AN ARTICLE CALLED “STAFF MEETINGS ARE A WASTE OF TIME” IS A WASTE OF TIME [T, 3-16-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

AN ARTICLE CALLED “STAFF MEETINGS ARE A WASTE OF TIME” IS A WASTE OF TIME   [T, 3-16-21]

 

I received a lot of positive response to the article, responses sent directly to me, via USPS since we didn’t have computers and email in the early 1980s. I even got a few phone calls. I was feeling pretty good about it. I had expected negative response, but it was all positive. And then Duane Hulse, a minister in Clearwater, FL, wrote to me to tell me what a good article it was. “But,” he went on, “I read it to my wife and said, in the next issue, they’re going to nail that poor man’s hide to the wall.”

He was right. The editor used two pages in the next issue for the responses to the article--more space that they usually allocated for all letters to the editor--and still didn’t have enough room for all who wanted to have a say on the issue. Apparently if we want to praise an article, person-to-person makes sense. If we want to criticize an article, we do it publicly so everyone else can get in on it.

I understand that. I haven’t made a count, but I suspect I have sent more disagreement letters to editors than praise letters myself.

The criticism didn’t bother me much. It would have bothered me if the article had been about racial justice, or world peace, if the article had been in “Newsweek” and entitled “Feeding the Poor Is a Waste of Food.” No, the article was in a magazine for clergy, and it was entitled “Staff Meetings Are a Waste of Time.”

Big deal, right? I mean, who cares? Either you like meetings or you don’t, and either way, you develop a total philosophy that allows you to claim your likes/dislikes are the correct ones. Helen says teachers are like that, that each one she knew claimed that the way they preferred to teach was the correct pedagogy for all. I know preachers are like that. “The correct theological and biblical way to do church is the way I feel most comfortable.”

From the responses to the article, you would have thought the entire purpose of the church depended on the presence of staff meetings. Of course, all those responses were from the senior ministers who got to call and preside over those staff meetings. None of the “underlings” complained about their possible demise.

One minister wrote to me after that second issue to say that he did not have staff meetings because “…my music director, organist, and pianist would cut each other to pieces—note by note. I do not need their animosity transmitted to the rest of the staff.” I hadn’t even thought of that in the reasons for eschewing staff meetings!

Later in my ministry, I was asked to do grief work with the congregation of a large church where the pastor had died suddenly. I went to the staff meeting. About half-way through I had to throw up my hands and say, “This is the most dysfunctional staff I have ever seen!” No one stuck to the agenda, no one listened, they all talked at once, they were all trying to promote separate causes… it was chaos. “I realize that you are acting out your own grief, but you have to be the adults here. You are creating grief for the whole congregation rather than helping with healing,” I told them. “I have no authority over you, of course, but I think the best thing you can do for this church is stop meeting.”

They decided to stop meeting during the grief period, but they sulked. After the grieving period, a new senior pastor was appointed. He thanked me.

John Robert McFarland