Sermon Branding

Meetings are pointless. 

Well ... at least the majority of people think so, especially if they are a part of an organization that does not know how to run effective meetings. But even if you do know how to run an effective meeting, how do you get from dream to reality? Google Sprints don't work for everything and you probably can't afford Patrick Lencioni to train you and your team. Everyone needs something, but what exactly do they need?

We are huge fans of leading within context. Trying to fit your square meeting within the constraints of a round framework is going to frustrate your team and lead you astray. That's why you need specific tools for specific events.

One of the benefits of hanging out in the local church almost every day is that we get to meet a lot of people. From lead pastors to their creative teams, we have an opportunity to hear a lot of stories, successes, and almost s many failures (we call them learning opportunities). Last week we heard one of those stories. Perhaps you can relate.

• Weekend teacher calls for a meeting to discuss the upcoming sermon series.
• Everyone shows up and sits around a giant table. White board is blank.
• The meeting starts with the dreaded, "So ... what do you all have?"
• With lumps in the throats, everyone says the same thing, "nothing".
• Unprepared, the lead teacher describes the sermon series and meanders around a general idea for the next hour.
• There's give and there's take, but ultimately, the teacher leaves with what he entered with: the same basic idea they have been thinking about for weeks.

Sure, the creative team could have done a better job at giving input and convincing the lead teacher of a certain direction. And yeah - the lead pastor could have prepared his people a bit better. It's these situations that really frustrate people and give them a general uneasiness about meetings. It's why most people hate them.

We aren't magicians, but we do know how to create a little meeting magic. 

Based on the feedback we heard recently from the disastrous creative team meeting, we want to help you out and give you our Creative Team Meeting framework for Sermon Branding.