Modern business practice often speaks of the meeting before the meeting. Before a business meeting, it’s a good idea to talk to key players about things that are expected to come out in a meeting. It prevents people from being blindsided and it allows them a chance to process their outlook on the situation. When premeeting meetings are used wisely and not as manipulative tools, they can be very helpful to leaders. While the meeting before the meeting is commonly accepted as good practice, the meeting after the meeting is not. After any meeting, participants are likely to discuss the meeting. That’s normal. But there is a condition common to local churches that I call the “meeting after the meeting syndrome” that is not healthy. These meetings are more like scheming sessions than meetings.
The Meeting AFTER the Meeting
The scheduled meeting started at 6:00, and instead of leadership meeting at 5:00 to clarify details, every clique and crew meets at 9:00 in the halls and parking lot to complain about what was said and plot about how they will get their way. That is: the meeting after the meeting. What causes a climate where business meetings are ineffective and lead to after-meeting control sessions? Here are a few factors and some thoughts about how to change them.
1. Resentment:
Churches post-church splits are filled with people with thin skin and their guard up. Following sweeping conflict in a church that led to a pastor leaving on bad terms and/or a mass exodus of church members, churches need to be intentional about doing the hard work of reconciliation and healing.
When churches in and after conflict short-sheet this process, inevitably the cultural factors that caused the conflict in the first place will creep up again.
2. Domineering personalities:
To put it plainly, saying, “That’s just how old so and so acts,” is not acceptable. Every church needs leaders, but bullies, even unintentional well-meaning bullies, kill the effectiveness of church meetings.
Pastors and church leadership teams have to be willing to address domineering personalities in the church. This is the hard work of ministry, but due to a lack of it, local churches struggle with control issues that prevent growth in every area.
Better to lovingly downgrade the power of one domineering person in a church than to allow them to marginalize several gentle people in the church.
