Episode Details

After nearly a year of somewhat dissatisfying, best-we-could-do substitutes, we’re getting back to the real churchiness of church, at least in my part of the world—by which I mean the actual gathering of God’s people around his saving word. It’s marvellous. 

All the same, whenever you return to something familiar after a break, you do see it with new eyes. It’s an excellent opportunity to pause and re-assess why and how we’re doing things as we do.

In that spirit, over the next three Payneful editions, I’m going to offer some miscellaneous ideas about: 

* leading better church meetings;

* why praise makes God bigger (sounds heretical!); and

* the theology of livestreaming. 

This week: seven thoughts on leading better church meetings. 

Leading better church meetings

The following ideas are by no means all that could be said about leading better church meetings. In fact, I wrote a meatier essay about this in The Briefing back in 2012 that you’re welcome to check out. In that longer piece, I dug more into the theology of the gathering, and why (also theologically) it’s important to be wise in how we construct them and lead them. But for now, here are seven punchy principles to provoke your thinking, and to use in discussion with your meeting leaders.

1. Be clear on what your role is as a meeting leader

The leader of a church gathering should be more than a peripheral MC or a warm-up act; but neither should they be the centre of attention. 

The role and purpose of a meeting leader relates to the purpose of the church gathering as a whole. Let’s stipulate (rather than debate at this point!) that the purpose of the Sunday gathering is to meet with God in Jesus Christ as his people, and to edify one another by his Spirit, as we speak God’s word and respond to him together. 

If that (or something very like it) is the case, then the role of the meeting leader is a bit like being the head of the household at a family dinner. He welcomes everyone, and oversees and facilitates all that happens, in order that the family gathering might function well and meet its goals. He doesn’t cook and serve every dish, or even the main course. But he is the one who takes responsibility to see that the whole thing goes well. 

You could summarise the purpose of a meeting leader as leading the household of God in God-ward edification by the word and prayer.

This means that the role of the leader may not quite be an exercise in teaching, but that it is certainly a very important role requiring theologically discerning leadership.

2. Aim for a conceptual flow that suits the purpose of the gathering 

1 Cor 14 suggests that a meeting leader should marshal the various contributions from different members of the church household into a decent, orderly edifying whole. Those contributions will usually be some form of word ministry (Bible reading, preaching, testimony, singing) or some form of response to the word (prayer, thanksgiving, singing, confession, and so on). 

Just as a family dinner has a certain logic to it—nibblies then main course then dessert—so in a church meeting (or any meeting for that matter), there is a conceptual flow that makes sense of what the meeting is trying to achieve. This might be a general gospel-shaped conceptual trajectory (e.g. one that leads towards a repentant, faith-filled, listening to God’s word and then responds to that word in various ways). It also might be shaped by the particula