[0:00]
Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network. Get out Scott Sanders. I'm Derek Hanna. Welcome to the one thing a podcast is on to give you one solid practical gospel sentiment to each week. Wow. I just added a little little ladle of the head. Oh, that's getting catch on. Scott's catch phrase. Scott's catch phrase.

[0:35]
What would you catch phrase, please? Yeah, it's chat soon. It's chat soon. It's chat soon, is it? Yeah. And Maddie doesn't like me saying get out. She really struggles. So that's scripted in the script. Get out. What does she want to say? I look at hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello. She's so polite. I like it. I get a nice kind of nakedness at any point in time of the day. Now the one thing is brought to you with thanks to the Geneva Push, the Australian church plant network. Over the past 10 years we've supported over 100 church plants and over the next 10 years we want to see

[1:06]
a further 200 church plants supported. A massive goal. We're going to need the whole church across Australia, thinking about raising up new congregations, starting new plants. If you want to see this goal reach, so start thinking and planning in your church. But for now you press play on another episode of the one thing. Refresh your staff meetings. Part two. So last time we heard from Mike Sam's and we heard from Ray Gallear and we started pushing into

[1:38]
a few aspects of staff meeting. So key questions to ask. And also what do you do when you actually don't have a staff team? What do you do when you've got a launch team or a core group of volunteer leaders? In this episode we're going to hear from John Rumble. John is the exact pastor of Providence Church in Perth, a multi-site church, one church in three locations and a fourth location. Just launched recently. Let's have a listen to what John has to say about refreshing their staff meetings. Hey, it's John here. I'm the executive pastor of Providence City in Perth.

[2:15]
I've been doing a bit of thinking about our meetings recently. At the end of last year, I felt like our staff meetings were starting to get a bit stale. I guess I wasn't putting enough time and energy into planning for them and organising them. And it meant that each week we dutifully follow the instructions of the calender when it told us to me, but they were starting to get unfocused. So over the summer break, I gave some time to thinking about our meetings. I wanted to start with a blank slate, thinking from scratch if we could put something in the calender, what would it be? And I think the big question was, what are these meetings actually for? Why do we actually get

[2:50]
our staff team together to meet? And so I came up with a bunch of answers to that question. This might be different for you, particularly depending on the size of your staff team, but here's what I came up with for us. First of all, we meet to be disciples together, to pray, sit under God's word together, before we can seek to lead others, to be the shepherds of God's people, we first need to be sheep following the chief shepherd. Secondly, we meet to spend time with each other to build the community of the staff team. And that might be a particular thing for us. We have a

[3:23]
distributed workplace, we don't own a building that we all work out of, we largely work from home, so that means we need some time in the week when we're just spending time together, getting to know each other, living life together. Thirdly, we meet to get worked up, so that's making decisions, solving problems, thinking things with an agenda, ticking things off, communicating decisions that have been made elsewhere. A fourthly part of what we want meetings to achieve is some training and professional development, growing the staff team. So whether that's

[3:55]
talking about a book that we're reading or discussing a paper or talking through a topic of theology or ministry ethics, at some point in the week or in the calendar, we want the team to be growing together. And then last but not least, this one's a little bit harder to put your finger on. We think that our staff teams need to communicate and reflect our values. And sometimes that's going to be explicit. So coming from the senior pastor, talking about who we are as a church, what we value and cherish, where we're going, our vision. But also even when it's not explicit,

[4:28]
our values will always be implied in how we communicate with each other and the things that we think are important to talk about. So to give you one example, we have a value as a church that our staff and our volunteers should be loved and cared for, and they should know that they're loved and cared for. And so while we don't want our meetings to be meandering and waste people's time, we also don't want them to be so ruthlessly efficient that people come away from meetings, feeling like they didn't get a chance to speak or weren't heard.

[5:01]
Okay, that was really helpful to hear John, you know, John's five things. I just want to push into Derek and just hear your off-the-cuff comments. Un-scripted. Un-scripted. So the first one, we meet to be disciples together. Yeah. When you were a lady village church, how important do you say your role as discipling your staff team, discipling your apprentices, discipling your team? Yeah, yeah. Well, let me say two things

[5:33]
on that. One is there's two different questions. How important do I say it and how well did I do it? Let's leave the second one. Because in terms of the importance of the, it was huge. It was huge. I wanted, you know, as I want to grow as a discipl, and I want my kids and my life to as well. I wanted the staff team. That was what we were driving towards together to be Christlike, you know, our own lives in community as we were encouraging our people to do. So, yeah,

[6:05]
we absolutely did want to invest in that and see that in people. And we know for ministry as well, character is keen with this stuff. And so we wanted to work at how we encouraged each other on a weekly basis to pursue godliness and holiness and love and kindness and generosity, those kind of things. So yeah, it was huge. The second point we meet to build our community in the staff team. So he speaks about this concept of having a distributed workplace. As you know, I think people are all over the place. How can you build community well in a staff team?

[6:42]
Yeah, there's all the, I think it's little things rather than big things. So he's an insight into my bad marriage practices. I always want to fix things with big stuff. You know, I want to plan a five day trip in, you know, trekking through Tasmania just to spend time together. Is it a jackal? And actually just once like that'd be nice. But she also just wants that regular contact and connection and you know, do you know together sometimes I'm happy for the big stuff, Derek. I just want you know, I'm having for the big stuff. So yeah, it's why you always

[7:14]
always allow the home. You'll have it. But I think it is, it is those consequences. So when you're in the same office, it can be easy although you still got to be delivered back because you're kind of rubbing shoulders with people. I know you guys are Sydney. I'm all the way up here in Brisbane by myself. But you guys being in the same office, it is helpful because there's little fowl releases that happen in relationships where you can kind of sort things out quickly and connect well. And so, you know, John's saying they do a distributed workplace. They don't have a central office. And so you do need

[7:47]
to be more deliberate about that. So it can be some things like Slack, we use Slack a little bit to kind of share stuff. It is about taking time and start meeting to connect and not just doing business as well. But working out things outside of those things, even whether it's a monthly dinner or something you have, yeah, that can be really important for connecting. You can also solve a whole bunch of problems in other areas by doing that. Well, what do you think? How do you do it? Well, I think all those things, I think lunches are important. I think credit exercises actually,

[8:18]
where you get the opportunity to actually hear from each other and learn about each other are really important as well. So creating those opportunities for people to actually share stuff that you wouldn't ordinarily know. Yeah, it's interesting. And the different personality types will lead you to this much more. When I'm stressed, I pull away from that stuff because I just want to get stuff done. Because I know when other members of team who are different personality types than me, we then are stressed. They need more of that. And so being aware of how we

[8:49]
take in that and finding a way we should love each other well, yeah, it's important. Yeah, and so one of the things just distribute that sort of fun activity to the team. So you do get a diversity. So it's just not always what you think is fun. You start think we made to get work done. Really important meetings are about saying actions and accountability and responsibility happening. So being clear with your agendas on actually, and your meeting with your purposes on what you're seeking to achieve is really important. So fourth, we meet for training and professional development.

[9:27]
How have you sought to do that in regular staff meetings? There's a number of ways. I think that the helpful realization for me, it doesn't always need to come from the top of this stuff. Like I think we need to be thinking through what is a team we need to grow in and learn. And I do, you know, I need to lead the way or you need to lead the way, depending on the context or what it is in your own church. But it doesn't always need to be from the kind of top down in that sense. I think seeing the team and recognizing there are things which

[10:03]
we can learn from each other. And so getting some from the outside, sometimes I might do it and sometimes the team does it as well. That's been really helpful. I know you've seen us do that for what would it be for you? Yeah, well, I think actually having a slot we have a longer period of time on a monthly basis can be really important. So actually, you know, planning for you know, third week of the month we're going to do a start training piece. I've seen other churches, you know, it's a slot each week, you know, for half an hour, 45 minutes. So does that regular

[10:34]
start training please? Now generally, I've seen that with staff teams that are larger that have, you know, a number of apprentices in interns. And so it becomes kind of the, you know, the regular ongoing activity. The other thing is I think, you know, your quarterly, you know, team quarterly or, having a slot where you bring someone in externally, you know, to train and to teach as well. So you could argue as well that professional development, you know, it's got to be ongoing,

[11:05]
but it doesn't necessarily have to take place in that meeting as well. So I remember when I was at Kipz and Laura, we used to have a Wednesday sort of tax tip kind of lunch. And every Wednesday, we'd have an hour of a new area of tax law that are being run. Oh, that's great. Well, it was great. It was great because the food, the food was always amazing. So we had this great kitchen. So so part of that for me was we always got a really good lunch. And there was always 15 minutes of just hanging out and catch up. And then it was, you know, half an hour on a new area of tax law.

[11:38]
Now again, I mean, that was really important in that job because the law was always changing. And it was really important. And again, it was distributed. You had partners all the way down to the new tax and so on. You know, sharing ideas and so there's a real opportunity for development and grow. So that was excellent. Now, can I ask if if staff team wanted to staff teams across Australia wanted you to come in and share some tax tips with them, would you do that Scott just 30 minutes? Happy to. Happy to have the last one. Our staff means need to reflect our values. So I spoke

[12:08]
about you know, love and care being a value. And I think this is one that I find hard. I guess I can be ruthlessly efficient sometimes. You know, I'm like, okay, we've got an hour. You just got to get through this meeting, you know, to have a just yesterday in a board meeting. You know, where I was like, okay, guys, we've only got an hour. There's lots to talk about. Let's get into it. And hopefully the chair of the meeting went, hey, how's it going? How have you been? report and, you know, and private for each other. But some, I guess that's a really helpful thing.

[12:39]
Building in capacity. So you are present and there for those personality. So I've actually found it hard to be present is really important. I'm not looking at me. I'm looking at other people out there. Well, I do that was of all the ones that John said, and he says, there's a really helpful thing. So that was the one the most struck me actually. They thoughtfully translated who it is they want to be, what values they put forward. And not just how it pushes out into the church, but how it pushes into the staff team. I thought that was really, really helpful.

[13:09]
Okay. Now we're going to hear again from John. In this clip, he's going to be talking about the importance of purpose in his meetings. Now, if you put all that together, that's a lot. That's a whole lot of purposes and you might be better at cherry meetings than I am, but that's not something that you can achieve all in one meeting. And so this year, we've actually ended up with a few different types of meetings in our calendar over the course of the school term. So firstly, we have a regular meeting for prayer and praise 30 minutes each week. Open the Bible together,

[13:42]
pray for one another and for the ministry. And we're really blessed to have some great musicians on our staff team. So they'll pick up a guitar and we'll sing a song or two together. Secondly, we have a dashboard meeting once a week for 30 minutes. And this is short and sharp just talking about what's going on this week, solving any problems that might have a reason. And we'll go around the whole team and talk about where we're up to with our goals or focus areas for each part of the ministry for this term. Work out if we're on track or if there are things

[14:12]
that need to be solved. And just talk about who's doing what this week. The other kind of bigger meetings that we have then, two off sites each term that are higher level, a longer time, a better part of a day away together in a different place from where we normally meet. That gives us a chance to have morning tea and lunch together as a team to spend a bit more focused time doing that kind of professional development and learning to think theologically together, as well as planning and setting goals what's coming up next. And then last but at least,

[14:47]
we'll have focused meetings for a particular thing. So if we have a particular area of the ministry that we need to talk about to solve a problem or make a plan, work out what we're going to do, then we'll have a meeting and we'll just invite the people who are relevant to that particular part of the ministry. And that will try and be quite focused. So rather than having a meeting with an agenda that says membership course, it'll say something like brainstorm ideas for what we should include in the membership course or make the decision on what's going to be in the course.

[15:19]
Because if we're clear in our agenda, what the outcome that we intend for the meeting is, then hopefully when we get there, we're all on the same page and we'll know if we've achieved what we want to achieve at the end. Well, that's what we're trying this year. We've wiped the slate clean and tried to refresh the way we do our meetings. I hope that's helpful for you to. So John talks about different types of meetings. So the first one, prayer and praise, 30 minutes weekly, including singing. Yep. I look when it was just me on the staff team,

[15:56]
I used to do that all the time and I used to love that. That's part of the values. You know, we're a worshipping, you know, we want to be a worshipping people which works itself out in all of life, not just singing. But I think by doing an exhibiting staff meeting, it says, we value this aspect of our church life together. So value opening up gods, we value opening up being together praying together as a staff thing, but also singing as well.

[16:27]
So I've been to a number of staff meetings when they have cracked out the guitar and saying, they're rich times of community and care. Next one, a dashboard. So 30 minute weekly dashboard meeting. Yeah. So that's just checking in like some of the questions that Ray asked in the last episode. They're checking in on some of the things that are key in court to the division of mission of providence and they're just checking how they're going with that, seeing if there's any blockages.

[17:00]
It's nice hearing the tone of that from John as well. So it's not about, you know, we have to hit this metric. This is about us together. Are there problems? Are there things we need to address together in order to keep moving forward? And all the dashboard board does for that is just help you assess what other things were asking questions. I thought that was a really good time. Again, pushing to those high level outcomes, you know, making sure that it's, you know, big picture we're on about making mature disciples, but then pushing into the detail. There's a real opportunity to create ownership for the whole thing.

[17:31]
Having a goal is big enough that, you know, everyone needs to jump in, but then owning it individually. And I think as a leader, what you want to be doing in that meeting as well is creating opportunity to have each other, you know, gently carefully speak into each other's areas. And credit culture of saying, hey, look, you know, ministry, you know, the serve area is not going, well, that's my responsibility. We're not raising up leaders. What can we be doing, you know, to do that? So actually you modeling, getting feedback and modeling, you know, work with the team. On that one as well, just very quickly, the weekly thing actually helps to make it not so

[18:04]
confronting for you if things aren't going well, because it's slight course course correction. If you're on every turn, if you just check back in, things can go very awry 90 days. But if you're doing it weekly, you can start to see that slow, you know, drift and help course break much earlier than you can if you do it on a 90 day basis. Don't forget to celebrate too in that, you know, like there's opportunities that are looking for regular celebrations, so to say, how we hit that goal, we're doing well. Okay, two offsets off sites per turn. So that's really interesting. I'd encourage a lot of

[18:39]
churches to have a quarterly offsite or a quarterly day, but they do two off sites. Now, well, they spend most of the day including 80 together in professional development, planning and goal scene. That's a big investment, isn't it? I love it. That's a good investment, because you get so busy, you think I can't spare two days of terms to do that. Like that would be it is, but you're really valuing each other in that, you're valuing the the cybership aspect of the team and you're saying, actually, we need to keep working out how we get to where we're going.

[19:12]
So spending time developing ourselves, I think that's a great investment. I need to put it, this is what Johns worked out. You need to work out what's worked out, you know, works out in your context as well. So I think when you've got a distributed team, you're not spending a lot of time together. You do need to be a bit more deliberate about when you gather. And so that's what, you know, I think this allows for the teams to be well, they've got, you know, say more than more than one there. And they've got a complex setup as well, though. Like they've got a number of campuses spread around. So those times together are important. Yeah, yeah. Last one there, focus meetings for a particular problem or plan. So one of the,

[19:47]
you know, one of the big issues with with with any sort of meetings is that you kind of get stuck into a topic area, you know, they get landed on the table, you know, someone kind of throws the bomb out and then you spend a heavier time discussing it with actually no structure, no plan, not asking the right questions before you know, you've wasted kind of 35 minutes and you haven't decided anything. No one's any clearer or wiser. So actually realizing, okay, that, you know, once we've kind of got five, 10 minutes into that's a really important discussion. You know, assigning responsibility to someone getting them to actually think into it and say, okay,

[20:19]
we're going to come back to that and we're going to, you know, we're going to give it the time it needs it actually needs two hours an extra hour or it's a bigger problem. We need to go away as a leadership team, you know, first to work it out and then bring it back is really important. The other, you know, the other sort of focus meetings that the opportunity to brainstorm and the opportunity to sort of make a plan, I like it, it's kind of got those sort of two frames. People know, know they're coming to sort of come up with ideas. So for your, your high J types, who like to be prepared, you know, they can be prepared by being unprepared and that's their

[20:51]
preparation and they can feel comfortable and settle with themselves for the high P types who they love the flexibility. It's just, it's just game on, like it is always for them, making just come in there. They could just be be who they are. So being, you know, being aware of that actually saying, this is what this meeting is for. But then I think helpful to have that make a plan for at the end of this meeting, we, you know, we want to have this outcome. And we're kind of not leaving the room until we get there. So at the end of that, man, it's really important to to stop and say, okay, what have we decided? What are the next action points here from the room?

[21:24]
What's been decided as well? So that you go away, you know, with a real clear, you know, plan for the next steps. Yeah. Now, I just wanted to sort of push in at the end there, you know, talking to a former senior pastor, how, how does senior pastor sort of sabotage meetings? You know, what are the particular things, you know, that leaders do often to sabotage meetings for their team? Now, it's part, I want to kind of look across the time and go, you know, what does Derek do? No, I mean, what do I do regularly? He's looking, he's ready. Hopefully, he doesn't have a microphone. So you can't

[22:00]
hear him, but he doesn't have a video either. So he can't even see the face. He does edit. He can edit in later. He can edit. So I've got sort of four things here that I think you can do, but Derek, what do I do regularly? So touch me. Well, listen, I'm not, I'm not going to figure out you because I think I didn't say things as well. But the, I think the reality is when you're, you're leading a church, you're leading a staff team, you are juggling a whole number of things. And so often you will be seeing sometimes things that other people aren't seeing or feeling

[22:34]
precious, they're not feeling and you bring that to a staff meeting. And this might be the only time actually during the week that you have the people who you need to help you make this decision in the room together. And so you will, there'll be an agenda that's been sent out two days beforehand. It's clearly articulated. Does anyone have input on it? No one says anything. You get to the staff meeting and the senior has something which has been brewing and may only have been brewing for a few hours or last 24 hours. And they need that soul then and they hijack the meeting. So don't be a, don't be a meeting terrorist. Don't hijack your meetings.

[23:09]
That's a really, that's a really, really good one. Yes, but, but I'd say, but you do need to leave space for that kind of thing if you're the team. Like there needs to be an understanding that there needs to happen, but it's seen to be where the impact they can have on everyone else's agendas and the things they want to talk about because they will nearly always be the loudest voice in the room and have the authority to dominate their conversation. So, so really, really helpful one on the hijack. Maybe you, you, if I could stand up for practice and let's put a pin in that, let's come to that, that, that back one, a recognition of, of your power,

[23:42]
your power, your voice being being strong. So, so working hard not to speak into actually allow others, others to speak in the meeting. And I think a key, a key role in that is the leaders actually understand where, where different personalities and where people are at. So, so giving the people time and they need to say the big picture to go away and do the big picture and then come prepared for the meeting, but those who like to brainstorm, you know, pausing them regularly, so that other people can actually get a word in edgeways. I think we sabotage meetings, often by, we're not being clear about their purpose. So, I think that's a really helpful thing

[24:14]
about John's sort of discussion above is that they've got a real clear agenda for what they're trying to do in their meetings. This is what we're on about this week. But what I want to say in that is there are going to be a bunch of people who are going to find that frustrating. They want to do something new. They're going to be agitated. They're going to go, oh, not another boring meeting. So, I reckon the leader has to give, give and pay attention to how do you regularly do the hygiene habits, you know, making sure minutes are going out, making sure agendas are clear and actually being accountable and following people up. So, people know when they come to the meeting,

[24:47]
you know, this is important. And so, that's another, I think, big way that leaders sabotage meetings, is they don't stick to the systems that they put in place. So, build a system, stick to it. I'm looking at me, Derek. I'm not looking at you. Yes, thank you very much. Well, Scott, seeing you's got a lot to say on this topic, let me ask you, what is the one thing that you would want to say about stuffings? Now, you did sum up both parts. Part one and part two, what's the one thing you want to say about start meetings? Be purposeful about your start meetings. That's good. That's good. Excellent.

[25:25]
All right. What is in the toolbox today, Scott? So, again, we've probably mentioned this book a few times, but Lensy Aini has written lots of books on meetings and teams that are really helpful. So, debt by meeting, really helpful book. If you're short for time, go right to the back and just read the sort of four or five different types of meetings, rather than reading all the narrative, that would be my short tip if you just want to get it or pull down a, you know, pull down a PDF on it. I think one of the things you ought to be doing is actually review your meetings. So, I want,

[25:58]
later I'm talking, busy later out there, I'm talking to you, write down all the meetings that you've got, review them, and probably use debt by meeting as a way to sort of identify, well, what is this sort of a meeting? And then assess if it's actually being effective at achieving that purpose. So, do that hygiene thing and actually look at your meetings. The last one is there's a book called the Five Disfunctions of the Team Field Guide. That has a number of exercises that push into the Five Disfunctions and how you can actually bring them out. So, I reckon it's just a really

[26:28]
helpful book if you're looking for ideas to build trust, to build accountability. You know, if that's the issue in your team, then jumping that book for some key ideas to, you know, to work into those spaces. Yep, that's good. Well, listen, if you're looking for more information on this, we've got an episode 118. Have we really done that many? 118. Run better. This is online meetings. So, you can go back to episode 118. Pretty sure that's with Gus too.

[27:01]
Is that right? Yeah. Gus McKout. Excellent. Well, here's the second one you can have, look, we're on a plug today. There's a new podcast out, Patty Ben, who works at Sydney University students, yeah, Sydney University of Angelic students with AFES. He's done amazing work there. Now, whole team is doing amazing work there. They started you podcast to engage next-generation leaders thinking through ministry and the why is it the why question of why we should give our life to this and why we should consider that. It's called this SPI podcast. So, any of your

[27:35]
podcasting apps you can go on and have a look at that. Two more. Listen, I was in Courage Stop in Contact, but by a few people after we did the session on Measure What Matters and OKRs, took Matt had a deal in their church. So, I'm going to put an offer out there. If we can get 10 people who want to talk this through about how they do it in their church, then we'll get on Zoom in the next month or so. How can they contact? So, email, email tomatretustraide.com.au. We'll get a learning lap. Yep. Just to keep them off because I realise it's OKR then.

[28:15]
OKR. Nice one. Anyway, here you go. Come to the RetroStraide conference. Last one. Nine State Hubs, 18th and 19th May, 2021. It includes music and music. If we can do it, and each location, there are prayers that will be available, go to RetroStraide.com.au to get your ticket come together after you're being apart and have a vision again for how we reach with a broken world and a broken country with the New Year's of Jesus. I'm Scott Sanders.

[28:49]
I'm Derek Cannon. Chat soon.