Author: Terence

I am a Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. My current ministries focus on consultancy and teaching about consensus based decision-making, mediation, governance training and professional supervision for Ministers. I am co-author of the book "The Church Guide For Making Decisions Together". I live on the beautiful Far South Coast of NSW from where I undertake ministry across the globe. Contact me at terence@makingchurchdecisions.com

A free webinar on digital ministry

Making Church Decisions has always been about helping people to communicate well, to care and to assist people to connect at a deeper level. In that spirit I (Terence) have started a new ministry to operate along side Making Church Decisions.

During COVID 19 many Ministers and congregations have experimented with the use of technology and many of them have done very well in extending the reach of their congregation’s ministry. However, many have told me that they don’t know how to go further with these initial connections even though they know that it must be part of their ministry in the future.

Drawing on my experience of the church and of developing ministries through the use of digital technology I thought that I can help with this issue. My new ministry is called Digital Churches Now: helping churches communicate, care and connect with communities. From early September I will be providing weekly blog posts and You Tube posts. If you want to access these then you will need to go to digitalchurchesnow.com and sign up for the weekly posts. This is the only time that I will send an email to this list on this topic as I respect your privacy and will not spam you. I am sending this email as I know that many of you are interested in my ministry more broadly and this seemed a good way to share about my new ministry development.

Below is information about a free webinar that I will be conducting at 9.30am on August 29th (Australian Eastern Time). I’d love you to join me there.

Three things that I learned as an Internet entrepreneur that digital churches need to know!

Sign up for the Webinar here: https://digitalchurchesnow.ck.page/webinar0820

 This webinar is for you if you:

    • are using YouTube because of COVID, or earlier
    • know that you must do ministry and mission in a different way if you want to have a future
    • have a digital presence with a website and want to make it work harder for you
    • are just curious about digital ministry possibilities

What you will get out of this webinar

    • Actionable steps that you can put into effect straight away to improve your digital ministry
    • Strategies to connect you with people who find you on You Tube, a website or social media
    • Ideas to help you think about digital ministry in a holistic way
    • Inspiration and encouragement that you can do this

Nothing in ministry taught me how to communicate with people who were not already part of the group which was within my Placement context. I had to learn digital ministry from scratch. As a result of the things that I have learned, I now have a ministry that includes teaching workshops around Australia and the world. I work with more than just the Uniting Church in conflict intervention and mediation. I resource churches and ecumenical bodies around the globe in consensus meeting procedures and I am a professional coach for commercial businesses in how to leverage the Internet for the success of their business.

I have started digitalchurchesnow.com to help you to communicate, care and connect with communities. It can be done. Many of you can be highly successful at it and all of us can improve the effectiveness of our digital presence.

A great place to start is by joining my free webinar at 9.30 am on August 29th (Australia Eastern Time). Sign up for the Webinar here: https://digitalchurchesnow.ck.page/webinar0820

5 Questions for Efficient Meetings

meeting

Efficient meetings – a dream or reality?

I am sure all of us have attended way too many meetings where too much time is wasted. It can be frustrating to struggle through a discussion that takes forever to get anywhere. Then even worse the destination turns out to be a dead end.

No one wants to waste their time. But also we don’t want to rush and make people feel left out, or dominated by the powerful, or end up making a bad decision because we didn’t take everything into account.

Being efficient does not mean rushing. Being efficient means only talking about things that actually help us to make a good decision!

There are many tools that help us to make good decisions in a time-effective way. This post looks at five questions that can help us to be clear and focused on the task, and ensure that we know when we have talked enough to make the decision.

What are we here for?

This is not a question that needs to be asked every time but it is something that should be considered from time to time. There will also be situations when it is just the right question to get people back on track.

I have been to many meetings where an issue comes up and people want to tell you their experience of this issue. Or the conversation leads to commentary on the motives or credibility of the people bringing the idea. Have you ever been to a meeting where the group is asked to provide advice on a question and they want to spend their time saying what they think should be the final decision? All of these things cause a meeting to wander away from its purpose. They are classic time-wasters. When people talk about what is not their business it is very inefficient!

Any member of a committee can remind the group of their purpose. If no one else does it then it is up to the Chair. Simple comments like: I think the question before us is …; or We were not asked to make a decision on this subject but to identify the relevant issues for the Church Council; or We don’t have the authority to act in that way so there isn’t much point talking about it; or Can you help me to see how this conversation is helping us to get an answer to the question in front of us; etc.

There are many ways to pull people back on track. However, too few people are prepared to do it and so meetings wander off into all sorts of blind alleys. If the meeting is wandering one very useful tool is to remind people of the purpose of the meeting/discussion in which they are involved. Be polite – but just do it.

What is the issue?

A common way that meetings waste time is to not address the main issues. Instead, they talk about all sorts of things that are irrelevant to the topic. Often this is not done deliberately. People think they know what the issue is but they are wrong – so they talk about things that just don’t help to get the job done.

So the absolutely best way to make your meeting efficient is to make sure that everyone understands what is the issue that is before the meeting. Now, this is not as easy as it seems! Let’s look at an example.

Recently I was having a conversation with a regional church leader who said that a local congregation and his committee had to make a decision about whether a local church Minister would get an extension beyond their current term. On the surface, it looks pretty simple. The issue seems to be “Should  Rev X get to go beyond 10 years?”

But dig deeper and the issues expand. Ask the question again: “What are the issues at stake when we consider an extension for this Minister? Now we start to see that the deeper issues include

    • the effectiveness of the mission of the church
    • the health and well being of the Minister and congregation,
    • the Minister’s professional and vocational development
    • the personal needs of the Minister and congregation
    • the best use of her gifts across the church
    • is there a “church policy” that needs to be accepted or challenged

As you can see, by digging deeper to find the issues that lie beneath the presenting question we can better see what we need to talk about. If we don’t dig deeper then when the talking starts some people will speak to the first point, others the fourth and the talk will jump all over the place and make it hard to get to a point of decision.

This list of “what we need to decide” is very important. Write it up so everyone can see it. You are going to come back to this list. After creating this list, ask one more time: “Is there anything else on which we need to make a decision as we discern this matter?”

One outcome of this process is that it is possible to systematically work through each area rather than wandering all over the top of them and confusing the discussion. A second benefit is that you can prioritize the issues. Another is that you have now moved the conversation from one about strategy (in this case an extension) to goals (ie why would we give an extension).

What do we need to know?

What information do we require if we are going to understand these issues and be well informed? This step significantly reduces the potential for people to bring up red herrings, irrelevant minutia and overweighting their bias rather than dealing with the data. All of these are great time wasters.

So in the example above, the answer for issue one might include things like:

    •  we need to know the mission priorities for the congregation
    • the skills of the Minister and the members
    • decide if the Minister can make a significant contribution to that mission direction
    • etc

Do we have the information that we need?

I am often amazed at how often meetings are prepared to make a decision when they do not have the information that they need! To make a good decision you need the right information. By agreeing ahead of time what you need to know then you can decide if you have the answers that you need. This helps efficiency in at least two ways. First, it means that you only have a discussion when you are in a position to make a decision. Second, it reduces the chance that someone will turn up at the next meeting and say “We didn’t take this into account” and start the discussion all over again. Yikes!

If you do not have the information at this meeting then ask: how do we get it, who will collect it and by when? If this question is right up front then it is less likely that you talk for ages and someone decides that they have to postpone the discussion until another meeting because there is something they need to find out.

Have we talked this through?

Talk through the issues one at a time then move to the next one. Summarize the comments. If there is agreement then note it. If there is a difference of opinion then acknowledge it.

After going through the list of issues that you wrote up at the beginning of the discussion summarize what has been said and see if there is a consensus on the presenting question. It may be that the conversation leads to discernment about the appropriate path forward on the presenting question.

It is also possible that people want to give more weight to one of the underlying issues than to another. For example, some people may want to give the most weight to the family’s needs, others a policy or bias against long terms, or others the mission of the local church. Not all considerations are created equal! But getting these out in the open reduces the risk of it becoming a shouting match or a time for accusations that some people just don’t care about the Minister’s family.

If it becomes clear that there are strongly held different views on what should be the most important factors then make that topic the discussion for a time. One thing that may be helpful is to give people two or three coloured dots and ask them to put a dot next to the two or three things that are most important to them as they make this decision. People can share why their top one is important. This kind of process encourages transparency and makes it possible to address the feelings and values of the committee members as well as their ideas. This step plays into achieving positive relationships among the members and ensures that everyone is respected and has the chance to share their point of view. This may seem to some to sacrifice efficiency for a feel-good vibe in the meeting. However, that sets up a false choice. At the end of the day good, respectful and open relationships enhance the ability of a group to work effectively together over time.

Conclusion

It is very easy for members of meetings to wander all over the place and take way too long to get to a conclusion. The best solution is to have a structure for exploring any issue that is before the group. This post could only offer one example. However, I encourage you to think of an important agenda item from a recent meeting that you attended. Were there more issues under the surface than seemed obvious from the way the business was presented? Did the group try to make a decision without realizing all the information that is needed? Did the meeting go around in circles or have people talk back and forth at each other because they had different priorities and they were trying to wear the other person down? All of these problems can be overcome if you ask the five questions for efficient meetings!

 

6 things not to like about Committees (and what to do about them)

committees

Whether it be work, church, or community groups we have all sat through meetings that make us sad, mad, and bad. Sad about the wasted time and expertise. Mad about the outcomes. Bad inside is often how we feel and it can make us want to behave badly too! So what to do about the things that we hate about Committees?

6 things to hate about committee meetings!

      • Meetings that go for hours longer than necessary
      • Valuable people time is used for no good result
      • Processes that often leave the people affected by the decisions confused, disempowered, hurt and angry
      • A few people within committees seem to hold the power and the greatest influence on decisions
      • Quieter members do not speak up or challenge proposals that some see as unfair or unjust or uncaring
      • Inexperienced and untrained people who deal with complicated and sensitive issues

Wasting Time

I am sure that we have all sat in meetings and thought “surely we can do this business faster than it is taking!” The signs of time-wasting include repeat expressions of the same point of view, going around in circles, never finishing a discussion, people bringing up things that are irrelevant to the matter at hand, etc. I am sure that you can add to the list.

One of the complaints sometimes made about using a consensus-building approach is that it takes too much time. This is a fallacy. It is actually very efficient because it focuses on the things that matter in making a decision rather than let a rambling succession of speeches pile up in the hope of wearing people down to your point of view.

The key to efficiency is not to shut down the conversation and “run a tight ship”. Rather it is to make sure that you open up the discussion early so that you focus on the core issues.

For example, most motions/proposals/recommendations that come before a meeting are that a certain thing is done. It is an action step. The Chair will then often ask “what do you think of this idea?” This has the potential to (and it often does) lead to a spray of reactions, comments, and alternatives. One reason for this is because an action step is a “strategy” – a means of achieving something else. That something else is a goal. There are lots of ways to achieve a goal and we waste time when we don’t first consider what we are trying to achieve.

Tip one for saving time: focus on the real issues. Clarify the issue – what are we being asked to make a decision on? For example, if it is a discussion about using new music in worship the first answer might be “to be more contemporary”. But dig deeper and the issues expand and become clearer- the importance of cultural relevance to mission, supporting the diverse spirituality and faith experience of different members, including more people in leading the worship, etc. Now you know what you are talking about. This helps you to be more systematic in the conversation by working through the goals one at a time rather than the discussion spraying all over the place.

Poor stewardship of people resources

Sit in any meeting – local, regional or wider and multiply the number of people by the meeting hours by the number of meetings a year. A local Church council of 12 people meeting for 3 hours a month 11 times a year is 396 hours a year of valuable people time. Saving an hour puts 132 hours back into a mission activity. Regional meetings can burn thousands of hours a year in ministry time – what a waste of God’s resources! Yes, we need meetings but there is always a question about how many people need to be involved, how often they should meet and how long they should run.

The solution to squandering people’s time resources is to have efficient meetings, good delegations, and very clear role descriptions. I worked once with a local Church Council that went from 45 members to 14! One part of the strategy to releasing over 1,000  hours a year to support local mission was to give people the ability to swap that meeting for another respected and important leadership role – plus get the meetings to work better!

Processes that often leave people confused, disempowered, hurt and angry

I could write a book about this! That’s right I did: The Church Guide for Making Decisions Together. There isn’t space here to cover everything that helps to avoid these problems, but here are some key elements that you want in your process.

      • everyone gets to express their feelings, hopes, fears, and ideas
      • all the issues are understood
      • all the implications of a decision have been thought through
      • the group has all the information that it needs to make a good decision

If these things are going to happen you have to create a culture of co-operation, a place where people feel safe to speak their mind, ask the right questions of the group, always begin with questions for clarification – so people know what they are talking about, use the blue and orange cards, don’t put haste ahead of care for people. Easy!

A few people hold the power and  greatest influence

Could it be that there is some cultural influence at play? There are some cultural groups where it is not appropriate for persons of a particular age or gender to contribute on some subjects. Another kind of culture is where committee members defer to ordained people or those who have high power professional jobs. Still another culture is one where certain people are the gatekeepers and power brokers in a congregation and they expect to be followed.

Different cultural sensitivities need to be respected even if that tends towards the exclusion of certain voices or fosters a hierarchy with Ministers at the top. Respect doesn’t mean that it goes unchallenged but this issue needs to be named and sensitively explored from a theological and cultural perspective. Western individualism also needs to be critiqued from the same angles.

The key to addressing power is to name it out loud and to find a way to talk about it. If the use of power includes intimidation, disrespect of others and arrogance then it is a spiritual issue and a matter of discipleship. Allowing bad behaviour to continue unchecked is a failure of leadership.

Alongside naming power, understanding where it is based, exploring it, and teaching about it we need to operate in a way that shows appropriate respect for all – not just the powerful. This can be done in ways a simple as who we ask to contribute first in a discussion through to how we praise and honour the contribution of everyone.

Quieter members do not speak up

One of the reasons that this happens is because people are dealing with the use of power and culture that we just talked about. However it can also be that some people have low self-esteem, or they process things slower than debater types, some people need to talk their ideas out loud before they come to a view and can’t jump into a debate, some people are just shy, still others avoid conflict or have a personality that wants to accommodate other people and not be self-assertive, etc. You need to know your group and devise a process that meets their needs.

Tools that are mentioned in our book include using small groups to explore more complex issues, ask people to think about their response to a lead question for a minute or so (maybe writing a note to themselves) before asking anyone to speak, invite people to talk to one or two persons around them so that they can surface their thinking before the group discussion, and use a behavioural covenant to create a safe place for dealing with differences. There are plenty of other things that you can do – what are your suggestions?

People don’t have the experience or training they need

This can happen a lot in church meetings. It is not necessary to be an expert to be on a church committee but people should have the ability to grow and build on the skills that they bring from other parts of their life.

Ongoing professional and personal development should be part of what happens in all committees. If that is going to happen then you have to spend time understanding what your task is and what skills are needed. Many leadership groups in the secular world have retreats and planning meetings as part of their schedule. There is nothing to stop a church committee from setting aside some or all of one of their meetings a year to ask the following questions:

      • What is our reason for having a meeting?
      • What skills, attitudes, and spiritual gifts do we need to do our job?
      • Are there gaps in what we need?
      • If so, how do we fill them, eg training, spiritual growth, new people?
      • Looking back on the past year – have we done a good job?
      • How can we better fulfill our calling in the next 12 months

Self-evaluation and training based on recognized needs is a great first step to having skilled and effective members for your committee.

Conclusion

Meetings do matter so we have to do them as well and as faithfully as we can. I encourage you not to put up with less than the best. You don’t have to hate committee meetings and be frustrated by their results. There are simple steps that you can follow to overcome the problems. It truly is worth the effort.

 

We need to talk!

Talk

Why talk together?

We need to talk together because the world is changing! The days of the local church where everyone came from the same background, had similar religious experiences and shared the same cultural views and practices are numbered. Sure they will hang around for a while but they are dying out.

In a very simple, clear and accurate article, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson writes about the future of the church. He makes the compelling case that the game is up for would be homogenous churches. Try as they might most of these types of churches can not grow. This is because demography, culture and changing world views have left them behind. In the US it is expected that 100 of these aging white Protestant mainline churches will close each year for the foreseeable future. It has been happening in Australia and Europe for decades.

Lectures and directives from the pulpit might work when the majority accept the dominant world view. However, when groups are diverse and hold different perspectives and experiences they will not be told. Talk together is the key to sustaining diverse communities.

The changing landscape for the church

Granberg-Michaelson says that the changes that make this death spiral inevitable include:

  • Multiracial congregations are expanding to draw 1 in 5 churchgoing Americans. Surveys on American congregations report a higher level of spiritual vitality among them compared with racially homogeneous congregations.
  • For 400 years, the faith has been moulded by the largely European culture that came out of the Enlightenment. But today church vitality is coming from emerging expressions of Christianity in Africa as well as in Asia and Latin America.
  • These new influences are raising new questions about the relationship of the individual to the community, rational versus non-rational pathways to perceiving truth and the interplay of the spiritual and material realms.
  • As the yearning for authentic spiritual experience moves from the head to the heart in this new environment, spirit-filled communities are flourishing.
  • The culture wars in the church are divisions that are not seen as the core of the gospel and many contemporary people don’t want to fight over them.
  • “Belonging before believing” is reshaping pathways of discipleship. The demand that outsiders first adhere to specific beliefs expressed in creeds or confessions is giving way to inviting them first to explore and share in worship, reflection, and service.

Evangelism needs us to talk together

Anyone who has a genuine concern and capacity for evangelism knows how important it is to understand the context. To understand context  – the life, experience, and values of people – requires listening. Talking together starts with the dominant group listening to the ones who are different.

When it is appropriate there will be a place for the evangelical person, or church, to share their perspective. However, it can never again be in the arrogant, superior, assumption of knowing what others need to learn. The talking will be more in the form of testimony about what God has meant in their life. Then, once again, it is time to listen to how others have experienced God in their life.

To talk together today about faith (or anything in the church) requires patience and humility. It requires a setting and practices that make it possible for all to share. Many of the processes in the Western church assume that there is one place of knowledge and one way to work it out. We need processes for being in a community that is open to learning from the stories and experiences of others. There needs to be space to experience the non-rational ways of gaining insight.

How does your congregation foster open, honest and risk taking conversations? When you meet for Bible study how do you listen to one another? When you meet to make decisions about how to you talk together so that all perspectives are heard? Unless churches develop a process that help them to talk together they will not navigate the changing landscape of society and the church.

Dealing With Difficult People

As is our custom in January we pull some posts from “the vault” and share them with you again. We hope that your 2020 is hopeful amidst all the challenges that we face.

difficult people

 Conflict and Difficult People

Sometimes it is easy to think of anyone who gets in the way of our goals as a difficult person! However taking such a view is to see conflict / disagreement / encouragement to pay attention to other views as a negative experience. Here at makingchurchdecisions.com we consider conflict to be a place for growth. Meeting people with whom we disagree, or who are different from us, invites us to new learning and growth. Conflict is not a bad thing! Combat is optional.

However some negative experiences of conflict arise because we have to deal with difficult people. Difficult people are those who – for whatever reason – do not make a constructive contribution to resolving a conflict. The example might be people who are negative as attempts are made to work through a shared issue. Or it could be that they behave in a way that creates unnecessary tension or strains in relationships.

Examples of Difficult Behaviours

People who are stubborn and refuse to entertain any view but their own are a classic example of people who are difficult to deal with. They turn a healthy conflict into a combat zone. Such people range from those who refuse to take seriously an alternative point of view through to those who put down and belittle alternative opinions.

Still others insist on focusing on things that are irrelevant or minor in the scheme of the issue that is being discussed. We all know the people who want to get into minute detail on something when what is needed is to explore the big themes and grand vision.

Perhaps among the most difficult people are the straight out nasty ones! They use harsh words, put people down and speak in sterotypes. Through body language and tone they make it clear that they are in this fight to win it. Conflict for these people is always a blood sport.

It should be noted that these types of behaviour can show up and the person is not a “difficult person” by our definition. For example people can be negative and oppose things because they have a mental health problem, or are suffering from an illness like dementia, or perhaps transferring emotions from a place of personal pain, eg a deep grief. In these cases they are not being difficult people in order to win their argument. Rather they are outworking – in an unhealthy way – their own illness. We still need to deal with their difficult behaviour. However, it is worth trying to work out where the negative behaviour is coming from because it helps us choose the right intervention.

Options for responding

1.  Don’t react
This is easier said than done! Nevertheless one of the best things to do with difficult people is to suck the energy out of them. Negative people thrive on opposition – it feeds their aggression and makes them feel justified in attacking during a conflict.
Stay calm. That old advice about counting to 10 before you respond to a negative comment has a lot of merit. Process your emotions. Remember to talk slowly and reduce the volume if you hear yourself getting faster and louder
2.  Disarm your opponent
Remember that the comments of difficult people are their weapons – so decide how to take those weapons away. I have found that acknowledging the worthwhile points in an opponent’s argument can shift the tone of a conversation. If people don’t have to defend everything that they believe then it reduces the range of areas where there is contention.
Where people are nasty and agressive then a helpful, but challenging approach is offered by the Apostle Paul in Romans 12: 17 – 20.

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. … 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, … 20 On the contrary:“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

3.  Change the game by changing the frame
With difficult people this will require a different response depending on their behaviour. So, when someone is being argumentative and not wanting to hear another point of view it may be helpful to reframe the discussion. For example the discussion is about enlarging the meeting room next to the church office and buying new furniture to set it up. One person may be fixated on cost and arguing against luxurious furniture in the church. By inviting that person to talk about how hospitality is shown in their workplace or home, it may help to reframe the discussion away from money to being about how to be a welcoming community.
If the difficult people are being rude, disrespectful, etc in their attempt to get their way then they need to be confronted. It is not acceptable anywhere to denigrate and put people down in order to get your way. Therefore the reframe here is to call the person out and tell them that the behaviour is unacceptable. The new frame is what is an appropriate way for people to act. Don’t let people get away with bad behviour because they are allowed to continue to think that winning is all that matters!
4.  Make it easy to say “yes”
There are many ways that this can be done but the basic idea is to get a person to work constructively on a solution. By allowing people to remain outside the solution it gives them permission to keep sniping and complaining.
So, if a person continues to make the same repetitive speech about an issue say something like “it sounds like you care a lot about A, B or C.” “Would you like to be part of the solution to the issue that is before us ?” It is pretty easy to say “yes” in response to those invitations. The goal is to find places of partnership.
In the case of bad behaviour the aim of the words might be to help them see the harm that they are doing. It is important to be very careful here so that a person doesn’t say “no” out of ignorance or spite. So know the context and person very well. Some possibilites for comment include: “Have you noticed that people in the church don’t like spending time with you when you behave this way?” “Do you know that your behaviour is hurting people?”  “Do you want to find a solution to our problems?”
5.  Make it hard to say “no”
In some ways this is very similar to the previous point. Difficult people are often very negative in their mindset. They see problems where others see possibilities. The aim is to get difficult people to see the positive in a situation so that they might be drawn into constructive rather than destructive conversations.
Some things that might be said: “Do you care for our church?” Do you want us to find a solution to this issue?” “Can you offer us some constructive options that will meet the needs of as many people as possible?”

Conclusion

Difficult people turn up in lots of places. We can’t prevent that from happening. However we need not be their victims. Most people can take up the steps that are suggested here. Of course there will be some people who have been subject to put downs for so long that their self esteem is damaged and they cannot confront people who are abusive in their way of relating to others. However many people have options and don’t need to be paralysed by bad the behaviour of difficult people.