Yesterday, we did the healthiest thing we do all week - we had a meeting.
Many of you are rolling your eyes right now and thinking, "
A meeting? Who wants to go to a meeting? I do meetings all the time."
When Gerald and I started to form
Infinitely More, we realized there were many roles we would need to share - musician, songwriter, manager, social media, administrator, radio, publicist, and of course, spouse. With the unconventional work hours that can come with a musician's life, we needed to find ways to balance our roles and add some sense of structure to our lives.
Thus was born, the Tuesday Meeting!
Why Tuesday? Because we take Mondays as our Day Off, so Tuesday is kind of our Monday. We always go to a cafe, so we're not distracted by laundry, puppies, and other home priorities. A good cafe also allows us to indulge in sweet treats and listen to jazz, keeping the atmosphere fun and creative. We give a start time but not an end time, to allow for free flowing discussion. The goal is always to be positive, honest, and pro-active. The key, like all healthy life choices, is to be consistent. It's easy enough to say, "
We're busy this week, let's skip the meeting." But like skipping prayer, exercise, or taking your vitamins, after a few days, you'll start to notice that something's off. Also, by meeting on a weekly basis, we're able to handle things in small pieces, rather than allowing issues to build into crisis moments.
We always have 4 important themes in our meetings:
Celebrate
We strongly believe in the power of encouragement, both for ourselves and others. Each week, we take time to celebrate our recent accomplishments and give thanks for the blessings in our life and ministry. We also take time to express our gratitude (
via email, phone, or social media) to anyone who has joined us on the journey in the past week.
Improve
Early in our relationship, Gerald and I got in the habit of having a performance post-mortem. Sometimes we would do it in the car on the way home from a concert. If we felt there was sensitive feedback to give, we might wait until the next day. It was very important that we were always lovingly honest. We learned to give each other both support and healthy criticism. At each Tuesday Meeting, we look at the different aspects of our ministry - music, booking, online, etc - and ask how we can make them better.
Dream
This is one of our favourite parts of the meeting! What is it we want to do with Infinitely More? Where do we feel God is calling us? Do we want to record a new CD? Tour a new part of the country? Create something special for our online friends and fans? We write down every idea. No dream is too big or too small.
Plan
This is where Dreams turn into Life. How can we make each Dream come true? What are the steps? Can we do them ourselves, or do we need to seek out talented friends and mentors? What Dreams can happen soon and which might need more time to ferment? We create lists, timelines, and assign tasks. Each week, we check in with these lists to see how our Dreams are progressing, which of course, leads us to Celebrate...
If you are in a band, ministry, any other kind of self-employed or creative team,
we highly recommend a Tuesday Meeting!
For us, it's probably the most valuable tool we have for aspiration, inspiration, and activation.
Do you have similar meetings with your team?
If so, what are the parts that work best for you?
Please leave your thoughts in the Comments section...
Worship Wednesdays is a weekly series to encourage and equip worship leaders and songwriters. Bookmark this page & visit us every Wednesday!