How to hold a Church meeting in your home

In ministry we are almost always holding meetings, whether it is a team meeting, a planning day, a discipleship or mentoring session or a pastoral catch up. The space that you choose for your meeting is really important in setting the boundaries and tone of the meeting. Finding good spaces to hold meetings is part of your job in ministry.

At times I have held meeting in a few places that just didn’t work. Perhaps the meeting room was next to band practice or the café was so popular that we couldn’t get a seat. One time the café was public that everyone from our church that walked past stopped in to say hello, interrupting the flow of conversation. In this series I want to look at choosing the right location for your Church or Ministry meetings.

In this first post we will look at holding church meetings at your house. When my wife and I had kids it was much easier at the time to have people over to my house for a church meeting. It was great for social events with a ministry team or a planning day that was going to take several hours. The home environment gave us a greater opportunity to offer hospitality but there a few drawbacks as well:

Cleaning up – every time we have people from church over to our house there is extra cleaning to be done. Whilst you don’t want to put on a show for people, the house can’t have the same clutter that your family might put up with every day.
Getting people to leave – at the end of the night you just want to go to bed but how do you encourage people to your house? You have to set a finishing time before you start so that people know when you are expecting them to leave.
Kids – everything goes well if the kids behave but what if they test the boundaries just when the meeting is starting? You should establish some ground rules with your kids before your ministry team arrive.

Several years ago when my wife and I were starting a church ministry we held the leadership meetings in our house. We had a big house with an upstairs living area for our two boys so the boys could play whilst we held the meetings. If you have a meeting in your family home don’t make your family sit in their bedrooms whilst you take over the house for meetings. If there isn’t room for your family as well as running the meeting then meet somewhere else.

Recently I read about the guidelines for a Vicarage within the Anglican Church, these are the standards that all houses should meet for a minister in the Anglican Church:

Four bedrooms – which are off limits to guests
Two living spaces – one for the family to live in and one that could be used for meetings
Study or an office
Separate toilet for guests

Whilst your house may not meet those requirements, if you are going to use your house as a meeting spot think of the needs of your family. The advantage of having a meeting at your home is that your family can be part of your ministry. It is a great blessing for your ministry team to witness what a family is really like. But if your home is not suitable or it places too much burden on your family then choose another location for your church meeting.

In the next two posts we will look at holding church meetings in other places: