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Are your staff meetings ho-hum? Too focused on random details? Non-existent?

Strong communications at your church can begin in staff meeting. These connections among staff are the foundation for all communications at and through your church. 

More and more our team is consulting with pastors and church staffs about how to enhance their staff meetings. These significant meetings are key times of communication for celebrating, building unity and casting vision!

Here are some of the topics and tips we've been sharing to boost staff meetings:

• Fun them up: Keep people anticipating these meeting times together. Serve snacks. Share a meal (to start or end your meetings). Ask different people to lead. Hand out gifts (even cheap, small items can be fun). Present an award. Change the location. Play a game. Celebrate birthdays. Build these meetings so that your folks will look forward to them. Or, if this isn't something you naturally want to do, ask another trusted leader to lead or plan them.     
• Include more people: Pastors, ministry directors, admin staff and/or deeply involved volunteers! We encourage you to include more folks (rather than limiting - which can often feel like excluding). The time invested in staff meetings can lead to greater productivity and effectiveness as your team becomes more unified and strategic in their work.
• Focus on relationships: Take time to pray together. Smaller groups can form from week to week to share (about a few personal and also church/ministry requests) and then pray together. Note: Save long lists of requests and/or folks who need follow-up for an email or other follow-up conversations.  
• Focus on vision: Staff meetings are the ideal place to communicate again and again about your church's vision, strategic priorities and to tell stories about how ministries are living these priorities out and how people's lives are being changed as a result. No one leader needs to go on and on. But a few compelling updates and stories - shared on a consistent basis by various people and ministry areas - will lead your staff to understand and support where your church is headed and the specific role they play.
• Focus on brief updates: No rabbit trails. No squirrel sightings. No laborious details. During staff meeting, brief updates can be shared by the various ministry areas and teams. But brevity is key. Long lists of details or intense decision making should be saved for an email or other conversations and meetings. 

Okay ... okay ... I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on staff meetings? What tips would you add?