First published on this website in April 2011 and last updated in February 2013

Committees can seriously damage your church's health. But you will probably need some set of groups if you are concerned with collaborative planning, clear decisions and definite action. Here are 12 pieces of advice to ensure your groups are effective. They include the following:

• Avoid the word! ('committee')
• Define the overall purpose
• Treasure simplicity
• Keep numbers small
• Structure by church purpose
• Give each group clear powers
• Build teams

and so on. Test your 'committee structure' against the list - but don't then set up a committee to decide what to do....