You’ve been there, in that never-ending meeting where all you can think about is the fact that the next thing on your to-do list is yet another meeting!

You’ve thought it before, “There has got to be a better way of doing meetings at the church.”

A few years ago, I considered how much time our church was investing in meetings and how that regular rhythm was costing our team. Everywhere I looked I saw meetings happening around our organization, including meetings for:

* Weekly service reviews* Kids ministry pre-game* Admin team workflow check-ins* Service planning * Small group brainstorming * Lead team discussions* …and the list goes on

While meetings can be an useful tool to push the mission of your church forward, sloppy meetings can be a total waste of time for your team and for the church as a whole. Some common problems that I’ve seen creep into churches with too many unfocused meetings are that:

* Rather than focusing on the critical issues, they become a time for people to wander from topic to topic.* The wrong people are in the room for the issues at hand, while the right people are sitting through endless conversations that don’t require their input.* The inspiration of your team can be tapped out as people sit in useless meetings on a regular basis.* Meetings can be never-ending, meaning that the people who can last the longest get their way in the organization.

Every meeting should be a time and place where decisions are made. There needs to be inherent tension as people are presented with options to choose from. The worst type of meeting is informational where no decisions are made, and people are simply brought up to date on what’s happening in the church. Avoid meetings that are purely informational.

Effective church leaders look to root out useless “information sharing only” meetings and find other ways to keep the team aware of what’s happening at the church. As such, you need alternative strategies to keep your people aligned. Here are eight meeting alternatives for your team:

Regular Email Rhythms

Write a regular email that is fun and helpful, and your team will read it. I promise. Pack the email with information that they will actually want to read. Send it regularly enough and it will cut out the need to pull your team together to keep them informed. Make sure each email follows the V.I.P. approach:

* Vision // Remind people why you are doing what you do as a church.* Information // Make your emails the primary way your team receives the data they need about the ministry. If it is helpful, they will open it!* Personal // Don’t write your emails like you are addressing a mass of anonymous people; write them as if they are being sent directly to a friend.

Project Management Software

There are many tools that teams can use to track tasks, goals, and projects. Project management software provides a great way for teams to stay up to date without needing to gather everyone together. This type of software is not free, but it is an easy-to-use tool and scales well over time as the demands of your team increase.

In many ways, the weekend is one big, continuous project at your church. Many churches have found Planning Center to be vitally important for communication and collaboration for the organization of weekend services.

Other examples of project management software include:

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