. I’m recording this the night after having a child be sick. I’m really tired right now, but I’m also really curious about this topic and I’m genuinely interested in what’s going on. And I think about curiosity in church meetings. Obviously I lead the musical meetings, but I’m often in a place say on a committee meeting, where I’m a participant and I’m not a leader. So I’m not the one necessarily setting the tone. But I, as a participant, by using curiosity and a lot of body language, I can affect the mood in a room in a really positive way.
Sarah Bereza: And I do this really intentionally – this isn’t a reflection of where we are, this is just a reflection of committee meetings in general. You often have just a variety of personalities on committee meetings, and they don’t necessarily gel all the time. And that’s just how life is. That’s how people are. And I very deliberately use my body language and my attention to focus in on people when they’re talking and nod my head and smile at them and just engage like an empathetic person. And you know what? That makes a big difference in the energy of a meeting. Because if you’re a committee member saying, well, I think blah, blah, and like everybody’s looking at their phones – well that doesn’t feel good. The energy goes down. You feel like an idiot. (You know, maybe you are, but you know, hopefully not.) And so by bringing that kind of energy, by just bringing that curiosity to the meeting you know, it does wonders for the energy in a space.
Bill Smutz: And as those who serve a church, we’re rarely going to be in charge of the meeting we’re sitting in. Usually there’s a volunteer member of the church, maybe another member of the staff team, but we’re rarely the one in charge of the meeting. And so we have to bring that energy and know how to be in a meeting in a way that is genuine but productive and faithful and energetic.
Sarah Bereza: And I think that curiosity really is a huge part of that, because it gets at you in a place where you can be very genuine. Even if you are tired, even if you are sick, even if you’re just really tired of this committee or whatever it is, you can still be curious about people. And I think for many of us in church work, one of the reasons we’re ministering in a church setting is that we do like people just at that basic level. We just like people, even if we’re not particularly extroverted, we just want to be around people and are curious about how people think.
Bill Smutz: And it’s interesting as I think about the meetings that I’ve been to and I come home jazzed, I come home energized. The meeting has been life-giving in some ways, versus those meetings I’ve been to where I come home just, why did I waste my time that way? And that energy is critical. And it’s the energy I bring. But if I bring good energy, I generally receive it back at some level. Whereas if I don’t bring good energy, somebody is not going to pick things up for me.
Sarah Bereza: I think that’s related to us being the staff person there, because we’re usually the ones who have to think about that anyway. Cause I think a lot of times volunteers, especially in a committee meeting setting, they’re not really thinking about that. They’re just like, oh, you know, I went to work, I got some dinner, I came to a meeting. And that’s not a bad thing about any particular committee meeting at all. I think they’re not thinking about it in the same way that a staff person would.
Bill Smutz: And I think you’re hinting also at the importance of us as staff members being pastorally present in that meeting, because our members are gonna come in from wherever they have spent their day with all sorts of challenges, upsets, excitement, and we need to be sensitive to that and receptive to that. We can’t take on all their negative emotional energy, but if we can say, oh, you look like you’ve had a rough day or tell me what’s going on – I think that can go a long way as well. And that takes energy on our part, and intentionality on our part.
Organization – Talk to People Ahead of Time
Sarah Bereza: Let’s wrap up by talking about organization. We’ve just pointed out a lot of times, we’re not always the ones setting the agenda. So we want to be organized, and yet we can’t always be organized. And I want to start this off by noting that if I know someone who’s going to be in a committee meeting, and I’m not quite sure what their viewpoint is on a particular issue, I will often ask that person ahead of time, like, I want to support you and I want to understand where you’re coming from. Can we talk about it ahead of time?
Sarah Bereza: And so I don’t necessarily know the organization of what’s going to happen, but I do know how I can best support a colleague or another committee member. You can’t always hash that out in a committee meeting. There’s so many personalities, there’s so many varying levels of vulnerability that you can have, and just frankness that you can have in a committee meeting. Whereas if you had just one on one – you know that person and you have a trusting relationship with that person who could say, oh, hey, what do you actually think, so I can support you.
Bill Smutz: Correct. And I would say that the longer I’m at this business – 32 years now – the thing that I’ve found is that meetings actually start long before the set meeting time and end after the set meeting time. And by that I mean, I need to do some prep work for a meeting if I’m the staff representative. And pastors are often staff representatives to lots of committees. I found it useful to engage with the chair of the committee sometime before the meeting to sit down on a regular basis with them, to talk through the meeting or just to be talking about the business of that particular committee or team. So that we kind of know where each other’s coming from so that we’ve had a chance to say, oh, we think these are the agenda items, but let’s clarify them.
Bill Smutz: So that we’re focused and, and we’re somewhat connected. Even if we have different opinions, we’ve at least had an opportunity to talk about that a bit.
Sarah Bereza: And you’re not discovering that difference of opinion in the midst of the committee meeting, which is not really the greatest time.
Bill Smutz: Amen. Yes.
Organization – Follow Up After the Meeting
Sarah Bereza: What are you doing after a committee meeting?
Bill Smutz: Well, this is where I talk about how the committee meeting continues. It’s been my experience that it’s important to follow up with somebody who said something profound, or who raised a tough question and maybe got some push back for raising that question in the meeting. But it was the question that really needed to be dealt with. And so it’s important for me to get to that person and say, Hey, thank you for raising that question. I really appreciate it. Or if I saw someone who was just sitting over on the edge of the table, didn’t say anything all night or seemed really distracted.
Bill Smutz: Again, this is where the pastoral stuff kicks in. I just need to check in with them, hey, you seemed kind of distracted last night. Is everything okay? Are there ways that I can be of help? And if there are significant pieces that came out of the meeting, how do I address those? Maybe it’s making a connection back to the administrator who manages the calendar and saying, Hey, please get this date on the calendar. Or maybe it’s circling back to the chair and saying, wow, I don’t think either of us expected things to go that way. Do we need to talk about this some more? Or just to circle back to the chair and say, what a great meeting you ran, thank you. I really appreciate that. I think your leadership was really valuable and here’s where I saw that to kind of, to encourage those good practices.
Bill Smutz: And that’s not being fake. Not trying to be disingenuous, but just trying to say thank you. I appreciate your efforts. I appreciate what you’re doing. Here’s how I saw that really helping. Does that make sense?
Sarah Bereza: Yes, it’s so relational.
Meetings Are About Relationships
Bill Smutz: Yeah, it is. And I think we’ve been alluding to that all the way through. If we can’t be relational in a church, we’re never going to have good meetings. If we’re in a corporation, and we’re all paid to be there and paid to follow whatever the corporate mission and vision is, that’s one thing. But we’re in a church, we’re part of an emotional system. And that’s going to run to a large part on the relationships that we all have with one another. And so if we want to bring good energy to meetings, then we need to be about those relationships all the time.
Sarah Bereza: One of the essences of being a Christian is being in relationship with each other.
Bill Smutz: Yes, yes. And another piece I think to say about meetings in general, they’re really an art form. There’s not a prescribed, okay, if you do X, Y, and Z, you’ll have the best church meeting ever. Each meeting is going to be different because of the group, because of the congregation that you’re serving, because of the context in which that meetings taking place. And so to be there as a supportive staff person, even as a leading staff person, is to pay attention to what your guts are telling you, is to pay attention to experience. And I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but to continue to listen to the Holy Spirit and ask where is the Spirit in this? Maybe even raise that question aloud for the group on a regular basis.
Sarah Bereza: Yeah, this is another means by which to model that way of living in the world.
Bill Smutz: Yes.
Read of the Week: Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Sarah Bereza: So now it’s time for our read of the week. And Bill and I are both fiction readers, and you’ve heard about that some on the show, although I don’t think I’ve shared any of the fiction that I read yet. And just this past week I finished a novel that I want to share with you. Because, one, it is a good novel, and two, because of how I think it resonates with the work that we do pastorally. The novel is Queenie and it’s by Candice Carty-Williams. And I’ll have a link to this in the show notes.
Sarah Bereza: The reason I read it was not because, oh, I think this will be great for me to learn from pastorally. I read it because it was the third one that I had gone through on my kindle and was like, ahhh, finally a good novel. Okay, I’m interested, this is really good. And it’s the story of a young woman living in England. And it’s the story of the year. It starts out, her life kind of blows up. It gets worse. Gets worse. Yep. Even worse. And then in the last few months of the year, like her life starts getting put back together. She is putting her life back together. And I think for us in a church ministry setting, it’s interesting and I don’t know if useful is the right word, but I think fiction can be a great way of teaching us imaginatively. And it’s the kind of book that teaches us about being alongside someone through a dark place and you can’t fix their problems. And I think often times in church we kind of want to fix people and we think we can fix them.
Bill Smutz: Church workers tend to be fixers. The reality is that most of us are pretty bad at it.
Sarah Bereza: I had a conversation with my husband about this last night! I see this pattern in me, and I need to fix my fixing problem.
Sarah Bereza: But throughout the story, like you see someone who needs to come to the point where she can be fixing her own problems or getting the help that she needs, but her friends were alongside of her and not able to fix those problems. They’re able to be alongside her. And I think that for us as church workers, that’s something that we have to continually do ,and not expect that people are ever going to be fixed because hey, we’re in a church. Church is a hospital. Like there are not always solutions to people’s illnesses.
Bill Smutz: Presence is a huge thing.
Sarah Bereza: Yeah, it is. It is. The other interesting thing about this book – depending on your background, you may or may not find this useful. I’m a white person, and I grew up in mostly white communities and this was a book about a young black woman who is dealing with a lot of systemic racism and a lot of personal racism. And so for me, this kind of book is good to read because I don’t really deal with that in my personal life. Literature is a really great way to be aware of other people’s challenges in their lives. Challenges that I can’t even necessarily see because you know, maybe people won’t make racist comments around me because they know I’m going to jump up and you know, bite their head off, but they might around other people. Right. f your background is pretty similar to mine in that way, this book is good in that regard as well. So Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. I’ll leave a note for it in the show notes.
Should You Forward This Episode to Your Head of Staff (or Committee Chair)??
Bill Smutz: Well, have we gotten to the end?
Sarah Bereza: We have indeed.
Bill Smutz: So that means this is it for this installment of Called. We’re glad that you have been with us.
Sarah Bereza: Look for new episodes on the first and third Tuesdays of the month. And as I said, you can find shownotes at calledpodcast.com. This is episode nine.
Bill Smutz: Wow. We made it that far.
Sarah Bereza: Yeah. Right.
Bill Smutz: If you enjoy our conversation, we’d love to hear feedback. We’d also appreciate it if you’d invite other people to listen to the conversation. Do you have colleagues in ministry that might benefit? Not so much from our wisdom, but just from this kind of conversation.
Sarah Bereza: I feel like the question is, so if you forward this episode to your head of staff, are they going to immediately take offense at how they run meetings?
Bill Smutz: I would never take offense! [laughter] So maybe not send it to the head of staff. Maybe invite the head of staff to listen to episode eight. And here, let’s have a glass of wine or two, or a beer or two before we listened to it.
Sarah Bereza: I’m Sarah Bereza.
Bill Smutz: And I’m Bill Smutz.
Sarah Bereza: Until next time, cut out the bs and embrace the good.
