Have you ever had this experience: You look at things your team or staff is doing, you look at programs at your church and wonder, why are they doing that? Why are we doing that?

Most leaders will shrug and let it go because they trust their team, and they assume there is a good reason they are doing that. There is a good reason we are doing that. And, let’s be honest, as leaders, we have so many other things to do.

But at this moment, the leader actually pushes one of their main tasks to the side.

The task that very few leaders like and keep your team, keeping your church or organization aligned.

Leaders like creativity, strategizing, and brainstorming to develop ideas, but the actual alignment management isn’t enjoyable. In fact, it can be exhausting. And, as leaders, we often think, “If it’s clear to me, it’s clear to everyone.”

No matter how long a team is together, one of the most difficult and important tasks of the leader is to keep everyone on the same page.

It is easy as a leader to think, “We all know what the mission is, so we’re good.” Or, many leaders think, if it’s clear to me, it’s clear to everyone.

Like a car, one of the most important things for a church or team is alignment. 

On any team, alignment is crucial.

If your vision, word for the year, or goal involves more than you, alignment is crucial. 

But like a car, you must pay attention to it because alignment isn’t natural. 

It takes attention and care. 

Andy Stanley said, “Visions thrive in an environment of unity. They die in an environment of disunity.”

I remember talking to a couple once whose marriage hit hard times, and they were talking about getting divorced, and I asked them why. They looked at me and said, “We no longer have the same goals, the same dream.” They started with it, but slowly, they stopped working together, and their lives went in different directions. 

Alignment takes care and attention. 

And like a car, we often overlook the warning signs of alignment at work, home, and in life. 

But, for a vision, goal, word for the year to come to fruition, staying aligned is crucial.

How do you know if the alignment is off course? Here are a few ways:

1. People start having competing wins.
2. People start fighting for stage time or platform time for “their thing.”
3. Leaders can’t articulate the overall “why” for the church or the “why” is different.

So, what do you do as a leader or team to keep alignment?

1. Ensure everyone can articulate why you are doing something, who you are trying to reach with it, or the goal for a ministry or event.
2. Once that is clear, continually communicate it and keep it in front of people.
3. Listen for anything that sounds like something different than #1, and gently move your team back to the focus.

Yes, this is hard. Yes, this never ends.

But that is the job of a leader. Otherwise, you won’t get to the place you set out to get to.

I’ve worked as a lead pastor, church planter, campus pastor, and student pastor. I’ve sat on both sides of the leadership world, and what’s interesting is what people long for.

When you work for someone, you want many things, but one thing above all begins to rise to the top. When you attend a church, you want many things from its leaders, but one thing rises to the top.

This current world of covid, our political climate, the tensions around systemic racism has only heightened this desire from people.

What is it?

Clarity.

Clarity is one of the greatest gifts you can give your church.

The people who attend your church, the volunteers, the staff on your team, they want to know where they are going. They want to know where you are taking them. They want to see what you believe and why you believe it. When someone follows someone, they are putting their future hopes on the line with that person.

Why would that matter so much?

Clarity says this is where we are going. This is what is essential now. This is right; that is wrong. It helps everyone to know what they should or should not spend their time on, what the church should spend its money and resources on.

Years and years ago, Howard Hendricks said, “If it’s a mist in the pulpit, it’s a fog in the pew.”

That isn’t just about preaching, but so much more.

If a sermon isn’t clear, no one will get what you are talking about. If you don’t have a clear main point, application steps, people will feel lost.

But right now, it has become even more important for churches and leaders to be clear.

Are you having in-person worship gatherings? Why or why not? How long will you wait? What will make you return to in-person worship gatherings?

The reason this matters is it tells your teams what they should be working on. It also gives everyone a measuring stick that moves them out of their political opinions.

For example, many churches came out in March when they stopped meeting in person to say, “We aren’t doing any camps this summer.” That’s clear. It tells your church what you are focusing on. It shows your staff what they should or should not work on. Did those churches get angry emails? Yes. But they were clear.

Recently, Andy Stanley said that North Point wouldn’t have in-person worship gatherings until 2021. Right? Who knows. Clear? Yes.

One of the most deflating things that can happen on a team is for the leader to change the win mid-stream. It makes the team wonder, why did we work so hard if we aren’t going to go there? It also makes it difficult to know whether or not to throw everything behind a leader the next time he or she says, “This is the hill we’re climbing.” If your team has felt a lack of clarity in the past, they will wonder how much effort to give the next time you say something.

What keeps leaders from clarity?

For some, it is fear. It is easier to hedge your bets, wait to take a stand. But while you wait, you also miss opportunities. You also run the risk of your team, wasting effort on things that will never happen.

One thing that sneaks up on leaders is when it is clear to them, but no one else. Leaders must continuously ask their teams, “Is this clear?” That becomes monotonous to a leader, so they often don’t do it. They settle for the thinking, “Because it is clear in my head, it is clear to everyone,” and this is an invisible killer for leaders.

The other day, I was on a Zoom call with a bunch of pastors, and we were talking about what is working and not working in this new world. As the call went on, we started to discuss what will come next for churches.

The world is different today than it was in January. And while some think once everything opens up, life will return as it was, I don’t believe that. Yes, some things will go back to “normal,” but the world will be different, and consequently, the church will be and look different than it did in 2019.

That is exciting and scary all at the same time.

So, as I processed that call, I wrote down some questions I think churches and leaders need to think through:

How long will it take people to come back to church?

I’m finding there are two schools of thought on this: one group says that the moment churches are allowed to meet, everyone will flock back and fill up the room. The other side thinks people will be timid and come back slowly.

Who’s right? I have no idea. Only time will tell.

I fall into the camp that says people will come back slowly. I think there will be people who are there week one a church is back open, but also people will stay home and continue to watch online. Not only because of ease but also because of fear. And while some will say there shouldn’t be fear, there is. The job of the leader is not to wish a new reality, but to face reality and lead through it.

People may come running back to church; they may go back slowly. Will parents send their kids to school once they open, or will more parents homeschool next year? The answers to those questions will have an enormous impact on how ministry is done moving forward.

After watching church online, how will that change the way people view video teaching?

If you’ve been around church circles for the last decade, the debate around video teaching and whether or not online church counts has raged.

I think that after spending months watching church online and watching their pastor on a video will have an impact on how people connect with church and teaching in a post-covid world. What is that impact? Right now, it is hard to say, but I think the idea of watching a pastor on video won’t be as weird as many once thought it was.

Yes, people will still want to be in a room with a pastor, but will this change how they consume teaching?

How will this change people’s view of leadership and their confidence in leadership?

We live in a polarizing political world. Just look at social media, and you will see people throwing stones left and right. Regardless of your political view, most of us assume the other side is lying, not leading well, getting in the way, etc.

How do you lead in this world?

For those who feel like the government hasn’t done an excellent job in this crisis, have they lost confidence in leaders and leadership? How will that affect pastors moving forward?

If the government says, “you can gather with 100 or 200 people,” what does that look like for worship gatherings?

There is a chance that things will open up, but there are limited to the number of people who can gather. For smaller churches or campuses, this might not be a problem, but for larger churches, this could change things.

Do you pivot and do smaller gatherings and do them more often? On different days? Do you go to the venue route and have different styles of worship? What about teaching in those spaces?

Have we built a strong enough leadership pipeline?

Many churches are using more and more staff to do things right now because of safety and guidelines, but when churches are back together physically, the finances will be different than they were before. At that moment, as churches are rebuilding, the strength of your leadership pipeline will be seen.

The view of this crisis also seems to have different viewpoints, and most of that is seen through age. Many people over 45 view this differently than those under 45. How much of a voice does the under 45 crowds have in your leadership meetings right now? As you move forward?

How will this change how we do community?

One thing that will change through this is community and how we do groups. Yes, people will return to meeting in people’s homes for groups, but I think more people will see the value in an online group and want to do that.

I think we are also being reminded about how important community and presence is to our lives. We once took a hug from a friend for granted or sitting with someone and laughing over a cup of coffee. I don’t think we’ll take that for granted anymore.

How has this changed our view of life and death?

I’ve heard it said that by the end of this, everyone in the world would know someone who has died from this. I’ve already lost someone from covid-19. How does that change how we think about life, what is essential, and what we go after in terms of goals and priorities? What about death and what happens after death? Do we now view those differently? Do we focus on those a little more than we used to? Does that close us off and make us more callous towards life?

I don’t know for sure, but I think we’ll look at life and death differently.

The world is different and changing rapidly. This has always been the case, but it feels like it is overdrive right now.

And no, the world, school, work, and church will not go back to the way that it was before. Some things will return to what they are, but the vast majority of things will be different.

For leaders, this isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, but just a thing.

Picture this, your church just pulled off a big event, and you are sitting in a room evaluating it and deciding if it was a success.

The answers are often dependent on how excited you were before the event and during it — the number of people who attended, people who became Christians, or how you experienced the event.

Then someone asks, “Do we do this again next year?”

Now, if you are smart, you would stop the conversation at this point.

Churches are notorious for throwing money after things they’ve done before or something that someone else started without asking if it is worthwhile.

Most of the time, the question of worth boils down to the budget number on that white sheet of paper.

But what most elder teams and staffs miss is that the cost of an event or ministry is not just what is on that piece of paper. It includes that, but it is much more than that.

Here are a few questions you should ask as you evaluate an event or ministry:

How much did we pay staff to be there? When churches think about events, outreach, Christmas Eve, etc. they rarely factor in what they pay the team for the event. But this is a cost. Take whatever last big event your church did, add up all the staff hours, and what those staff members get paid per hour. That is a cost to your church for that event or ministry.

Now, it might be worth it.

But as a smart leader, you have to calculate that.

Let me throw another example out. Think back to the last meeting you had at your church. How many staff members attended? How much do they get paid per hour? Was that meeting worth what your church spent to have those staff members there? Did anyone check their email during the meeting? Social media?

What we pay staff members to do is a direct reflection of how we view stewardship as a church.

How many volunteer hours were spent on something? When it comes to a significant event or outreach at any church, hundreds and possibly thousands of volunteer hours will be taken up.

Those volunteer hours are hours that will not be spent on something else.

So, how can you make sure you don’t waste them? How do you make sure that it is worth it?

Many times, we don’t ask these questions; we plan an event and throw out the call for volunteers.

But why would they want to attend and help out? You must make sure that you attach a strong vision for something and make sure everyone knows why you are doing something.

What didn’t get done or got pushed back because of this event? No matter how amazing your staff is, when you pull off a big event or outreach, something won’t get done. That might be in terms of songs written, videos made, graphics produced, lessons, recruiting, or training might fall by the wayside.

Just like everything else on this list, that isn’t a bad thing — just something you have to factor in.

As best as you can, before hitting the yes button on something, try to list out what might get sacrificed because of something. Will there be an area of ministry that will suffer because of what you are trying to pull off? The reality is that something will fall off, but you have to factor that into the cost of something.

What was the wear and tear in terms of energy? One thing churches rarely ask is, “Is this the right season to do this?”

Churches fall into the trap of “we did this last year, so we have to do this again this year.” But what if you don’t have the bandwidth, energy, finances? Some years you can take a year off from something. There were times that Jesus walked away from the crowds and times that he walked into them. Both are acceptable and right at the right moment.

But just because you did something last year does not mean you need to do it this year.

Are you launching a campus? A new service? Did you hire several new staff members? What is the burnout rate of your team?

Remember, when you did it the first time or last time, that was a different season. Just like a family must continuously ask if now is the right season for this, so does a church.