You can run a meeting every week and still avoid the conversations that actually matter.
Often this is because staff meetings are trying to do too much in one space, with decisions, updates and random issues all crammed together.
In this episode, Andrew Mitchell (The Executive Pastor at EV Church on the Central Coast), argues for a clean break: one meeting to build people and culture, another to make decisions, and not mixing the two.
Key points:
- Why the main weekly meeting isn’t for making decisions
- How to structure a Monday meeting, from lunch to prayer to training
- The hidden cost of mixing decision-making with culture-building
- Why encouragement and shared stories aren’t optional extras
- What smaller teams can actually apply without copying everything
Toolbox:
Andrew Mitchell’s terms of reference staff meeting document
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni
How Do I Create a Culture of Trust In My Team? | Ep 316
Three dysfunctional types of teams and how to fix them | Ep 404
The One Thing Episode 166 – Refresh Your Staff Meetings (Part 1)
The One Thing Episode 167 – Refresh Your Staff Meetings (Part 2)
Credits:
This episode was brought to you by Safe Ministry Check
The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia
To pray for Reach Australia, join our WhatsApp Group
For ideas or questions please email [email protected]
Support Reach Australia’s online library
TRANSCRIPT:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:00:03:03 – 00:00:21:10
Pete Hughes
Good I on puce and welcome to the One thing. It’s a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel centered ministry. And we if you’re new to the one thing, why don’t you jump on our website? Reach australia.com today. You have a look at some of the other resources there. And while you’re there, have a look at our national conference.
00:01:13:23 – 00:01:31:13
Pete Hughes
It’s coming up. I think we still may have some tickets. Make sure you get there. But today we are talking about and it’s an important aspect of, a week in ministry and that is the staff to you. And how do we how do we run a staff meeting effectively? We’re going to be talking today with Andrew Mitchell from the.
00:01:31:14 – 00:01:51:07
Pete Hughes
Now, I realize before you press press. Skip, Andrew is, a part of the staff team there, and we’re going to be talking about principles that are important, not just the big staff teams, but also I actually cuz I’m going to do that whole thing again. Sorry. Today.
00:01:51:09 – 00:02:09:23
Pete Hughes
Today we’re going to be talking about an important aspect of the week and that is staff teams and staff team meetings. How do we run them effectively? Today we’re going to be talking to Andrew Mitchell from Ibi. Now before you press Skip and go, I’ve it’s got a huge team. They’re not going to be able to do things that I’m doing because I’m in a small team.
00:02:10:00 – 00:02:23:03
Pete Hughes
Stick around because Andrew is going to be applying some of those principles to smaller churches because he’s worked in smaller churches, not just EV. So, just don’t don’t press skip, listen to it. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.
00:02:23:05 – 00:02:25:07
Andrew Mitchell
Great to be here.
00:02:25:09 – 00:02:39:21
Pete Hughes
Before we get into, talking about staff teams, hey, we’re sort of in the first part of the year. Have you had a highlight of the year so far? Could be professional, could be personal, could be trivial, could be a sporting team. What’s been a highlight for you?
00:02:39:23 – 00:03:08:04
Andrew Mitchell
Well, we’ve got a new our fifth grandchild born, little parent to my son, youngest son, Toby and his wife, Krista. And, so that’s been a great joy to meet him. And so I’ve been Christopher, I’ve actually just moved down in the second year more college than in Croydon. And so we’re missing having parents coming to our place for about.
00:03:08:06 – 00:03:11:11
Andrew Mitchell
But, that’s been there’s a highlight.
00:03:11:13 – 00:03:37:03
Pete Hughes
Yeah. That’s a beautiful highlight. I mean, you can’t go wrong with grandkids. So, so congratulations and congratulations to Toby. And, and I hope the family goes well, but let’s get back on to business for now. You have press play on the one thing great Monday. Staff meetings, lessons in leading teams. All right. Okay. Andrew Ivey has a big church staff team.
00:03:37:03 – 00:03:48:04
Pete Hughes
In fact, I think the staff team is almost the size of some small churches. But what are your aims when you meet together as a staff team? What are you aiming to do?
00:03:48:06 – 00:04:18:07
Andrew Mitchell
Look, it’s it’s a very, special part of the week, and is about, encouragement and really building the health of the team in a whole lot of dimensions. I guess one key thing is that we, we spend a deal of time looking at the Bible, and we’re generally, you know, working through, you know, books of the Bible together as a church family.
00:04:18:09 – 00:04:42:19
Andrew Mitchell
And we’ll be looking at what’s going to be preached on the following week, what can be looked at in groups across church and sitting under the word as a team is a major piece of it. And generally Andrew’s leading those or someone on the team is leading that time. And the word we’ll spend a good hour doing that.
00:04:42:21 – 00:05:08:06
Andrew Mitchell
And, I think there’s one thing is that we as a team, sitting under the leadership of our God and but also in the process where we’re encouraging each other and teaching each other how to read the Bible, as well. So there is one major thing.
00:05:08:08 – 00:05:27:17
Pete Hughes
So it’s. Yeah, I love that fact that you talked about a healthy staff team. So it sounds like what you’re doing there is you’re saying before we become shepherds, we’re actually sheep under the great Shepherd, and we need to sit under his word together as we and encourage each other in that? Is is that what we’re to do?
00:05:27:19 – 00:05:42:13
Andrew Mitchell
That that’s the goal, I think, is. Yeah. There’s a bit of a. Yeah. So there’s one one piece. I think there’s many, there’s quite a number of teams, but that’s probably the principal one.
00:05:42:15 – 00:05:47:10
Pete Hughes
And so when you meet together. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. If you want to do it, you’re trying to keep going. Okay.
00:05:47:11 – 00:05:52:11
Andrew Mitchell
Well, what do you want to do? You want to hear the others or. Yeah.
00:05:52:13 – 00:06:16:00
Pete Hughes
Yeah, yeah, I do actually. Yeah yeah, yeah. So let let me give you a question leading to it. Okay. So one of that is one of the one of keys. I’m just not having a good day today. One of those aims is to sit together under the word. What are the other aims that you’re aiming to do. Because it’s not just a staff team’s, not merely, people meeting together under the word, you’re also leaders.
00:06:16:00 – 00:06:17:17
Pete Hughes
So what else are you aiming to do?
00:06:17:19 – 00:06:53:13
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah, well it does. We we are very strong on this. Is this is, a meeting where we do want everyone there. And, you know, you know, there may be reasons people are happy to hear, but, it would give their apologies. But it is a moment for the senior pastor to lead and envision the team. So. So that’s happening as we meet, we we have this, opportunity for we meet and we have lunch together.
00:06:53:15 – 00:07:28:18
Andrew Mitchell
And so it’s an opportunity for fellowship and encouragement amongst the staff, training without talking business, so to speak. Just developing relationships. And it is a moment where we can well, share information, and hear what’s going on in church law. We can talk more about what we actually do during the meeting in a second, but it does that and enable some cross team administration as well.
00:07:28:20 – 00:07:40:13
Andrew Mitchell
Along with very often we’re doing we’re doing some training together in some way, shape or form. So a bunch of those things that are building the strength and health of the time.
00:07:40:18 – 00:07:54:14
Pete Hughes
Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting to just see how you are building health because it’s not just business. It’s sitting under the word training. That’s an interesting part of it. So you do that every single week is some sort of training.
00:07:54:16 – 00:07:57:01
Andrew Mitchell
Look I’d say two thirds of them.
00:07:57:03 – 00:07:58:23
Pete Hughes
Okay.
00:07:59:00 – 00:08:11:16
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah. We’ll be training in some aspect of ministry and various different ones sharing, in that way to help the team. Yeah.
00:08:11:18 – 00:08:27:09
Pete Hughes
So talk me through what actually happens on a Monday when you meet together. What do you do? And also what do you not do when you all meet together there on that Monday stuff? I think you’ve already mentioned hearing from the Bible, having lunch together, but talk me through the actual agenda.
00:08:27:11 – 00:08:56:13
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah. One thing we don’t do is we don’t make decisions. So it’s not a decision making. Yeah. So that’s one key piece with with. Yeah. But, what we do is we, read the Bible, we sing, and then someone leads us in prayer and giving thanks for the meal. We’re reading the passage.
00:08:56:13 – 00:09:27:21
Andrew Mitchell
We’re going to look at it later. We then have lunch together for about 20 minutes or so informally, and then we look at the Bible together for about an hour. After that, we take, well, we generally pray in response to having read the Bible. Often we do that, in small groups and then, we have a break, grab a cuppa, whatever.
00:09:27:22 – 00:09:52:00
Andrew Mitchell
Just about a couple of minutes, and then we have another 20 minutes just sharing the news of what God’s been doing around, in our ministries. And so generally, you know, where the first question I always ask of a new people in the Kingdom, the.
00:09:52:02 – 00:09:53:16
Pete Hughes
Right question to ask.
00:09:53:18 – 00:10:23:11
Andrew Mitchell
So that’s the that’s the first question. And we hear, hear that, and then we just hear, you know, what God has been doing, from various perspectives by way of encouragement, will then pick up, things for prayer, particular prayer needs of particular people. You know, in the church, family, other things we need to be praying for.
00:10:23:13 – 00:10:57:01
Andrew Mitchell
And then again, we will pray around the things that have been shared. We take a break after that, and then we will share a bit of meaning, and that is very brief. But there might be something across the team we administer. We need to do administrative, you know, and then we will spend say 45 minutes, you know, training, some training topic.
00:10:57:03 – 00:11:03:10
Pete Hughes
What was the last training topic you did? Just to give me an idea of what the the kind of things that you do when you train.
00:11:03:12 – 00:11:30:05
Andrew Mitchell
But we did. We’ve been doing some on, building teams actually. And so one of in our ministry area, a couple of that team helped us think about how we’re building teams and rising up leaders and some initiatives that got there. That’s a recent one.
00:11:30:07 – 00:11:37:07
Pete Hughes
I talked, and, once the training’s done, is that the end of the meeting or is there anything else? Let’s say.
00:11:37:09 – 00:11:39:16
Andrew Mitchell
Okay. Let’s see. Yeah.
00:11:39:18 – 00:11:58:15
Pete Hughes
It sounds like this meeting has very little business and a lot more culture building and building that brought that that team together. Why is it so important to to have that culture of or to invest in that culture building, moment in the team?
00:11:58:17 – 00:12:24:01
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah, people. People do. It’s interesting. We do a bit of a survey once a year, you know? How how how are you sure? Health? Yeah. Spiritual health, physical health team health. And people do refer to this as just, a key, a key way as a team where we’re growing together and encouraging each other.
00:12:24:03 – 00:12:56:13
Andrew Mitchell
I just think it is important, given the ministry we’re doing to to provide and give space, to build the things that we’ve just been talking about. And to do that intentionally give time to give priority to it. So this is, you know, people would pray this is the priority meeting of the week, actually, even though we’re not making any decisions and we, you know, we’re not task oriented in it in a sense.
00:12:56:15 – 00:13:13:15
Andrew Mitchell
It it is it’s building the culture that provides the basis for the ministries, all the ministries, in the specifics. This this is centrally building. This is what we’re on about, you know.
00:13:13:17 – 00:13:27:19
Pete Hughes
So so you’re expecting that culture that you have there on that Monday to kind of trickle down to the rest of the church. And so this is not just a a it’s like a great thing to do for your team. But as you’re expecting that to to go through to the rest of the church.
00:13:27:21 – 00:13:43:15
Andrew Mitchell
Yes. So when you stop team, you know you’ve got the key leaders there. So it is it’s this really affects the culture of the whole church. Does. Yeah. It flows out. So the ministry as a whole. Yeah.
00:13:43:17 – 00:14:04:00
Pete Hughes
But now you’ve mentioned a couple of times that this is not the meeting where decisions are made. And I think most staff team meetings that I’ve been in, that’s the primary places. We’re here to make decisions and to work out how are we going to work together? If you’re not making decisions on a Monday, where are you making decisions as a team.
00:14:04:02 – 00:14:39:15
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah. So we have a whole range of meetings. But many of our, you know departments, we have meetings on a cadence of once every two weeks. We have our sort of major management meeting where all the department heads are together. But this that’d be a classic staff meeting context. Where we meet once every two weeks with a clear purpose and agenda.
00:14:39:17 – 00:15:11:00
Andrew Mitchell
And that’s where decisions are made, I think. I think back, back in the day, in some other contexts in church life where you intermingle the two, you can end up really not hitting the target either. Why or or just end up with a bit of a miss in your staff meeting and with people frustrations and, perhaps disorganization in, in what you’re doing together.
00:15:11:02 – 00:15:21:12
Pete Hughes
So you would take those two. Yeah. You would keep those two things very, very separate, so that they don’t intermingle and don’t get confused. Oh, I got that right.
00:15:21:14 – 00:16:14:20
Andrew Mitchell
That’s right. And where you are making decisions, get organized and give yourself the opportunity to do that. Well, you know, be clear on your meeting purpose and what you’re doing in the meeting. Keeping having an agenda, keeping minutes, working at your actions, coming out of a meeting very clearly and following them through. So I think, it is possible in a small context to have a meeting that’s a bit of a blancmange and not very effective, you know, and that’s, that’s something I will look at the years, is it’s just helpful to be clear now, it may be on the same day, you know, or, or implies CI, you know, in
00:16:14:20 – 00:16:38:17
Andrew Mitchell
a small context, it might not be easy to, to meet at different times the different things or, you know, might be but I yeah, you’d set aside the time and then shift shift gears into the decision making meeting around. Whatever the issue you’re trying to address is, is what I would suggest. Yeah.
00:16:38:19 – 00:16:58:09
Pete Hughes
Okay. What I’d like to do is, is to push into a little bit more of what will this look like as you already started to, to do is what is this going to look like if you’ve got a small staff team. To how how do you do both the culture meeting or, and the decision making meeting. What will that look like?
00:16:58:09 – 00:17:01:15
Pete Hughes
How will you apply these principles to a smaller change.
00:17:01:17 – 00:17:04:19
Andrew Mitchell
00:17:04:21 – 00:17:09:13
Andrew Mitchell
What what size will we work on. Yeah. Six on the team perhaps.
00:17:09:15 – 00:17:11:16
Pete Hughes
Let’s go with that. I think that’s probably a good one to do that.
00:17:11:16 – 00:17:48:13
Andrew Mitchell
Sort of number. And you might have higher level volunteers in which potentially I guess well I think, I think the principle of reading the Bible together, is just directly applicable, you know, and, and a great, a great thing to do. And, and prayer in the light of that, I think, you can also, well, share a meal together.
00:17:48:14 – 00:18:24:08
Andrew Mitchell
That’s a good thing to do and just share loaf together at that level, you know, relaxed y, without that, without an agenda behind it. But just building your fellowship and relationships, and then sharing news so often. Yeah. I remember staff meetings where we were reflecting on Sunday and it immediately becomes, you know, critique and things that can be quite, quite difficult for team members.
00:18:24:10 – 00:18:58:13
Andrew Mitchell
But sharing how you seen God at work sort of major on the positive for Pete and items for prayer to then bring them to the Lord to pray about. You can do that with, with the C’s, you know. So a lot of these things, I think, kind of can be scaled up or down and then potentially talking around some theological pie or, or some some area to reflect on together.
00:18:58:14 – 00:19:09:16
Andrew Mitchell
How do we think about this, theological issue or, or this practicing ministry together? You can do that in a small group. So I think,
00:19:09:18 – 00:19:46:17
Andrew Mitchell
I think I think you can all be scaled and be very useful, you know, that’s that’s on the culture building piece, but it can be what we hope coming out of our time together is people are energized and encourage out of this meeting, out of this time together. And then. Yeah. So, so give I think it’s just good practice to give time to this and priority time to this kind of, agenda.
00:19:46:19 – 00:19:48:23
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
00:19:49:00 – 00:20:09:22
Pete Hughes
Talk me through the that’s that’s for the culture side of, meetings. Have you got when it comes to the decision kind of meetings that need to happen if you like, the more business type of meetings, do you have a particular template, at least in your head, of what that should look like, how people should prepare, what is going to happen after the meeting?
00:20:09:24 – 00:20:38:07
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah. Well yeah. Just standard now of course are all kinds of things you might be focusing on. It might be a pastoral meeting where you wanting to do pastoral follow up people staff. It may be a meeting where you are reflecting on Sunday and how to go. And what are we going to do right. But or or yeah, lots of different objects.
00:20:38:09 – 00:20:45:08
Andrew Mitchell
Be very clear on what the aim of the meeting is.
00:20:45:10 – 00:20:52:23
Pete Hughes
And would you say that right up front and go, what we’re aiming to do today is this is that is that. Yeah. How clear it needs to be. Yep.
00:20:53:00 – 00:21:44:17
Andrew Mitchell
Yep. And have an agenda. So, it’s very I think generally it’s difficult to have a weekly cadence of business meetings. It’s just it comes around too quickly and you end up not having time to be organized around it. So I think fortnightly meetings and and a bunch of meetings monthly. But a fortnight, fortnightly cadence can be better to look at, I think to, to make the meetings a but you know, open with prayer, depending on the nature like if you’re then meeting in a group with a bunch of two people who aren’t normally in meetings together.
00:21:44:19 – 00:22:14:16
Andrew Mitchell
Yeah, it’s good to read the Bible together and, and pray, it can be good to check in on your team members. Maybe not every meeting, but checking on how they’re going. Give some time to that. But then following follow an agenda of around the issues you want to address, reports you want to receive and decisions you want to make.
00:22:14:18 – 00:22:48:01
Andrew Mitchell
A big piece is an important piece is, keeping minutes and being very clear on action items coming out of the meeting. And so in, in all, in our agenda templates, we, record them in, in the minutes. So I’d also just keep a table of all the action items and how they progressing. And that that’s generally reviewed at the beginning of the meeting.
00:22:48:03 – 00:23:11:10
Andrew Mitchell
Have they will go on, you know, are they still in progress or completed etc.. Yeah. So that so that the outcomes who’s responsible when, when the actions expected to be completed, are there clear for everyone in the meeting at the end of it.
00:23:11:12 – 00:23:27:21
Pete Hughes
That that’s really, really helpful. I think just to have that otherwise you just end up going spinning wheels and just having the same meeting over and over again because, oh, we were supposed to do that, but we did. What do you think is the biggest mistake that you’ve seen, or you’ve seen in other teams when it comes to meetings?
00:23:27:21 – 00:23:35:10
Pete Hughes
What’s what’s the classic thing that people keep making the same mistake on?
00:23:35:12 – 00:24:18:10
Andrew Mitchell
Well, I think, the. Yeah, it is it it’s the blancmange, I guess. Sure. It’s, trying to cover too much and not be clear what you’re trying to do, and and I think in the smaller team, and this has been my experience them in earlier years as well, you know, you try to cover, you’re covering off on the urgent and the thing that’s presenting, I remember one time sitting in a meeting and the, the, the senior pastor at that time, he had his mile and he was opening his mail, or we’re having the meeting and saying, oh, look at this.
00:24:18:15 – 00:24:36:04
Andrew Mitchell
Know. So I think it’s very easy to just be ill prepared and waste a lot of time, frustrate each other, you know, so but that’s the biggest problem. Yeah.
00:24:36:06 – 00:24:58:04
Pete Hughes
And yeah. Yeah. Okay. Andrew I want to jump to if there was one thing that you could go and tell every staff to in Australia, every ministry team here is the one thing you need to get right. What would it be.
00:24:58:06 – 00:25:19:24
Andrew Mitchell
I think the one thing is to see the staff meeting as a time to be growing in Christ together, Christ growing in Christ, and fellowship together and give quality time to that.
00:25:20:01 – 00:25:44:13
Pete Hughes
Well, that’s I you know what? I think that’s great. I just think it’s unexpected. I didn’t actually expect to hear that as we’re going into this, this interview. And I feel a little rebuke, to be honest. And that’s a good thing. So. Yeah. Okay. We we want to help you continue on. So in the toolbox, there’s a couple of past episodes that we’ve got in terms of thinking about how do you create a culture of trust in a team?
00:25:44:15 – 00:26:00:21
Pete Hughes
A couple of books that may be helpful for you as you think that through as well as, I’ll link to our national conference. Andrew, do you have any particular tools that you think would be great for, people helping people think through team meetings?
00:26:00:23 – 00:26:18:18
Andrew Mitchell
Look, we do have, we read write a terms of reference document for our for our general staff meeting. I could share that with you if you like. And that could be useful just to. That can give you a summary of the things I’ve talked about.
00:26:18:20 – 00:26:34:15
Pete Hughes
Sounds great. That’ll be in the the, That’s great. That will also be in the toolbox there as well. So that’ll be terrific. Andrew, thank you so much. There’s been a lot of wisdom here and I’ve really, really appreciate it. I’m sure other people have. So thank you so much for joining us.
00:26:34:17 – 00:26:38:02
Andrew Mitchell
Pleasure. Right, right. To be with you.
00:26:38:04 – 00:26:57:06
Pete Hughes
Now, this is obviously a, an episode that you probably need to listen to as a staff team. If you’re in a staff team, listen to it together, have a conversation, take some time away and actually think about how are our meetings going, what do we need to change? I think it would be a great opportunity. I’m Pete, use chat soon.
00:26:57:08 – 00:26:57:11
Pete Hughes
