42: Moving Methodism: 21 ways to improve Local Preachers Meetings

Local Preachers Meetings have a poor reputation. Here are 21 ways to make Local Preachers and Worship Leaders Meetings into hotbeds of dynamic worship improvement (as promised in 42: Moving Methodism).

Venue: Do not use a Church with pews. Instead use a Church Hall, meeting room or pew free church. Make sure the chairs are comfortable, arrange them in anyway apart from straight rows (and have them different each time, simply try a different shape or facing a different way). Make sure the room is warm, easy to find and open well before the start time.
Welcome: Make sure everyone gets a warm welcome, offer good coffee (fairtrade, decaf, filter) and tea (including herbal), hot chocolate, plus cold drinks plus snacks (be more creative than value custard cream or bourbon biscuits please).
Worship: Always begin and end with worship. Do not simply sing a Wesley hymn and have a prayer. Invite your circuit fresh expressions to lead the worship, use a different style each time (how many years can you go without a repeat style?), ask teams or ad-hoc groups to lead the worship, make sure you involve worship leaders, musicians and Junior Church leaders etc in the worship, do not let the clergy be involved unless part of a team, invite other churches/denominations to lead the worship. When you celebrate communion try a liturgy nobody has used before, try specifically following the latest recommendations from the groups working on the covenant with the CoE (or use URC or Baptist or ... liturgy).
Notices: Do not make people sit and listen to announcements about upcoming conferences etc. Make sure all these are printed on the agenda and available on the Circuit website. Same for all other bits of routine business. Do not read out anything that has been provided on paper (or electronically).
Preachers in training: Circulate reports including training progress (eg completed section 1) with the agenda, no need to read anything or impart status updates. Instead get them involved in leading the worship, get them to do the kids address from one of their services. Use their prayers, ask them to present for 5 minutes on something from a recent module that excited them.
Do Development: Make continuing development part of every meeting. Get the Preachers on trial to set a quiz for everyone else based on one of their recent modules. Have teams to compete. Split into groups with 20 minutes to prepare an order of service together for a set Sunday using a specific style for a specific Church. Each group to present their service in 5 minutes. Take a news headline and each group connect that to a gospel message and show how they could engage a congregation in sharing and prayer.
Communication: use email, SMS texts and postal mail to remind all preachers of forthcoming meetings. Send reminders of their obligations as a preacher (copies of the relevant bits of CPD, send out invitation tickets to Local Preachers Meetings. Circulate minutes within 1 week of the meeting at the latest (or have a team doing live minutes using Google Docs with a projector showing the current state of the minutes). Make sure the Church Councils know which of their local preachers and worship leaders are (or are not) attending the Local Preachers Meeting. Get reports of all the exciting things that are happening into the Circuit Newsletter, Church notices, local Churches.
Followup: Make sure all minuted actions are followed up. Include the results of all actions in the minutes for the next meeting. Someone must chase to ensure that actions actually happen, use SMS text reminders to make sure things happen.
Mix and Match: have at least one meeting per year jointly with a neighbouring Circuit.
Surrounding Prayer: Make sure that there is a side room/chapel available for prayer before and after the meeting. Ensure it is nicely presented with cross, candle, chairs, soft lighting, flowers etc.
Congregations: Invite representatives from every congregation. Ask all congregations to provide profiles of all their worship services including all available resources (people, equipment, song books, liturgy). Collect and circulate reviews of services. Get a report on a service lead by each preacher at least once per year (using the same forms as used for preachers in training).
Go out: have the meeting at someone's place of work with a focus on how our worship can be relevant to people working there. Use a local pub or coffee shop for a meeting.
Be social: Instead of a "normal" meeting go out for a meal together or go bowling or to a Salsa dance class or ...
Prepare: In small groups prepare a Circuit Service with each group responsible for a different aspect of the service.
Bible Study: Personally I think this one should be obvious and already part of our normal practice. Anyway spend time together in detailed Bible Study. Have a few people prepare to lead groups. Get the circuit to pay for some resources eg so everyone has the same commentry on the current lectionary gospel and study a passage in detail together.
Do a Series: Lead a series of services across the Circuit. Plan them together in the Local Preachers Meeting. Consider using a book such as "Just walk across the room" by Bill Hybels (very popular in many of our Churches) and tieing it into Small Groups (form small groups specifically for the series as a way of growing small groups).
Consider inclusion: Have a discussion and then small group work to consider how to include people in worship who are often excluded from worship (such as people who are deaf or homeless or goths or ...). Invite some along to talk about how they are often excluded and what would make them feel included.
Lead Worship: Instead of a normal meeting go and worship with people who do not normally come to services eg in a shelter for homeless people or in a prison or in a school
Visit: Go and visit a Temple, a Synagogue, a Mosque. Ask for a tour and a speaker to describe their worship.
Learn songs: Bring in the worship band from one of the Churches and get them to teach you a few new songs. Get someone to lead an Iona Big Sing for you and neighbouring circuits to learn new ways of congregational singing (Personal recommendation: Alison Adam does this fantastically - pay for a day and get her to spend time in a local school as well).
Be silent. Spend an entire Local Preachers meeting in silence. Have a number of prayer stations around the room, have a silent Eucarhrist (Inderjit Bhogal first introduced this to me and it is wonderful).

Even as I write these there are plenty more ideas around (devise surveys to discover how people find worship at present, ...). So please add you own ideas in the comments.

Next step is how to start some of these when you feel you are not "in charge" of what happens at the Local Preachers Meeting.