Resources e-letter 12:6 - December 2012

NEW: Seatings for meetings

The latest set of Training Notes, uploaded yesterday, seeks to encourage the study of seating layouts at church and other business meetings. The choice of layout speaks loudly about issues to do with formality, relationships and authority. Six different layouts are shown for a meeting of 18 people and analysed:

1. Top table
2. Boardroom
3. Circle
4. Arcs
5. Living room
6. Buzz groups.

These are followed by seven general points, with the emphasis that the seating layout needs to serve the purpose of the meeting. As different agenda items may have different purposes this may point to a need to change the layout at various times in one session.

If you chair any group that meets for business or if you serve on any such group, here is something to make you ponder and help you reconsider your current practice.

Training Notes TN71 Seatings for meetings, are now available in the Training Notes listing of the Resources section of the website. As always you are welcome to download the notes and/or print up to 30 copies without charge.
  
  

Tweetings

Here’s a reminder to follow me on Twitter @johnnvtruscott if you want a range of short ideas and thoughts on creative church organisation. But the birdies are having Christmas week off so no tweets will be heard next week. Silent Day and Silent Night.
  
  

Cheatings for Administrators

If you work as your church’s Administrator and are reading this paragraph, you are not a member of the UK Church Administrator Network (UCAN) – simply because members receive a slightly different version of this e-letter, omitting this paragraph for a start.

And if you are not a member you are cheating (had to get the word in somehow!) yourself out of all kinds of benefits. There is no subscription, simply a suggestion of a £10 voluntary donation with a repeat request every few years.

We have bimonthly specialist mailings, a range of local and national events for you, a wide range of resources from our remuneration survey results through to conference audio recordings, and now we are launching local groups and, within the next year, will have a distance learning course.

Forthcoming events currently booking include:
Manchester Area Training Day – Sale – 22^nd January 2013
Bath Area Training Day – 25^th February
Cutting Edge residential conference – Northampton – 11^th-13^th March.

Membership is growing steadily and passed the 700 mark this autumn so, what are you waiting for? And if your church employs an Administrator, please make sure they are members.

Read all about it at www.church-administrator.net or the Administrators pages of my own website, see the event details on the ‘UCAN events’ page, and join on the ‘UCAN application to join’ page there.
  
  

Final bleatings!

Enough of these rhyming headings, you are saying. Thank you for your interest in the website. Please tell others about it. I welcome feedback so that I can be constantly improving it. It is updated every few days and there is a constant stream of new material being added to its various sections. If you’ve not visited recently, have a good look round.