Our staff team spent about 8 hours today locked in a room together as we continue to move through the planning and vision casting process for ’09. All I can tell you is that it was one of the most exhausting and thrilling days I’ve experienced in a while. God is stirring some huge things in all of us for ’09 and I can’t wait to share them with all of you.

But one of the things that struck me today is that you can tell a lot about the health of a team by the volume of their meetings. When meetings are quiet, tame, boring affairs it indicates teams don’t trust each other well enough to actually engage. But when people engage, it gets a little loud from time to time!

It got LOUD in there today! Loud from laughter and loud from “heated conversations.” Both are essential to healthy teams. You’ve got to be willing to drag conflict front and center and deal with it. But you also have to be able to laugh with each other. We might have disturbed the peace a bit today, but that’s good. Volume is a sign of health!