Church Leader Insider - Issue 5
Accelerating What's Next in Your Church
Pressing Issues – Perspectives – Pivot Questions for Church Leaders of Larger Churches
reading time - 1250 words - 4 minute read, 90 second skim
This pandemic season is revealing our character, our depth and our resilience factors. Admittedly, every leader can be tired and fatigued in this season. This is to be expected. We are all being pushed, pulled, stretched and ground to bits for parts of every week.
The subject of this week’s edition came from my weekly pastor forum call. While I formed some of the thoughts, the group added others and elaborated. You can learn more about that call and see if you want to apply down in the issue. It is reserved for Senior/Lead Pastors of larger churches. So that perspective is evident in this summary.
The question was something like: “As the key leader, I am doing well, but there is a portion of my staff that are really ground up emotionally. How can we improve morale?”
1. Purpose and the Why
We have to realize that our “why” has to change a bit during this season. This is especially true for those whose subterranean “why” was built on gathering and the platform. (see prior issue here for more on that)
If the team’s purpose, why and success measures were crowd measures, we must refocus them on our true missional purpose. That has to be clearly articulated to the whole team.
Can we ask each and every day: How did you contribute to the “why” today? – perhaps via slack messages or other messaging groups among your core team. If every team member can identify one thing they did to contribute to the “why” and share it with others, that will be encouraging.
Implication: Celebrate those that get the “why” tied to a daily action.
2. Directionally
We need to communicate the direction FOR NOW and our next season. What is our next interim normal?
“I know everything is changing for us but here is where we want to go directionally in the immediate next season.”
My sense is while your longer-term directional focuses may not have changed, your Winter 2021 and Spring 2021 will be steps along the way, not final destinations.
It’s hard to articulate more than that time frame for most staff right now. So just give a realistic framework for what ministry will look like for us in the next season, and outlines of the one after that.
THEN – how each person on the team contributes to those outlines for those seasons. Staff need some sense of personal agency of course. What are the things they can do to contribute to those frameworks and outlines for those next two seasons and what does that means for their week to week and day to day work?
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Last week on our Senior Pastor Happy Hour call we covered “How to fire someone.” We featured a guest that did a talk on the subject but also had many of the other pastors share their experiences. That’s something you don’t learn in most training contexts.
The Happy Hour call is a re-creation of a forum experience, where we organize participants questions and let peers mentor peers. We have an occasional guest to talk about important issues but those guest spots are driven by real world questions where we want some added expertise.
The call is every Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. The group ranges from a low of 6 to a high of 20 participants.
IT IS INVITATION ONLY THOUGH. To apply for invitation, send an email to Linda.Stanley@generis.com.
The call is limited to Senior/Lead Pastors of larger churches.
My colleague Greg Ligon also has one for Campus Pastors of multisite churches as well. If that describes your role, send him an email at Greg.Ligon@generis.com to apply to attend.
(Resuming story)
3. Managing Energy
Most of my clients are back to gathering their staff teams within office or common spaces for most of the week. They have options for vulnerable staff on health fronts.
But the pandemic has made us realize that remote work is very doable for many meetings, tasks and creative work.
Some are altering work week schedules with certain days for “on campus” and other days for “home.”
Implications: What are our common team times and flex times we expect from our teams?
Make a plan there, communicate it and hold staff accountable to it.
4. Cadence and Communication with the team.
Overcommunication works. In March we hit cadences of communication with the entire team frequently. Then mid-summer, most backed away a bit. If you want morale high though, continue with a regular cadence and communicate with the whole team MORE than you think.
I hear the phrase “zoom fatigue” a lot – but people will show up and enjoy the experience IF we make each gathering/meeting a special experience.
And the staff team can be rotated into small focus group check ins. One client set up sessions for “coffee with the pastor” for those staff that wanted 15-minute sessions via zoom. In two hours, one can cover 8 team members individually or 16 as pairs. Just spend that time relationally with them.
I hope you are also doing some focus groups with leadership at your lay level where you do 30 minutes of updates, vision casting and sharing the needs for where you are going NEXT. Be clear on THREE THINGS you want them to take away.
A live gathering in a room or online is best – but keep the group to 30 people or less, repeating it multiple times for different groups.
Do the same for your key and best givers. Share with them where your church is going next and why. Thank them for their continued support.
YES, this is more work for you Senior Pastor. A cadence helps though. “On the first Monday of each month I will do a session in the morning with all staff. Then I do 2 hours of coffee break with staff. At 3 p.m. I do lay leadership via online and record for those that can sit in. Then I do key givers in the evening.”
Whatever cadence works for you, do it regularly and repeatedly. They need to hear from you. They need to know your heart and they need direction.
5. “We will return to gathering and not just in small groups or smaller crowds.”
Keep reminding people of this. During the “Happy Hour” call on Wednesdays we have pastors from a all over the country. Some areas have no restrictions on live gatherings and are seeing up to 70% of their preCovid attendance in the room. On the other hand we have churches with very severe restrictions with limited public gatherings allowed.
For most, the majority of your core congregational attenders are still participating via online means for worship.
We need to remind those craving the community of worship and fellowship that:
We will sing out loud and praise with boisterous abandon again.
We will drink coffee again with one another. We will have parties and hug and shake hands again.
It is not yet, but it will come.
People need to be given the hope that while it may be several years for many of these things to “come back,” they will come back.
6. And finally for this edition – the playful challenges, events for staff.
Remember the TV Show – The Office? The American edition, not the original. They had a party planning committee. Painful to watch, but so real life in practice.
I hated that idea. But sometimes manufactured energy is good for many of your staff.
Some clients have:
Stafflympics – a annual summer event for their staff where they spend three hours doing silly games and awarding “medals.” Each year the games changed but you got to keep your “medal” for the whole year. This year they had to adjust some of the games, but they still made it work.
A staff “Dinner on the grounds.” – That may be a southern thing but encourage everyone to come in casual dress, bring a meal, spread out in a large room. Have each team assigned to do a skit, or saaaangin unlike your usual approach. Don’t preach but celebrate something. Maybe just that “we’ve made it this far.”
In the past some clients have formed teams to do challenges such as “biggest loser” or walking mile challenges and the like focused on health. With apps now you can have people track their own totals, combine with their team numbers and create ways they are building physical health.
I hope the ideas above you can take and adapt to your purposes.
AND – I am sure you will have better ideas. Please send them in and I will hope to share them with everyone in a future edition. Just hit reply to this email and I will get it.
Great Things God Has Done
The partner podcast of this newsletter. This week we have premiered a conversation with Dr. Stacy Spencer of New Directions Church in Memphis, TN.
Prior editions have featured John Braland, Mike Woodruff, Larry Osborne and Toby Slough.
Check it out here: GreatThingsGODhasDONE.substack.com
Now available on Spotify, Apple, Stitcher and other popular platforms.
Please subscribe and like!
Schedule a free call to talk about your current situation or predicament: Dave.Travis@generis.com. See my web page at generis.com/dave-travis for more information.
Church Leader Insider is free and always will be. It is intended for leaders of larger churches. Admittedly some of the thoughts do not apply to smaller congregations. Don’t feel slighted. God values all. But my experience in consulting focuses on large church issues.