Photo by Ryan Riggins on Unsplash

Every leader and pastor knows that to reach the goals you have in your heart for your church and to fulfill the mission that God has called you to, you must find the right team. Nothing is more important than the people you put around you. Whether they are elders, volunteers, or church staff. This has never been more important, but with COVID, this has never been more difficult.

All leaders know that nagging feeling. It keeps them up at night and gives them indigestion. It creates anxiety, stress, and even anger. What is it from? Having the wrong person in a leadership role. Sometimes, it might be a mismatch of skill; it may be that the person isn’t capable of leading a ministry or team at the size it is. This happens when someone struggles to lead at the new size of a church, as leading in a church of 100 is different than leading in a church of 500. The mismatch can also be a character issue you didn’t see before or recently developed.

But how do you know? What do you do with the feeling that someone shouldn’t be in their leadership role?

Jim Collins in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t said, “Two key questions can help. First, if it were a hiring decision (rather than a “should this person get off the bus?” decision), would you hire the person again? Second, if the person came to tell you that he or she is leaving to pursue an exciting new opportunity, would you feel terribly disappointed or secretly relieved?”

Over the years, these questions have helped me evaluate the leaders that I have and where we are as an organization. 

This doesn’t mean that if you answer, no you wouldn’t hire this person again, that doesn’t mean you let them go. Especailly if the issue is around competence as opposed to culture fit or character. Compentence is the area that you need to spend time on to level people up if they can be.

What do I mean by that? Not everyone wants to grow as a leader. People are often content to stay where they are and not grow or develop. That isn’t a character flaw or even wrong, but it might mean they can’t continue growing with your church or culture. 

But how do you know ahead of time? All of us have led people who shouldn’t be leading, weren’t bought in, or weren’t capable of leading in the role they are in.

In his helpful book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown said, “If the answer isn’t a definite yes, then it should be a no.”

While McKeown was applying that to opportunities, I think it is incredibly applicable to hiring someone, raising a volunteer leader, or putting someone into a new leadership role.

If you have a gut feeling they shouldn’t be there, wait. If a trusted leader tells you to wait, listen up.

If someone seems over-anxious to lead something, wait. If someone seems to be hiding something or something doesn’t add up about them, wait.

There is no harm in waiting.

I know. I hear you, church planter and pastor. You need someone. Who is doing it if you don’t put someone into place?

Possibly you. Possibly no one. You may need to wait on a ministry or miss a vision opportunity because you don’t have the people you need.

There have been times in churches I have been a part of where we have missed opportunities or we’ve not grown or we haven’t done a ministry because we didn’t have a leader. This is hard and sometimes people leave because of it, and you lose momentum or people.

Those are never easy, but they are all easier than removing the wrong person.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

The further we get from March 2020, the more we see how COVID has changed our world.

It changed our world in some significant ways. The same happened within the church. We’ve seen how COVID changed giving patterns, attendance, and serving patterns for people; the list goes on and on.

Just as it changed workplace cultures and patterns, the same has happened for church staff. We are just beginning to see what has changed, and pastors and boards need to start paying attention before we get too far down the road. While it may have brought about some welcome changes, it made some bad ones.

Here are 5 ways I think COVID changed church staff cultures that we need to pay attention to:

Everyone is exhausted. A lot has been written about the exhaustion and weariness everyone feels. Not just pastors but everyone in our churches is weary.

And believe me, it is real. I feel it, too.

As you lead your team, you must understand this because it is not going away. As you lead your volunteers, this is your new reality.

People have less time, less energy, and less desire to do the things they did in 2019. Churches must account for this and think through this.

As a pastor or team lead, you must continually check on your team. How are they physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and mentally? You must keep a pulse on your team, and the dashboards running your team, to ensure you have the energy you need to make it to the end.

We stopped looking forward. During COVID-19, it was about what is next. The next day, the next week. And that makes sense because things were changing daily and weekly. Could we open this week? What did we need to know to open this week? What were the current guidelines for gathering, etc.? What were people’s comfort levels about those guidelines?

What happened because of that, though, is we stopped looking forward. We stopped asking questions about the next year, 3 – 5 years, and beyond. Ten-year visions were thrown out; sermon planning was thrown out because we changed our sermon schedules every month.

But now, as a leader, you must pull back and ask where you are going in the next 3 – 5 years. What dreams has God placed on your heart?

Many pastors and church teams don’t have the energy to look forward and dream. That’s why raising your leadership capacity is so important to lead to what is next. 

You must take time to ask, what is our next big goal? Our next big dream that God has given to us?

The churches, pastors, and teams who can start to dream again will catalyze their church for the future. 

No one knows who is responsible anymore. During 2020 – 2021, everyone’s jobs changed. Suddenly, you were doing things you weren’t hired to do because things changed and new things had to get done. Or, churches were trying to figure out how to fill 40 hours a week for people who no longer needed to do what they were doing. 

Then, as churches started to regather, old responsibilities were added back on; some roles stayed the same, and others completely changed. It created situations where people need clarification on who is doing what or what the win for their role is anymore. They are wearing multiple hats, and some of those hats aren’t what they were hired for. 

Hence the exhaustion that everyone is feeling. 

But as a leader, you must bring clarity to your organization. 

Who is doing what? Who is responsible for what? What are your top 3 priorities right now as a church?

There was less oversight. As more and more churches embraced working from home or a hybrid office model, there was less and less oversight. I talk to many lead pastors who are now frustrated with the lack of work their teams are producing and aren’t sure what to do about it. 

It is a combination of exhaustion and the reality of being thrust into a remote work environment you didn’t plan for. Most pastors struggle to embrace it and figure out how to thrive. 

Your team might need more oversight. If they do, they need to be trained, or else you have the wrong team. The best staff don’t need oversight but coaching and guardrails so they can thrive in them. 

As a pastor, I know what you’re thinking: “I don’t have the energy to train and coach people. I’m exhausted.” You must deal with your exhaustion so you can step up your game. 

In this post-COVID world, we must focus more on results and what is being accomplished than the old way of working at church, where we focused on how many hours people were in the office. 

Do you have clear objectives for yourself? For your team? What do you hope to accomplish in the next 3 – 12 months? Does everyone have clear results to accomplish week in and week out? Don’t just assume they know because there is a good chance they don’t.

What we tolerated and allowed during COVID-19. Whatever level of work you allowed and tolerated on your staff during 2020-2021, that is now what your team thinks you tolerate and allow in 2023 and beyond. 

If it was okay to hand things in late, not get things done, and blow off assignments, that happened because of the changing world we live in. Many employees and pastors now think that is normal, and it will require you to have some hard conversations and deal with some things in your work culture. 

The reality of the last few years is that work standards changed across industries. But in the church world, we have this idea that being nice is the same as being Christlike. So, we don’t have hard conversations or talk about work being done below the acceptable level (or not at all) because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. Holding someone accountable is being Christlike. Tolerating poor work, or no work, is not okay.

For churches, people give every week, so our standard of work must be high. Not perfection. Not killing ourselves, but it must be worth the investment people make in the church and the kingdom of God. 

Covid changed our world and our churches. We must pull back to ask how and if we like what it did. If not, it is time to do the work to make course corrections. 

And yes, this will take work. 

I talk to many leaders who are exhausted (and I feel it), but the job of leaders is to get in there and lead. Do what you need to do, what God has called you and your church to do. There is too much at stake for you to coast through leadership.