How to be a committee member

Committees in churches sometimes make slow, or no, progress when the members think of committee business only at the meetings. Your committee work will be considerably more rewarding and your committee considerably more useful if you can think of, and even act on, committee business more frequently than simply at meetings.

• Attend the meetings. Once you understand the committee's cycle of meetings, mark your calendar.
• Prepare for the meeting by reading the minutes of the previous meeting and marking the agenda areas where you have a potential contribution to the discussion. Make sure that both the agenda and the minutes match your understanding of the previous meeting and of the committee's goals.
• Make commitments carefully, then meet them. Refuse to take on commitments that you feel you cannot achieve.
• Help your committee chair. Sometimes, for the best of reasons, committee chairs undermine their committee's potential by doing all the work themselves. If your chairperson has trouble delegating some of the work, volunteer to do some of it and get your other committee members to do likewise. If the committee chair does not use agendas and does not call for minutes to be written, volunteer for these easy duties as well.
• Summarize the discussion when it seems to be veering away from the agenda.