Devotions and Discussions for Ministry Team Meetings

Meetings can be awesome. Meetings can also be awful. One thing I’ve learned along the way and TRY to implement in my ministry is to never have a meeting without a specific purpose and a plan. This tool might be able to help with that for your ministry team.

This set of devotions and discussions is designed to help a ministry team discover (or rediscover) why their specific ministry exists, define who they serve or desire to serve, and then out of those two things work together to figure out how to do that most effectively, which leads to what programs, events and trips you might design. I know from experience that it is much EASIER to start with the “what”; everyone has a million ideas, right? However, it is much more EFFECTIVE to center in on our purpose and the people. The rest comes naturally after that.

The goal of these discussion guides is to help teams get into God’s Word together, communicate with and learn from each other, and gain a clearer focus in their ministry area. They are created in such a way that any team member could lead them or everyone could take turns reading a different part of the discussion guide. We had youth ministry in mind while writing but they really apply to any ministry in the church.  While the design is meant to be consecutive, one leading into the next, you may be able to use a few that you feel might be specifically helpful for your team on their own. There will be 12 in all divided into three main sections. Feel free to use them over the course of the next year or 12 weeks in a row or whatever fits best for your ministry.

Here is a brief summary of what the talk sheets will cover:

Discovering Our “Why” – Without a clear purpose and vision for why we are here and why we believe this ministry is important, we might as well not do anything at all. If we start with why (which is a question often asked by teenagers themselves) we can draw students closer to Jesus and truly impact our world and God’s Kingdom. We each have a “why” for ourselves which is important, along with discovering our corporate “why.”

1. What’s YOUR why?
2. Why “Why” matters
3. So why ARE we here?

Defining our “Who” – Just as important as “why” we are here is looking at “who” we are here for. There could be some debate on whether this should perhaps even come before “Why”. In any case, this next set of three discussion guides leads a ministry team through a process of figuring out who this ministry is for and perhaps who best fits to serve here.

4. Who do we have?
5. Who do we want to attract? 
6. How our who fits our why?

Describing our “How” and Developing our “What” – The difference between “how” and “what” can seem a little blurry at times but one way to think about it is “how” is general, “what” is specific. This last set of discussion guides helps teams define both of these and put the details in place.

7. Brainstorming “How” (coming soon)
8. Narrowing Down the “how” (coming soon)
9. Moving Toward “What” (coming soon)
10. “When” – Making Timeline of Making the “What” Happen (coming soon)
11. How does “Who” fit the “What”? (coming soon)
12. Staying centered on Jesus while focused on details (coming soon)

Bonus: Naming our “wins” – Evaluating our Ministry (coming soon)