Managing Your Church

« Is God Calling You To Move? | Main | How Finance, Sexual Wrongdoings Challenged One Church »

Leading a Holistic Church Staff

Charlie couldn’t lead the church staff. The harder he tried, the more he failed. With 3,000 people in worship each week, the church seemed healthy. The staff, however, seemed emotionally sick and suffered from high turnover. When people left the church staff, they invariably stepped out of full-time ministry. Former staff members expressed bitterness and unhappiness with how they were treated. Charlie knew his ministry was failing. He couldn’t lead and mentor the staff. Charlie couldn’t release the staff to each person’s potential, fully using their gifts for ministry in the church.

Stories like Charlie’s always get our attention, but they don’t provide much positive traction for growth.

I spent some time recently talking with some executive pastors of significant churches around the country to discover their best practices for leading staff. What I found surprised me—not the best practices themselves, but the fact that my independent interviews, without any prodding by me, all connected to one common thread: holistic staffs.

Let’s look at how these leaders develop and oversee holistic staffs, and the lessons we can learn from them for our own ministries:

The Power of Many

Roger Dermody

Roger Dermody is the executive pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. With more than 3,000 people attending the weekly worship services, Bel Air employs 7 full-time pastors and 62 full-time staff members. The church’s approach to ministry leadership is different than many: It uses a triad comprised of Senior Pastor Mark Brewer, Executive Director Glenn Reph, and Dermody.

“That has been informally referred to as either the unholy troika or the Three Stooges,” Dermody says, showing the humor that permeates the staff culture. Humor aside, why a triad? Brewer, Reph and Dermody feel that their individual gifts complement each other, “and make our entire leadership stronger,” Dermody says. Thus, at the heart of Bel Air is a leadership community where one individual does not have all the gifts. There is an open recognition that others are essential to a fully developed team.

Mary Carroll

Hosanna Lutheran in Lakeville, Minnesota, uses a similar approach, recognizing the power that comes from intentionally identifying and using a variety of gifted people. Mary Carroll is the executive pastor of this church, which averages 4,000 people each week at worship services. “A huge part of my life and my faith story is a passion to help others see themselves as the wonderfully gifted and talented person the Lord created them to be, rather than believe the lies they may have heard,” she says.

Carroll and Bill Bohline, the lead pastor, demonstrate the high value placed on the giftedness of the individual. In their reporting relationship, the pastors report to Bohline for vision, theology, pastoral leadership, and worship. The pastors then report to Carroll for strategic planning, performance management, resource allocation, and process integration.

“At Hosanna, the model works very well because it allows Pastor Bill to focus on the highest priority matters that only he can do,” Carroll says.

Carroll notes that she and Bohline are “the exact opposite of each other in terms of Myers-Briggs personality type and varied in our Gallup Strengths themes; we approach situations differently and complement each other well.”

She says she feels that affirming each person’s giftedness is essential for a strong team.

“No one is more ‘important’ than anyone else,” Carroll says. Each team member has “differing roles, responsibilities and decision-making authority.”

Using Structure to Spur Creativity

Stacey Campbell

Stacey Campbell is the executive pastor of Christ Community Church in Greeley, Colorado, where 2,100 people worship each weekend. He comes at the issue of giftedness from a different perspective. Central questions for Christ Community are:

- How can we boost morale to communicate trust, ownership and belief in the individual and the team?
- How can we challenge each staff member to become the leader that God designed him or her to be?

The premise at Christ Community is about gifts and wanting each person to rise to their God-given potential. But the church’s mechanism for doing this is different than many others.

“I believe structure enhances creativity. In fact, you can’t have creativity without structure,” Campbell says. He uses the metaphor of a sandbox and emphasizes that he wants staff to have a large sandbox with clear boundaries. Campbell feels that this gives freedom for staff members to innovate while moving in the same direction at the same time.

With a highly relational and decentralized leadership style, Campbell gives “suggestions and opinions, but (I) trust the point-people to make the final call,” he says.

Though staff members make the “final calls,” Campbell holds the staff accountable to meet their goals.

Get Personal

Nicholas Smith

Nicholas Smith is the executive pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Lindenwold, New Jersey. Bethany, led by Bishop David Evans, is a dynamic African-American church that draws 30,000 people.

Smith begins with giftedness and then adds a highly personal dimension. “At Bethany we try to get to know the person’s ministry side as well as personal side. I want to know the person outside of their gifts and get to know them as an individual,” he says. “I believe in meeting the spiritual and natural side of people.”

Bethany emphasizes the whole individual, made up of gifts, ministry, spiritual dimension, and their natural habits.

Smith sources his perspective in the leadership model of Jesus. He emphasizes the “patient, hands-on, team-builder and good teacher” aspects of the life of Christ. The fact that Jesus chose some of his disciples by saying “follow Me,” is important to Smith.

“It’s in the following process that the real change happens in leading people,” he says. “Giving them something to follow, as well as teaching along the way, will bring transformation.” He enjoys helping people transform into the potential leader that God intends.

This model can build successful ministry leaders, Smith says. “Jesus worked this model in a team setting, allowing the disciples to grow together and find a sense of purpose and unity amongst each other. The twelve became His extensions and, as a team, shook up the world. The team process allows a leader to save time by teaching in group settings, rather than one-on-one meetings.”

The issue with a team setting is that everyone does not grow at the same rate. So as leaders we must then become a coach and inspire them in the way that is the most effective to them. Thus, even with a one-on-twelve teaching format, the leader must acknowledge and work with the unique learning styles and giftedness of each person.

My Surprise

As I began working on this article, I asked executive pastors to send me five or six lines on the following concepts:

• What are your leadership practices and habits (communication, style, morale-boosting, relationship-building)?
• What are your basics, your fundamentals, meaning the meeting schedules/frequencies, meeting types (group, one-on-one, agenda construction, reviews, hires/fires/underperformance warnings, check-ins with the senior pastor, and so on)?
• What turns your crank, gets you excited about leading a staff? What do you do well? What do you want to improve?

There was no hidden agenda in the questions. I simply wanted the best practices of leading a church staff in America today.

I began to read the responses from the church leaders while teaching my doctor of ministry students in India. As I began to read the responses, I wondered if I was tired or experiencing culture shock. The results were so similar and strong, I was not able to get beyond the first question. Each person had a dynamically strong emphasis on discovering the giftedness and “wiring” of each person. I like that word “wiring” because it emphasizes that there is a Creator who formed and made each person in a unique way. We shouldn’t be surprised at this concept, as it is evident in Psalm 139:13–14 (NIV):

“For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Not only did God make us, but we should celebrate His wonderful work—us!

The Holistic Staff

A good term for the findings from these executive pastors is holistic staff.

A holistic staff is one in which the leaders intentionally pursue a path of developing the whole person. This may be evident in a multi-person leadership team, where each person brings a different and essential gift to the team. Successful church staffs have members who know their unique contribution to the team. Staff members have—and need— structure, but also need to develop as whole persons.

Great leaders do not treat people as cogs in God’s giant wheel. Great leaders see beyond the stated needs of people and challenge them to grow in their multi-faceted life with others and with God.

Mary Carroll puts it this way: “We incorporate and publish the Gallup Strengths for each of our staff to increase understanding of our differences and to encourage complementary partnerships.”

Roger Demody says, “I’ve seen firsthand that there really is no such thing as ‘one size fits all’ in management.”

What type of leader are you? How will you learn from these great churches concerning the best practices of staff leadership? Are you leading a holistic staff?

David R. Fletcher is executive pastor of The Chapel in Akron, Ohio. He also runs XPastor.org, a global ministry tool for leaders of churches of all sizes.

share this

Posted by Matt Branaugh on March 9, 2010 9:00 AM

recent posts

Archives

February 2012