Tag Archive - hire

0

Top Posts of 2017 #3 “5 Things that make Good Church Staff Member Leave your Church”

Friday, December 29, 2017

We’re now into the top 3 posts from 2017 and it’s no surprise that topic of building and keeping the right team comes in at number 3.

Good Church Staff Members leave churches for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s because God has called them to something different. But more often than not it’s because of something very different.

1. You Stop Listening to Them

When you don’t listen to people they stop talking. And when you stop listening to good staff members they’ll go somewhere else where they feel heard.

2. They Don’t Feel Empowered

Nothing is worse than having responsibility for something with no authority to do anything about it. When you don’t empower staff members to make real decisions they’ll go somewhere they can.

3. An Unhealthy Staff Culture

Good team members don’t stay around on unhealthy teams very long. One of the best ways to attract and keep great team members is to build a health staff culture.

4. Lack of Vision

If you can’t provide clarity to your team about where you’re going next they’ll eventually grow frustrated, leave, and find that clarity somewhere else. And the irony is that those who have the greatest propensity to lead into the future will leave first.

5. Poor Strategy

If your team has a tendency to talk about ideas but has a difficult time executing them you probably don’t have a actionable strategy in place to move you toward a clear vision. Good Church Staff members don’t just want to talk about ideas, they want to execute them. If you can’t help them do that they’ll go somewhere else they can.

What are some other reasons you’ve see good Church Staff Members leave a church? Leave a comment.

Posted in Staffing

0

Top Posts of 2017 #4 “Stop Hiring People to Work at your Church”

Thursday, December 28, 2017

I just wrote this post back in October and it jumped up the Top-10 chart quickly! It addresses one of the most significant and common lids to growth that churches experience.

Churches love to hire people. I mean they really love to hire people. Often times when churches are just starting off, staff members will raise their own salary until the church has the capacity to pay them. Then as they grow I’ve seen churches long for the day where the budget grows just a little bit more so they can make that next hire. They put so much hope into staffing. Many think that if they could just add one more special staff position to the team, the church would grow.

Now before we get too far into this conversation, let me just say that I’m not against churches hiring staff members. I’m just against churches hiring as many staff members as they do.

You see the average church in America has somewhere around a 1:75 staffing ratio. That means for every 75 people they have attending the church there is 1 full-time equivalent staff member being paid to work at the church. A full-time equivalent may be made up of 2 – 20 hour a week employees, 4 – 10 hour a week employees, or any combination you can think of. At the Unstuck Group when we help churches build a Staffing and Structure plan for the future, we encourage churches to staff at 1:100. By the way, do you know where you church measures up on that ratio?

Why Staff Lean?

One of the many reasons why we encourage churches to staff with this approach is because the churches across America that are reaching the most amount of people with the Gospel and are seeing the most amount of life change are leaner with their approach to staffing. They’re putting resources into reaching people, ministry, and developing people instead of into salaries. They pay fewer people more so they can attract and keep great people.

The More Staff the Less Life-Change

When churches staff at a lower ratio they unintentionally keep people from following Jesus. When people are hired that means what was previously being done by volunteers is now being professionalized. This takes the ministry out of the hands of volunteers and actually often times discourages volunteerism. Volunteering is discipleship. You can’t follow Jesus and not serve others.

More Staff is an indicator of Over Programming

A low attender to staff ratio is also an indicator that a church is probably over-programmed. The staff are busy running a lot of programs to minister to people who are already a part of the church and already know Jesus. 

It’s Easier to Hire than Develop

It’s faster and requires less effort to hire people to do ministry than to recruit, train, and develop volunteers to do ministry.

It’s more Convenient to be Served than to Serve

It’s easier for church members to pay to hire people to serve them than to invest the time into stepping up and serving others.

I could go on and on, but I bet you get the point. Hiring isn’t always the wrong move to make at a church. But if you do hire, hire for two big results:

  1. Hire people who can build teams and develop people
  2. Hire specialists because of a needed skill
Posted in Leadership, Staffing

0

Top Posts of 2017 #9 “5 Proficiencies of Great Church Staff Teams”

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Hiring and building the right teams was a popular topic on my blog this year. This one was one of the most read and shared.

Great Church Staff Teams are full of team members who not only care deeply about people and are passionate about the ministry; they’re actually proficient in what they are doing. I actually believe you can fake passion for a while until your heart catches up. But you can’t fake proficiency. You’re either proficient or you’re not. That being said, I’ve been a part of Church Staff Teams for more than 20 years and the ones I’ve been on that are the best are always proficient in these 5 core areas:

#1 Team Player

Great Church Staff Team Members care more about the team than they do about themselves or their own standout performance. They’d rather the team win than get personal recognition for their individual contribution to the win.

#2 Specialty

Great Church Staff Teams are full of role players. They know what they’re brilliant at and they lead in those areas and they know what other team members at brilliant at and they submit in those areas. They play their specialized role well.

#3 Modeling

Great Church Staff Teams are built with people who lead with moral authority. They don’t just say, “Do as I say,” they model behaviors that they want replicated throughout the entire organization. They go first and inspire others to follow through their actions, not just through their words. 

#4 Follow Through

This may sound simple, but it’s actually unfortunately rare. Great Church Staff Teams are made up of people who do what they say they’re going to do. They deliver on time over, and over, and over again. They can be trusted to do what they say they’re going to do. They follow through.

#5 Communication

Great Church Staff Team Members communicate early and often with each other. Instead of surprising one another they manage expectations through communication. Everyone doesn’t have to know everything on great teams when great teams communicate with one another.

Posted in Leadership

0

Top Posts of 2017 #10 “What makes a Great Executive Pastor Great?”

Monday, December 25, 2017

For the next couple of days I’m going to be counting down the top 10 posts from 2017 here on Helping Churches Make Vision Real. These are the posts that generated the most traffic, comments, and were the most shared on social media. The most popular topics this year had to do with developing young leaders, hiring, building great teams, church growth, and church decline. We start off with a post about Executive Pastors, a role that often means a lot of different things in a lot of different churches and a role that I’ve served in for the last 10+ years.

When I was starting out in full-time ministry more than twenty years ago if you had told me that I would one day serve as an Executive Pastor of a multi-mega church I would have asked you, “What’s that?”

More and more I’m running into young church leaders that aspire to be an Executive Pastor and I’m fielding more and more questions about what young leaders can do to prepare for the role. With that in mind, while this is not an exhaustive list, here are a couple of recommendations I’d make to any young church leader who thinks they may serve as an Executive Pastor (XP) one day.

1. Sober-mindedness

Understand who you are, come to terms with who you are, and then be who you are. It’s not uncommon for young church leaders to think big and want something bigger than they’re able to handle sooner than they’re ready for it. It takes a deep well of experience built over time to serve well in the XP role, not just talent.

2. Submission to Authority

In Matthew 8:5-13 the Roman Centurion demonstrates an incredible XP mindset (seriously click the link and read it). He understands what it’s like to be in authority so he has no problem submitting to authority. Great XP’s submit to the authority of the Lead Pastor. They challenge appropriately, they lead up and ultimately understand what it means to both be in authority and under authority at the same time.

3. Recruit, Place & Develop People

The church is ultimately about people development. The theological term is sanctification, the every day church term is discipleship. Whatever label you want to put on it great Executive Pastors are great at recruiting the right people, putting them in the right seat to succeed and developing them.

4. Organizational Alignment

The best XP’s I’ve ever been around have an uncanny sense of alignment. They’re playing chess not checkers. They’re constantly working and reworking the organizational alignment (staff, finances, facilities, communication, and ministries) of the church so it doesn’t become a lid to growth.

5. Fill the Gap between Vision and Reality

Great Executive Pastors fill the gap between vision and reality. In other words, they’re strategic in nature. They think “how” are we going to get “there”? But they’re not negative about that “how.” They’re solution oriented.

6. Get Theological and Business Training

It takes a heart for theology and a head for business to be a great XP. If you’ve got more of a business background then get some solid theological training. If you got a theological background then go get your MBA.

 7.The Church isn’t a Business

The Church isn’t a business. It has a clear mission from Jesus about why it exists, the best ones have clear vision regarding where they’re going, and they have strategies to align staff and other resources around. There are a lot of things that “smell” like a business in the church (after all the book of Proverbs in the Bible too), but it’s not a business. The church is the Body of Christ, it’s the family of God. The goal is not to make shareholders happy by having a strong bottom line, it’s life change.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

0

10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

It’s almost Christmas!!! Hope you have all of your shopping done (not likely) and I’m praying that Christmas Eve is an incredible moment at your churches and that your people take the step to invite their friends and many people “say yes” to following Jesus! Until then, let me say thanks for making November another great month here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s always good staying connected with you through social media and hearing that these articles have been helpful. So, thank you for connecting with me through the content on this blog! You made these the top posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!

10 Insider Focused Ministry Names

This post came out of a conversation I had with a Leadership Coaching Network that I was facilitating back in 2013. So I wrote this post 4 years ago and it continues to be one of my top posts of all-time. Hope it’s helpful!

6 Lessons I’ve Learned from 6 Years of Multisite Church Leadership

Nearly 6 years ago Sun Valley Community Church (the church I have the honor of serving at) adopted a multisite strategy to deliver growth to new areas and reach new people with the Gospel. That one decision changed everything. Since that time, we’ve grown from one campus to five (with more to come) and we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. Some of those lessons, as you would expect, we’ve learned the hard way. Here’s a few that stand out.

10 Things that Require Zero Talent

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” That’s a statement I talk to my son about all the time. He’s only 9 years old, but I want him to grow up to have a great work ethic and a positive attitude. I don’t expect him to be the great at everything he attempts, but I do expect him to give a great effort. There’s a lot of things he can’t control in life, but he’ll always be able to control his effort and his attitude.

3 Shifts that Growing Multisite Churches Experience

The decision to adopt a multisite strategy to deliver growth may be a decision that your church is considering. While still young as a movement, multisite is proving to be an incredibly effective strategy for growing churches to deliver growth to new “markets” and reach new people with the Gospel. However, going multisite will make things more complicated and more difficult for you as a leader and for your church.

The Difference between Preparation and Planning

Do great organizations prepare for the future or do they plan for it? The answer is, “yes.” To be clear preparation and planning are not the same thing, and great organizations become great by doing both.

Stop Hiring People you Like

A wrong hire can set a ministry back for years and unfortunately churches aren’t known for making great hires. Pastors have a tendency to hire people that they like, and value relational chemistry over production. I get it. Pastors are taught Greek, Theology and the Bible. Seminaries aren’t known for providing great courses on recruiting, hiring and team development.

Why at Teaching Team is a better approach to Teaching at your Church

Although the idea of a teaching team is not a new idea, I’m surprised at the amount of churches across the country that have not embraced this approach to preaching in their weekend worship services.

8 Reasons Why People Don’t Volunteer at your Church 

I’ve never worked with a church that has said they don’t need more volunteers. But I’ve worked with a bunch of churches that have trouble getting people to volunteer and stay engaged volunteering.

Does your Church need to Sacrifice something Sacred?

Chances are your church has some “sacred cow” ministries that have been around for a long time, have a great history, have had a great impact in the past, but are on life support now. Does your church need to sacrifice some of these sacred cows?

The Difference between a Shepherd and a Leader

I love helping churches and leaders get unstuck and make vision real. In fact out of all the stuff I get to do with churches and leaders one of the things I enjoy the most is Leadership Coaching. Recently I had the incredible opportunity to spend a day coaching a group of Pastors and Church Leaders from Australia (unfortunately their cool accent didn’t rub off). One of the topics we spent time digging into was the difference between shepherding and leading in relation to why some churches are stuck while others move forward. Here are couple of thoughts from the conversation.

Posted in Leadership
Page 2 of 11«12345»10...Last »