This week we are getting into the nitty gritty of some specific meetings that I host every week with my team at Liquid Church. I’d love to hear what you do in these areas at you church so we can learn from each other!

“A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted.”
– James T. Kirk

I’m talking about our regular meeting routine this week because I don’t want to waste my people’s time . . . I want to get better at this stuff.  Let me know what you are thinking!

Weekly Service Programming Meeting

Why? To check in with the various team leaders who are responsible for rolling out our services every week to ensure we are on track and to look ahead towards what’s coming up next!

Who? Our service programming team leaders . . . Media Designer, Video Dude, Traffic Manager [more about Beth here], our producers from each campus, our internet guru, our site and sound lead and me (the schlep)

When? Currently we meet at 10am on Wednesdays.  Before I came on staff at Liquid, there were two meetings of a similar nature to this meeting each week . . . one reviewing past Sunday and then a “pregame” meeting on Thursday.  We compressed into one meeting . . . one hour a week.  This meeting rarely goes over one hour . . . I’m a big believer that you can get a lot done in 60 minutes . . .

What? This is the regular touch point that I have with this team … and because of the “sausage factory” nature of this team’s work . . . I try to keep it light and personal as much as possible. I’ve switched up the opening to various things over the time I’ve led it . . . from “get to know” ice breakers . . . to looking at fun clips on youtube . . . to seeking out what I can be praying for the team for . . . trying to keep it as human as we can because a lot of what we talk about in this meeting is pretty tactical.  The the rest of the meeting flows through what is happening this weekend . . .

• Run Sheet – Again we look through what is happening this weekend on the run sheet.  We talk through each transition in as much detail as necessary. We’re basically looking for stuff that might be different than normal so that we can make sure we all are on the same page about how it’s going to roll out.
• Asset Check List – We then look over a check list of all the various assets (digital and physical) for each campus and service.  We check in where these pieces are at in production . . . ensuring that we’ll have everything needed by the end of the day on Thursday.
• Coming Up – From here we round out the end of the meeting looking at what is happening in the next few weeks.  Anyone from the team is able to flag anything in this part of the meeting . . . so the topics can vary.  It would be at this point that we would talk about future series . . . or special events we are doing . . . or even just an individual creative piece that is coming down the pipe that we want to make sure everyone is on top of.

The bulk of our weekly production is led through this one hour meeting (We do a bunch of small check-ins on individual elements plus we’ll call roundtables when we are launching a new series to make sure we are all on the same page).  I like Wednesday’s at 10am . . . a real highlight!

What does your regular meeting routine with your production team look like?  What do you do to make sure all the pieces are moving together to land for the next weekend? I’d love to hear about it! [Let us inside your head by leaving some comments!]