Integrating Your Team
Our church shifted to an integrated family ministry strategy and combined our preschool, elementary, teens, and college ministers into one cohesive leadership team.
- Hold weekly meetings with an agenda and rotating participation: It is important for creating community. If you meet rarely, you are communicating to the team that they don’t actually need each other’s input.
- Have a standing agenda item for ideas and challenges: Bring a new challenge to the team each week.
- Obtain team leader buy-in: In order to create a strong team, the leader must commit his or her time and resources to the projects that are most important to the team members.
- Schedule one-on-one appointments: I have committed to thirty-minute weekly meetings with the people working directly for me. This is a great way for a leader to communicate, “You and your ministry are too important to me to let a week go by where we didn’t get at least thirty minutes to connect.”
- Communicate weekly to all staff members: I send a newsletter at the end of the week called “The Staff Loop.” Its purpose is to encourage our staff members as well as keep the vision right in front of them. I want them to know I’m accessible to them and involved on many levels.