Managing Church Meetings

For those of you that don't know our system, the Baptists have a Church Meeting, where all the members of the church can meet to discuss matters that are of concern to the Church as a whole.  There are several ways of looking at it.  Two ways I see it are:

• Theologically, it is the church, who are called "the body of Christ" in the scriptures, meeting to discern "the mind of Christ" for the future.
• Practically, it is consultative leadership.  Everyone has an opportunity to consider the things up for discussion and comment on them as they see them.  Not that the church meeting decides everything.  It delegates responsibility to groups and individuals and trusts them to get on with it.

Last night we had a meeting, and it is probably the most tense meeting I have been involved with at Stanley Road.  It made me reflect on the way I lead meetings.  I'm not one for the Minister and Deacons telling the church what to do, so I leave plenty of time for questions and dialogue.  The problems I have noticed are:

• Although the dialogue is encouraged it tends to be dialogue between and individual and me, the chair of the meeting.
• That although people are free to contribute only the most vociferous, or eloquent, do.

To combat this I have sat people around tables a hall, rather than rows in a chapel.  I don't think I have progressed that far enough.  The dalogue last night was mainly between me and two individuals who wanted to speak on two subjects without entering into any dialogue. We may as well have been sat in rows.  The meeting at that juncture would have been the same. Some things I could have done, but didn't (perhaps because I feeling a little under siege) are:

• Turn the questions outward: "Would anyone else like to answer that".
• Turn the conversation inward: "Perhaps you could discuss that around your table, and we will take feedback from each group".
• Shoot the discussion dead on items that are marked as information: "This item is for information, if you would like to discuss it at a church meeting feel free to ask the secretary to put it on the agenda as a discussion item at the next meeting."

Other things have occured to me that we could do:

• Provide a discussion primer introducing the topic so people are informed in advance.
• Have a discussion about behaviour in a church meeting and collaboratively produce a summary of what the church meeting is for, including acceptable forms of behaviour and questioning.

Has anyone got anything to add?