Bishoprics are notorious for long meetings.
Unfortunately, two- to three-hour bishopric meetings have become the norm for our leadership culture and many assume that is just part of the gig.
Plus, even though long meetings can be draining, they also fill your brain full of dopamine and it feels like you made serious progress in the ward.
I want to push back on this cultural norm and offer a better way.
I don’t mean to brag (yes I do), but in my last year as bishop, we spent an average of 30 minutes a week in bishopric meetings.
And I am willing to bet your bishopric or presidency could do the same.
Let me share with you five reasons why your meetings go too long…
You Aren’t Delegating Effectively
If your meeting begins with a list of decisions to be made or topics to discuss my experience has shown that more than half of those items could be handled by other ward organizations or by committees that are called to process that information.
This requires you to surrender control and trust those you serve with; however, more will be engaged in the work, and more progress will happen in the long run.
You Overestimate the Impact of Your Decisions
In short, your meetings are not as crucial as you think.
The decisions you make in the meetings won’t change much in general.
It’s easy to see your list of discussion items and put more weight and urgency on them than needed.
Recognize them for what they are and if you don’t get to each one, bump it to the next meeting’s agenda or erase it all together.
You aren’t going to break anything. 🙂
Too Much Time Spent on Ward Callings
Ward callings are one of the more difficult things to keep in check during a bishopric meeting.
I used to be the biggest violator of this and finally, we got it down to less than 10 minutes of the weekly bishopric meeting.
Bishoprics should only be discussing names for callings if they are an organization president.
Any other discussion related to ward callings should only include reviewing submitted names from organizational leaders and either approving the submitted name or sending back information to those organizational leaders to consider.
If the same organization is asking for the same individual to be called, have a short discussion, and then approve the name for one organization and tell the other to submit another name.
Bishoprics must get to a place where they trust their ward leaders to staff their own organizations or your meetings will be impossible to keep under 2 hours.
The next reason meetings go too long also relates to ward callings…
You Aren’t Using a Project Management System
A really big reason our bishopric was able to keep our ward calling discussion to under 10 minutes was because we used Asana, a free project management system (watch a free training about how to use Asana in your bishopric).
This allowed us to process simple information outside of the meeting.
For example, if a name was submitted to the bishopric from the Primary and I knew as the bishop that that individual was available, I could quickly respond so that the Primary would move on to another name long before our bishopric meeting even began.
The list of benefits of using a project management system is long, but, in short, it is essential.
You Don’t Preside Over or Focus the Meeting
Presiding is the most underrated skill in church leadership.
We often hear who is presiding in a meeting but real presiding is how that leader influences that meeting from beginning to end to become a revelatory experience for all involved.
In a bishopric meeting, this includes keeping the discussion on point and moving forward by asking questions and diminishing topics that will not help the progression of the meeting.
Presiding also includes keeping the main thing the main thing during the meeting.
It’s awesome to be a part of a bishopric where each individual feels like they are in a circle of friends.
Nothing beats a good belly laugh with those good people you serve; however, the presiding authority needs to avoid tangential stories or topics that interrupt the pace of the meeting.
So what do you think?
How do you keep the bishopric/presidency meetings concise?
Sincerely,
Kurt Francom
Executive Director
Leading Saints
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