The Annual Meeting, love it or hate it, someone in the church wants it. What if you could do an Annual Meeting that made people happy and excited about the life of our church? What if the Annual Meeting was a celebration and not a time for everyone to have to listen to Mr. and Ms. Cranky?
The Purpose of the Annual Meeting
What is the purpose of your church’s Annual Meeting? Do you know? If the answer is the denomination/ByLaws/Tradition require one, please keep reading. The denom/ByLaws/Tradition reason may be the literal reason for the meeting, but every organization needs time for:
Celebration
Sharing Information
Gathering Information
The Open Organization
Celebration
An important part of the Annual Meeting is celebrating the success of the church in the past year - regardless of whether this is a January meeting or a May meeting at the end of the school year. Use lots of pictures from all facets of your ministry. Set it to uplifting music.1
Ask three people who tell a good story to speak at the meeting. Two can talk about ministry success and one can tell a faith story. Or reverse it. Faith development is one of the reasons we go to church. Let’s celebrate it at the meeting.
Sharing Information
What information do the parishioners want? Ask them one year, then give it to them the next. The old tradition of committee reports is often boring and rarely read. Instead find ways to lift up “5 Great Things to Know” or “7 Ministry Joys This Year,” or “5 Things to Know & 2 Things that Did Not Work.” Sharing ministry failures helps a church be open to change and trying new things. Remember to not out names tied to ministry failures.
As an Interim Pastor, I sometimes abolish the written report and encourage those who will miss it to seek out three other churchs’ annual reports to read to look for new ministry ideas. Usually, only Mr. and Ms.Crank demand the annual reports. They never follow up on reading and learning about other churches.
Gathering Information
What if at the Annual Meeting we gathered information? We could have note cards at the door and have people submit questions that a panel could answer during the meeting. This allows us to say that we can answer 5-7 questions, but will get back to you on some of the others. We can also share that some questions will be answered in the church’s email blast so we can give well-thought-out answers.
We could also have a ten-question digital survey by Survey Monkey or Wuffoo available to do on their phones during a five-minute time before the meeting begins as people gather. Include at least one survey question for open sharing.
No Anonymous Surveys
The question will come up about anonymous or share your name on the survey. I have served churches that do not do anonymous so I prefer requiring a name. The advantages of anonymous surveys are often overshadowed by the negativity that really can hurt the pastor or lay leader or a particular ministry that gets blasted.
The Open Organization
The effective church doesn’t do secrets.
Let me say this again: The effective church doesn’t do secrets.
As a pastor, I keep pastoral care confidences, but I don’t keep church secrets. We are a volunteer organization based on the Lord God. We function on volunteer financial support. We don’t keep secrets. Anyone can see the finances and the budget.2
The Annual Meeting is a great time to emphasize that the church is an open book. One way to help this is to offer 2-3 times that anyone can meet with the Treasurer and the Finance Committee in the month before the Annual Meeting. Set up these meetings and have people sign up for them by SignUpGenius or SignUp or Calendly.3
Sharing the Budget at the Annual Meeting
The budget is a fraught time for church leaders at the Annual Meeting. Have the finance meeting ahead of time so people who have special interest can have one on one time with the number-people. When the budget is presented, share some good questions and answers from those meetings with the whole church.
Make sure the budget is given out ahead of time. I like it to go out before the Finance committee does its meetings. If you're not doing the finance meetings, then make sure the budget goes out by at least Thursday before the Annual Meeting.
Invite people to email their budget questions to the Finance Chair or Treasurer, who share these questions with pastoral staff - No Secrets! Answer the questions in an email or with a phone call. Important questions can be answered a second time at the Annual Meeting when you do the budget presentation.
Special Giving Opportunity
The Annual Meeting can be a great time to invite people to make a one-time financial gift to a special ministry opportunity - a mission, a youth trip, or the scholarship fund. Happy people give. Or you could pair a fundraiser with the Annual Meeting and do a silent auction or bake sale before the meeting.
Running the Meeting
Ask someone with administrative gifts to be the “Chair” of the meeting who makes sure everything is ready before the meeting begins. The pastor may lead the meeting,4 but this other person can do the problem-solving required before the meeting begins.
Lots of churches have a meal before the meeting, and this is a wonderful time for the pastoral staff to meet people. With someone else problem-solving the last-minute changes the pastoral staff is freed to roam and talk with the church people.
Visioning
During the meeting, don’t just look backward. Include some vision casting for the future. Can a church leader throw out some BHAGs - Big Hairy Audacious Goals5 that might happen 2-5-10 years out? These don’t have to necessarily be “approved” or from the board. Maybe you ask one of your oldest members to throw out some dreams. You could do a pop-up having asked five members of the congregation to bring goals for 2-5-10 years and then call them out to share.
At one church we shared the confirmation’s class answers to the question: “If someone gave our church 1 million dollars what would you spend it on?” These answers were heartfelt and sometimes silly.6 They gave the Annual Meeting a glimpse of the newest members of our church.
In Summary
The Annual Meeting can be a celebration of the life of the church. A well-done meeting can give people hope and thanksgiving for the past year’s ministry as well as hope for the future. If you are going to one of these meetings please pray for peace and love, smile at the meeting, and share your hope for the future.
An easy way to gather pictures is a monthly pic dump where church ministries must submit 5 pics of their ministry to one tech-aware volunteer by the 15th of each month. The tech person chooses two pics for the Annual Meeting photo show. They build it each month. By doing the slide show a bit at a time, you will save time while building a temporal order to the life of the church.
The giving list should be confidential to the Pastor and Treasurer/Finance Committee. They should share information with the board about how many people give in the ranges Zero Givers, $100-$1,000, $1,000-$5,000, $5,000-$10,000, and $10,000+ givers.
If you’ve got another sign-up software you love, share it in the comments with why you like it.
Some denominations require the pastor to chair the meeting itself. Chairing doesn’t require the pastor to also do all the pre-meeting organizing and worrying about details. Let someone with administrative gifts do this ministry.
I learned this term from the great Rev. Dr. Dale Galloway, the Beeson Institute for Advanced Church Leadership. Not sure if he originated it.
Still love the answer, “Build an Italian Restaurant in the church because everyone loves breadsticks. People would come for good pasta.” This 8th grader became an Army Ranger and now is in law enforcement with an active faith.