Not all church teams are created equally. Some are synergistic forces of nature that instinctually set and meet goals. Other teams remain excessively busy but struggle to gain much ground. Why is it that some churches have staff that seem to function so well together while others spin their wheels?
Productive teams don’t happen by accident. Even if you pull together all the right people, you still only have the raw materials for a dynamic church staff. A lot of strategic work needs to happen to fashion those elements into a well-oiled machine.
Some of the changes that need to happen are conceptual, and some require changes in practice. Here are some critical steps that go into leading a potent, energetic staff.
1. Keep your focus on the big picture.
You’ve likely heard the expression “They can’t see the forest for the trees,” describing someone who is so focused on the details that they miss the big picture. This mistake is incredibly easy to do in church leadership.
We tend to see all of the parts of the church as related but separate realities. You have administration, various ministries, service elements, outreaches, etc. Of course, we recognize that these are all elements of the church, but we tend to treat them as self-contained. In doing so, we silo each member of the staff into their particular area of responsibility.
Ideally, you’re not just hiring a small group coordinator. You’re hiring someone to help fulfill the church’s mission, but their primary focus is creating highly functional small group ministries. This might seem like a potentially inconsequential difference, but it’s not. It changes how you see ministry and how team members perceive their role.
Paul addressed a similar topic in his letter to the Corinthians:
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
1 Corinthians 12:21–27 ESV
Our limbs and organs don’t work in isolation from one another. On the contrary, they operate in tandem to facilitate the body’s ability to function. Things like children’s ministry, mission teams, and Bible study classes all exist to fulfill the church’s mission. When we see them that way, we become equipped to pull together in the same direction instead of operating as disparate members pulling the body in different directions.
To get to a place where the team sees their work as integrated toward a common mission, those in positions of leadership must first adopt this mindset. That means resisting the temptation to focus on the parts instead of the whole.
2. Create a staff of leaders.
The kind of team you need to plant a church is dramatically different from the one you need to run a church of 500. It’s not just that the staff needs to grow, you also need to think about how your staff functions in an entirely different way.
When launching a church, pastors and church boards tend to think pragmatically. They need a youth ministry, so they hire someone with a passion for working with teens. They need a worship ministry, so they hire someone to lead in that role. This practical thinking makes sense when a church is small, but eventually, this model becomes unsustainable.
At some point, your staff needs to transition from being people hired to do ministry to being people tasked with facilitating ministry. Your people need to see themselves as leaders who can invite the congregation into the mission of the church. They recruit volunteers, equip them to serve, and release them into ministry. A youth pastor who runs a ministry is limited by their own capacity. At some point, they will run into their limitations. But when you put a leader in that position who delegates and empowers others, effectiveness skyrockets.
The problem that a lot of churches run into is that they have an employment mindset. As the church grows, they believe the staff needs to, too. But that’s not necessarily true. It’s hard to secure the income that facilitates that kind of staff development. At some point, the staff size and income cancel each other out. You’re no longer able to generate the kind of growth you need to afford more staff.
But when you intentionally hire leaders, you create a foundation that supports more ministry with fewer hired hands. Now leaders can train and manage volunteers to do ministry work while they guide everyone toward the church’s mission and goals.
3. Be mindful of contextual fit.
A lot has been said about hiring for cultural fit, but churches need to think about context as well. Does a potential hire make sense for your church’s frame of reference? For instance, struggling rural churches have been known to hire staff members from large city churches because of a misconception that they possess some innate understanding of ministry growth. But when the staff member arrives, frustration ensues. The members and the new employee have entirely different frames of reference. The transplant may not really understand the rural church’s history or experience. Meanwhile, the church members may resent the new employee’s attempts to change things too quickly—even if that’s why they hired them.
It isn’t necessarily an insurmountable problem when someone from another context shows up at your church, but it can create difficulties. Sometimes the shock to the church’s system is helpful, and sometimes it’s not. These tensions take time and effort to process and work out, and sometimes what’s gained isn’t worth the effort it takes to get everyone on the same page.
Other contextual fit challenges could include theological differences, ministry philosophies, and community demographics. In your interviews with potential candidates, aim to suss out potential contextual mismatches and then be strategic in hiring for each position.
4. Any person is not always better than no person.
Have you ever seen a child with a few dollars to spend? That little amount of money represents a lot of possibilities to that young mind. Will they buy a plush toy? Some candy? There are so many options. But as they walk down every aisle, they may simply start looking for the first thing that fits within their meager budget.
Churches can be the same way.
If the church needs an open position filled or the board signs off on a new hire, they’re specific about the kind of person they want in the role. But as the search drags on, leaders can begin to make concessions here and there. After a while, the position may be filled with someone who might not be the right fit—and the ministry hobbles along until the problem gets solved.
If you want a staff that fires on all cylinders, abandon the idea that somebody is better than nobody. Sometimes you can find people to help keep a ministry going in the interim. But even if you can’t, it can be better to wait to start a ministry or allow one to go on hiatus until the right person is found. When you identify and hire the ideal person, you’ll get that momentum back in no time. But if you put the wrong person in that position, you might end up operating at a deficit.
5. Don’t allow conflict to fester.
There might be something wrong with you if you relish dealing with conflict. Some people are more adept at responding to it than others, but few people really look forward to it. Regardless of your level of comfortability, though, you’re going to end up dealing with conflict.
Every work environment has its share of disagreements, hurt feelings, and disputes. These conflicts impact everybody, especially when the team is relatively small. Too many excellent church teams have been waylaid—if not completely capsized—by unresolved discord. Whether you feel comfortable with it or not, resolving conflict is an essential task for leaders.
Here are a few steps to managing conflict well:
Set the expectation up front
Regularly acknowledge that conflict is a normal part of the work environment. Disagreement, anger, and frustration are natural consequences of being in relationships with other people. But also let your team know that you’re committed to building a staff that copes with this challenge in a healthy, mature, and godly way. Revisit this encouragement periodically.
Learn how to deal with conflict
You could probably come up with many things that used to make you anxious that come naturally to you now, and you can do the same with resolving conflict. But if you wait until you have a battle before you think about it, it’s going to take you years and years to feel adept in managing it. So take the bull by the horns now. Read books on conflict. Go to seminars and conferences. Talk to other pastors you respect and see how they deal with it. Then when conflict rears its head, you’ll be better equipped.
Train your team to think win/win
It’s one thing to champion compromise, but that often comes up short. Typically, you have a couple of people on your team who capitulate faster than everyone else. So every time a disagreement occurs, they get the short end of the stick.
Moving beyond compromise to win/win thinking empowers everyone to look for solutions where every party benefits. When team members see themselves as just that—on the same team, trying to achieve the same goals simply through different means—they often can think more outside the box to resolve a situation. It takes more work and creativity, but it’s worth it in the long run.
6. Set clear expectations.
Every workplace struggles with communication. Knowing how to communicate the pertinent information that every staff member needs in every situation isn’t easy. For many people working on church teams, this lack of communication also impacts job performance.
Whether you’ve taken the time to identify them or not, you have expectations for your staff members, and they have expectations for you too. If neither party has taken the time to discern what those expectations are and communicate them, frustration will abound and no one will understand why.
Do you have unstated goals for your ministry teams? Are there deadlines, metrics, or expectations that haven’t been made explicit? Once goals are out in the open, you can always adjust those that are too lofty. But you can’t expect anyone to meet goals you’ve never identified.
Give your staff what they need to thrive.
Your staff wants good communication, trust, recognition, and to be empowered to do their jobs well. Whether your staff is all under one roof or they’re spread out across multiple campuses, they need the same thing from you: they need to be equipped to thrive.
It is possible to create a work environment where everyone flourishes—and the church becomes a dynamo.
