• Talk with your campus minister/director about the items that need to be covered at the meeting and the goals he/she has for the meeting.
• Spend some preparation time in prayer about the meeting.
• Make sure that everyone is informed about the meeting.
• Prepare your thoughts – write them out, think about the opening of the meeting and how you will end the meeting.
• If the agenda has a lot of items, print out copies for your team members.

• Let the group know the purpose of the meeting.
• Design an appropriate introduction and always end the meeting-don’t just let it fizzle away.
• Keep the focus of the meeting where it should be…your overall goal for reaching students.
• Be positive (Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. Philippians 4:8).
• Always have a spiritually focusing time (devotion, prayer, testimony, all three). Get volunteers to lead that time.
• Vary the meeting. Routine is good, but sometimes people get bored with routine.
• Notice the people, not just the agenda. The key to a good meeting is the people- you need to notice who is and isn’t participating.
• Think Win-Win – sometimes we think that there is only one way, but if we’ll just be a little more creative, people with different ideas can both feel like they have contributed.
• Better to end a meeting too soon than to drag a meeting out too long.
• Begin and end the meeting on a positive note.

COMMON MEETING PROBLEMS

• Chasing Rabbits – as the president, it is your responsibility to keep the meeting on track. Chasing rabbits can be fun and should be allowed occasionally to build team morale, but it should be controlled. Try to use humor to handle individual rabbit chasers. Purchase a rabbit’s foot and bring it to your council meeting. If a particular student is chasing rabbits too much during that meeting, present them with the rabbit foot and inform them that as long as they have the rabbit’s foot, they are only allowed to make one sentence comments about the discussion!
• Inability to Make a Decision – during a meeting it is common to have a problem deciding what to do about a situation. Concentrate on what next steps the group will take. A decision is just a combination of next steps.
• If time allows, ask a student or group of students to study the issue and bring a recommendation at the next meeting.
  If the decision needs to be made during that meeting, ask the students to evaluate the options based upon the goals of your group. Some decisions are not difficult in the light of your goals. Spend time in prayer during the meeting about the decision. Don’t allow any one student to dictate an agenda.
• Vague Commitments – great ideas often float around in meetings and the Leadership Team may agree to do an idea. Make sure to assign someone in the group the ultimate responsibility for the idea and give them a timeline for completion of the project.
• Disagreements – it is possible that students will strongly disagree about a decision. If this happens, remind the group of the following things:
  • God has brought the whole group together to make decisions jointly
  • When making a decision leaders should be discussing how they believe God is leading, not their opinion
  • If disagreements become severe, take a moment to stop and pray for peace
• Bad Location - Pick a location that is as free from distraction and comfortable as possible.