There is a difference many people confuse. The weekly meeting with the Pathfinders is one thing. The leadership team meeting is another, quite different. In the first, you welcome children and teenagers, do close-order drill, teach Honors, play, pray. In the second, you sit down with the adults who make the Club happen: the board and the Counselors. There is no audience there. That is where decisions are made.
We call this meeting the "staff meeting" or "leadership meeting." It is the engine behind everything. When it works, Saturday flows, nobody is lost, and each person knows what to do. When it does not exist or turns into chaos, the Club lives putting out fires, always rushing, always improvising.
This guide shows you, step by step, how you — the Director — run this gathering for real. From sending the agenda to following up on tasks. With an agenda template and a simple minutes template you can copy today.
Don't confuse them: the staff meeting is not the Saturday meeting
It is worth making this very clear, because it is the root of nearly every problem. The weekly meeting with the Pathfinders is for them: it is program, teaching, games, devotional, close-order drill. It is planned by the leadership, but it happens in front of the members. The leadership team meeting, on the other hand, is the backstage. It is where you adults decide what will happen the following Saturday, resolve what went wrong the previous one, and organize the next campout.
Why separate them? Because they have different goals. You are not going to discuss the camporee budget with an 11-year-old Pathfinder in the middle of their meeting — they came to live the Club, not to administer it. And you will not be able to truly plan if you are, at the same time, looking after thirty children. Each meeting has its place.
In practice: the leadership meeting happens at another time. It can be a weeknight, half an hour before the Club meeting, or one Sunday a month, depending on the size of your Club. What matters is that it exists separately, at a set time, and that the right people are in it: Director, Associate Directors, secretary, treasurer, chaplaincy, and the Unit Counselors. If you want to see how to organize the members' meeting itself, check the Club meeting schedule.
The agenda sent in advance: the secret nobody uses
Here is the cheapest and most powerful game-changer there is: send the agenda in advance. Two days before, in the leadership group. A simple list of the topics you will deal with. That alone changes everything.
Think about the effect. When the Counselor knows that the topic "July campout" will be on the agenda, they arrive having thought about it. They have already talked with their Unit, already know who can go, already have an opinion formed. Without the agenda in advance, the meeting becomes a string of "let me think," "I don't know, I need to check," "I'll tell you later" — and nothing moves. The agenda turns reactive people into prepared people.
The Bible touches exactly on this point. Proverbs 15:22, in the NIV, says: "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed." Did you notice? It is not the Director alone who makes it work. It is the sum of the minds. But to reap the wisdom of many, you need to give them the chance to think beforehand — and that is what the agenda sent in advance does.
Practical rule: the agenda is short. From 4 to 7 items at most. If you have twenty topics, you will not resolve any of them well. Choose what is important and leave the rest for next time. And always open a space at the end for "general matters," where the small last-minute things go.
Short devotional opening: start with God, not with problems
Every Club leadership meeting starts with a spiritual moment. But pay attention to the word: short. Five, at most ten minutes. It is not a worship service. It is a breath. A verse, a one-sentence reflection, a prayer. Enough to remind everyone why you are there: it is not just any sports club, it is a ministry with real children and teenagers.
Why short? Because a devotional that is too long at the start eats the time of the practical part, and then the decisions get left for the end, in a rush, poorly thought through. The devotional prepares the heart; it does not replace the work. An experienced Director knows how to dose it: warms up the group, prays for the Pathfinders by the name of someone going through a hard time, and moves on to the agenda.
An idea that works well: rotate who leads the devotional. One week it is the chaplaincy, the next it is a Counselor, the next it is you. This shares the spiritual responsibility and even reveals gifts you did not know your team had. For non-Adventists who serve in the Club, this moment is also welcoming — it is reflection and purpose, no one is obligated to anything, and everyone is welcome.
The rules of an efficient meeting
A leadership meeting with no rules becomes a chat circle. It starts late, someone talks for twenty minutes about a single thing, three people talk at once, and in the end nobody remembers what was decided. You leave tired and with no result. The rules exist to respect everyone's time — because these people's time is volunteered, it is sacred.
There are few rules, but they change the game. First: timing. Start at the set time, even if people are missing, and set the ending time before you begin. "Let's go from 7:30 to 8:30 PM." When there is a time to end, everyone focuses. Second: one person speaks at a time. It seems obvious, but it is the most broken rule. As Director, you are the moderator — if two start together, you organize the line: "let her finish, then you speak."
Third, and the most important of all: every decision is recorded. Do not trust memory. In the heat of the conversation it seems everyone understood the same thing; a week later, each one remembers it differently. Someone — usually the secretary — writes down what was decided, right there, on the spot. That is the minutes, and we will see its template further below.
A fourth rule helps a lot: do not resolve in the meeting what is a conversation between two. If a topic only concerns you and the treasurer, do not spend the other ten people's time on it — note it as "handle separately" and move on. A good meeting protects collective time.
Read alsoClub leadership committee: what it is, who takes part, and how it worksPlanning as a team: listen to everyone, don't just announce
This is the heart of the meeting, and where many Directors go wrong without realizing it. There is a huge difference between planning WITH the team and merely announcing to the team. In the first case, you arrive with a topic — "next month's outing" — and ask: what do you all think? Where? How? In the second, you arrive with everything ready and just hand out orders. The second way kills the Club from within, because no one commits to an idea they did not help build.
Listening to everyone is a discipline. As Director, ask the question and then stay quiet. Let the silence exist. Call on the quieter ones by name: "And you, what do you think?" The Counselor who spends the whole Saturday with the kids sees things you don't see from the direction. The treasurer knows whether the money is there or not. Each seat at the table has a view you don't have. Bringing these views together is literally what the Bible commands.
Proverbs 11:14, in the KJV, sums it up: "Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety." Asking for opinions is not weakness — it is wisdom. The strong leader is not the one who decides everything alone; it is the one who knows how to gather the best counsel and then decide well.
And there is a beautiful model of this in the history of the church itself. In Acts 15, the first Christian leaders faced a difficult and controversial decision. What did they do? They gathered — the so-called Council of Jerusalem. They heard Peter, heard Paul and Barnabas, heard James. They debated for real. And only then did they reach a decision that they recorded in writing and sent to the churches. Listen to many, decide together, communicate clearly: the script is almost two thousand years old and still works.
Task with an owner and a deadline: where the meeting becomes action
Here is the final test of a good meeting: it ends in tasks, not in talk. "Everyone agreed we need to buy the new ropes" is not a useful decision — it is a loose intention. The question that closes every topic is always the same: who does it, and by when? Without those two answers, nothing happens.
Every task that comes out of the meeting needs an owner with a name and a deadline with a date. Not "someone looks into this" — but "Ana buys the ropes by Thursday." Not "we organize the campout" — but "Counselor Leo pulls together the list of registrants by Sunday." One owner. One date. When a task has no owner, it becomes everyone's, and what is everyone's is no one's.
Beware of a common mistake by the dedicated Director: pulling everything onto yourself. If all the tasks stay in your name, you become the bottleneck and burn out in three months. Distributing tasks is not dropping responsibility — it is trusting the team and helping it grow. A Counselor who receives a mission and fulfills it feels part of it, feels like a leader. That is how you form the Club's next leaders.
Note each task in the minutes, next to the decision that generated it. At the end of the meeting, read aloud the list of action items: "so, to recap: Ana, ropes by Thursday; Leo, list by Sunday; me, I talk to the church by Wednesday." Everyone confirms. No one leaves with any doubt about what is theirs.
Follow-up: the meeting doesn't end when it's over
The part that separates the Clubs that move from the ones that stall is this: the follow-up. It is no use distributing beautiful tasks and never following up on them. The next leadership meeting should start — after the devotional — by reviewing the action items from the previous one. Item by item: was it done? Was it not? Why? Does it need help?
This is not to embarrass anyone. It is to create a culture of responsibility with kindness. When the team knows that at the next meeting each task will be reviewed, the tasks are taken seriously. And when someone couldn't do it, the follow-up reveals the obstacle early — maybe the person is overloaded, maybe information was missing. Then you adjust, redistribute, help. Better to find the problem now than on the eve of the campout.
A simple tool closes the cycle: the minutes of the previous meeting are the opening agenda of the next. You read what was decided, mark what was fulfilled, and what wasn't goes back to the task list with a new deadline. Nothing is lost. Nothing is left hanging. The Club gains memory.
And remember the tone. Club leadership is service, not a rank of command. Following up with respect, recognizing whoever delivered, helping whoever got stuck — that is how the team stays united and motivated season after season. The same firmness with care that you use with the Pathfinders applies to your adult team. If you want to go deeper into how to form good Counselors, see how to be a good Counselor.