All churches have boards that in some way work with the lead or senior pastor. Different churches use different titles in their constitutions, calling these leaders elders or trustees or whatever. They also have different official ways in which authority flows between the board and the pastors in the church. Frankly, it’s pretty well known that not all board meetings are pleasant or useful. Many are contentious or unproductive or both. Things can get pretty unspiritual the moment after we’ve “opened in prayer.” I read years ago about a church in which the deacons’ meeting got so heated that one of them pulled a gun and shot another board member, wounding him gravely! The guy didn’t die, but one would hope that the results of a Christian board meeting might have a higher standard of success than simply that nobody got killed. Fortunately this was an isolated and rare incident (I hope).

 

So, assuming that your leaders are mature Christians (1 Tim.3; Titus 1) who actually want to do the right thing in discerning the Spirit’s guidance for the church, what are some practical pointers on a good meeting? I’ll offer just four of the many things I have learned in 34 years. We do have a unified, loving and very effective elder board in my opinion. But it’s not because I figured it all out as the senior pastor. It’s because through the years the Lord has brought mature guys who often added large pieces of wisdom to our way of doing things so that now we have a pretty smooth-running and Christ-centered model.

 

First, prioritize specific and personalized prayer over everything else in your meetings. Prayer meetings degenerate quickly into planning sessions and in doing so leave the Spirit out of most of their thinking. Take a long time of prayer at the beginning (not the end) of each elder meeting. Use a list of all the various ministries in the church, the missions, the departments, the key personnel. Work your way around the room until every ministry has been prayed for by the name of the director. We take at least 45 minutes, sometimes an hour or more, to pray for the church this way. Then and only then begin to look at the decisions and reports that will require board input or decisions.

 

Second, don’t let board meetings become staff meetings. Distinguish between what the board does and what the pastoral staff does. The staff implements the theological vision adopted by the board. When board members try to micro-manage staffing decisions it gets weird. The board should do large-scale and directional decisions, shaping a budget, discerning new overall ministry outreaches and directions, making sure that the church is “on mission.” If there are other pastors on the board than the senior pastor, these brothers need to know which hat they’re wearing when they come into the meeting. We have on many occasions had to redirect discussions back to policy and philosophy issues. It’s very helpful if the entire board knows that this is a point of organizational clarity. And it is increasingly important as a church grows numerically.

 

Third, use a real written agenda and stay on task with it. It’s amazing how many church meetings don’t use a serious agenda, so they have no way to know if they’re making progress. It helps to elect a moderator to keep the meeting on track, too. It’s his job to go through the agenda point by point until everything has been covered. We used to have an “open forum” time when anybody could bring up anything at the end of the meeting, but it was not helpful. Discussions arose with no actual shape, no real proposals, no research and no homework. We don’t do that anymore. If an elder wants to get something on the next agenda, he talks to the senior or executive pastor (who writes the agenda) and it gets added if there’s room. Many of these concerns are handled at the staff level before they even come to the board. It has streamlined our meetings wonderfully.

 

Fourth, be more patient than you think you need to be. Create enough emotional and temporal space to hear from each elder about any and all serious issues in the agenda. Here the lead pastor often needs to bite his lip, frankly. We pastors are accustomed to making intuitive spiritual discernments quickly in our daily work. That’s a good thing. If we were really unsure of spiritual things we shouldn’t be pastors in the first place. But a board meeting is a place to seek communal discernment from the Spirit. That means we need to take time for all the hearts to understand and bear witness to any new proposal. If a member is impatient (especially the senior pastor) he rushes the decisions. There is a saying, “Decide in haste and repent at leisure.” Take the time to get consensus. There must be no manipulation, just clear proposals that are presented well and defended practically, followed by enough discussion to reach true communal discernment. If members feel pressured into a decision they don’t have spiritual peace about, it comes back to bite the board later if anything goes wrong with the implementation.

 

There’s more to good leadership meetings than what we see here, of course, as any experienced pastor will attest. But we have found these four practical points foundational in creating an atmosphere of unity and spiritual decisiveness.

 

Just a Thought

Pastor Rick

About The Author

Rick Booye is the senior and founding pastor of the Trail Christian Fellowship in Eagle Point, Oregon where he has been the main teaching pastor for over 30 years. Rick is a graduate of Biola University (BA in Bible) and Western Seminary in Portland Oregon (M.A. Exegetical Theology; D.Min.).

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