Every Wednesday our entire staff meets together for 60 minutes. All 75 of us, from the interns to the pastors, from the worship team to the children's staff, from the senior pastor to the accounting team. We all stop by the Connection Cafe on our way and pick up a free beverage of choice from a great group of volunteers. Then we jump into a meeting that contains the same three parts each week:

• Stories -- about God and about life-change. We start out the same way each week, "Where have you seen God at work in or through the church in the past seven days?" This is a great way to spread the vision. It would be easy to forget why we do what we do (sweep floors, answer phones, prepare lessons, set up the drums) without the constant stories about changed lives.
• Spotlight -- Many times we spotlight a staff member, learning about their family, their past and pretty much anything else we want to know (of course, they don't have to answer). Then we take time to speak into that person, telling them why we are so glad they are on the team. Other times we spotlight a ministry in the church, letting the leaders of that area give us information about what they do, and what excites them about the future.
• Stuff -- the final portion of the meeting is to share inside information. It can be deflating for a staff member to hear about something big from the platform on Sunday morning. We try to make sure they hear about it well ahead of time and have a chance to have their questions answered. Another part of the "stuff" is teaching or training--like last week, when Mark pointed us to Acts 4 and talk about what God has been teaching him. Or like last fall, when we took several weeks to teach through The Forgotten Ways principles.

With offices that are spread out and ministries that are quite diverse--these weekly staff meetings keep us connected and keep the vision alive. I ran some numbers not too long ago, and figured out that this 60-minute meeting costs us $1,400 of staff-time (not including those fancy frou-frou drinks). In my opinion, it is worth every penny.

I personally think any organization, church, or business that has more than 20 employees should do some version of the same thing. Nothing can be replaced by flat-lining the org chart and letting everyone on the team hear the unfiltered thoughts of the lead pastor, director or CEO.