Last week I talked about making sure your group is prepared to handle growth. I explained that a ministry won’t experience sustained growth unless it is prepared to handle the increase. One of the things that we can do to prepare for growth is to strive for excellence in our weekly large group meetings.
For many students the large group meeting will most shape their impression of the ministry. At the Propel Leadership Summit in May we held a session with tips on how to run a good meeting. You can listen to the entire session on our website, but I wanted to take this week to summarize the Q&A time we had at the end of that session because there were some really good ideas shared.
Ideas for creating a welcoming atmosphere:[li]find a room that doesn’t have harsh fluorescent lighting or has multiple lights so you can turn some of them off during worship so people can focus on the Lord[/li][li]find a comfy feeling room (couches, fireplace, etc.) that has a projector[/li][li]tell students to intentionally leave empty seats around them for new people to sit by them and have greeters point out open seats[/li][li]have a greeter stay by the door to talk to people who may peek in during the meeting[/li][li]play some background music before the meeting[/li][li]have a hospitality team that looks for new people to talk to[/li][li]go out to eat every week after BASIC[/li]
Ideas for your worship time:[li]sing a cappella so as not to get caught up in the music[/li][li]introduce only one new song at a time and no more than two new songs per month[/li][li]play songs that are well known to everyone not just people in your group[/li][li]hold jam nights to help people develop skills who want to be on the worship team[/li]
Ideas for sharing the message:[li]have people share the message who are experienced[/li][li]pull from your resources: pastors, BASIC staff, people who have spoken at your church, etc.[/li][li]if you don’t have many people who are trained at preaching do a DVD series[/li][li]some churches have DVD series that you can borrow[/li][li]look for ways to mix up your weekly meetings (I posted some ideas for this back in January)[/li]
These are some ideas to get you started on finding ways to improve your weekly meetings. Do you have any other ideas or things you have done that work well? Please share them in the comments below.