Just Maintaining (Part 3)
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It’s easy to focus on what the church needs to change when growth slows—programs, strategies, systems. But often, the real breakthrough starts with the leader.
A particularly challenging part of leading through the maintenance phase? Adjusting your leadership approach.
In Part 3 of our “Just Maintaining” series, Sean and I discuss what churches need to be thinking about when it comes to their leadership team, key responsibilities senior pastors can’t delegate (and what they should delegate), and specific adjustments to make to move forward again.
Being on a senior leadership team isn't about having the right title, seniority, or position on the org chart. It's about being fully aligned with the church's mission. [episode 401] #unstuckchurch Share on X You’re perfectly structured right now to accomplish the things you have been accomplishing. Are you accomplishing the right things? [episode 401] #unstuckchurch Share on X Lead pastors: your church will replicate what is modeled to them. [episode 401] #unstuckchurch Share on X Fresh vision will compel some people and repel some people. Don't be discouraged. [episode 401] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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The Unstuck Church: Equipping Churches to Experience Sustained Health
In The Unstuck Church, our founder, Tony Morgan, unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find its way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck.
Join us June 26 at 1pm EST for a free 1-hour webinar, hosted by Amy Anderson, Sean Bublitz and Chad Hunt. The team will help equip you to recognize the defining characteristics of two critical seasons in the typical church lifecycle that can be easily misunderstood: Strategic Growth and Maintenance.
Transcript
Sean:
Well, hey listeners, before we start this week’s episode, I’d wanna say a huge thanks to our podcast sponsor, Planning Center. I’ve used Planning Center for years in my churches, and Planning Center is just a great all-in-one church management software that helps with all of the administrative challenges that you have when it comes to tracking first-time guests, your volunteer schedules and easy ways for your congregation to get involved. You can do it all from one single platform. If you need a check-in system, if you need to sign up people for events, if you need an online giving solution, Planning Center helps you engage your church and keep people connected. You can get started for free at planningcenter.com.
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean, your host here with my teammate Amy Anderson. We’re in part three of our series all about churches in the maintenance phase of the church life cycle. That’s the season that follows a time of sustained health in the church, and it’s often when growth has either slowed or stopped completely, and you really aren’t seeing a lot of life change happening anymore. Of course, our founder, Tony Morgan, he wrote all about the seven phases of a typical church life cycle in his book, The Unstuck Church, and in part one and two of this series, we talked about identifying the reasons why you are no longer growing as a church, and then how to get refocused on your next growth barrier. So today, let’s talk about a particularly challenging part of leading through the maintenance phase, and that’s adjusting your leadership approach. Amy, I wonder if you’d kick us off here, what’s different about leading a church that’s stalled in maintenance mode versus leading a growing church?
Amy:
Yeah, obviously there’s differences between a church that’s growing and one that’s stalled in maintenance, but here are a couple of the headlines. You know, in a growing church, the church is focused and intentional about reaching new people. They’re focused and intentional about creating the next steps for people to engage in their discipleship pathway. They’re really focusing their ministry attention there. Contrary in a maintenance church, ministries are actually more siloed. It’s also pretty complex. The church calendar, I mean, it’s full with programs and activities, but they’re often not focused programs and activities, rather, it’s just really more about busyness, you know, busyness and activities at the church. What they’re doing, they don’t connect people to that path, that discipleship path. And in this season, what we see are ministry leaders who are often, again, kind of siloed. They’re often trying to preserve their programs or their traditions.
Second thing that comes to mind in a growing church, what I notice is that leaders are just, they’re willing to change and adapt as needed. They’re looking for, and they’re trying new things to achieve the right results. They’re more focused on the results than the way they’re doing that. And they aren’t afraid to try something and fail forward. But in a maintenance church, fear of change often dominates the thinking. Leaders are kind of clinging to what used to work, which keeps them stuck and a little bit resistant to innovation.
Next, in a growing church, and this is probably spurred on by the growth, but senior pastors and ministry leaders are actively releasing ministry to the body, equipping the body to do ministry, or at least that’s what they’re working on. And team is a word that often describes them. They’re team based as their leading ministry. So the senior pastor, for example, leads by empowering and developing other leaders. And there’s just a strong team dynamic with clear delegation happening. Flip that over. In a maintenance church, often the pastor and the team are still doing most of the ministry themselves. In fact, most maintenance churches, they actually believe they’re understaffed, needing more staff when actually they’re quite overstaffed frequently. So there’s a sense of burnout on the team.
A fourth one, in a growing church, the pastor and the leadership team are forward thinking, meaning they have systems and disciplines in place that keep them making strategic decisions before problems arise In a maintenance church, much of the leadership is reactive, meaning they’re always kind of responding to the latest crisis or concern rather than planning for the long-term impact of what they’re doing.
And just one more. Lastly, in a growing church, decisions are often filtered through the lens, again, where I started, of reaching people and fulfilling the church’s mission, even when it’s uncomfortable, they’re thinking about those folks are trying to reach as they’re making decisions. Whereas in a maintenance church, things like internal preferences, comfort, tradition, that often drives decision making even if those decisions aren’t effective.
Sean:
Amy you said a lot about team, as you described, growing churches. What do you see in growing churches when it comes to their team leaders versus churches that are in that maintenance phase?
Amy:
Yeah, I mentioned the sense of team in that last conversation, in growing churches, but there’s more to it. To be a growing church, it’s really important who you put in your high level ministry leader positions. You need growth-minded leaders at the helm, not just shepherds who maintain what exists. In fact, when I work with churches in the maintenance mode, this is a really common discovery during our staffing and structure conversations. Often they are two to three leader short at the top of the organization that have this wiring and mindset and that that’s a tension because they’re also often overstaffed, like I said. But it’s amazing, Sean, and you know this how quickly like shifts begin to take place when they actually seed an additional leader or two who have that high-capacity leadership gifting. And so I would just say to our listeners, if you’re a leader in maintenance mode right now, if you’re gonna get back to a place of growth, you probably need to look at that leadership level and make sure you get the right leaders in place around you.
Sean:
That’s good. So if a church is in the maintenance phase of the church life cycle, what else do they need to be thinking about when it comes to the top kind of leadership or leaders of the church?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, continuing on this theme of team, there needs to be a shift away from solo leadership to a senior leadership team. Most thriving growing churches have moved away from that traditional top down model with one senior leader calling the shots. And instead they’ve built a senior leadership team around them, a team of three to eight high level leaders who collaborate on direction and health. And Sean, we just had this on our XP cohort call. We had an executive pastor who was feeling like he has a lead pastor who just wants to go do this and then go do this and go do this. But they’re at a size where that lead pastor really needs to lean in on this senior leadership team so they can make better decisions, thought through decisions, discern decisions, things like that.
Second, the team needs to be in alignment. So being on the senior leadership team, it isn’t about having the right title, seniority or position on the org chart. It’s really about being fully aligned with the church’s mission, being a strategic big picture thinker, and then bringing energy, not just tasks, to the table. So I just, I can’t understate how important it’s that they have this full alignment with the foundational level of your strategic alignment pyramid. And again, they need to have that leadership gifting.
The third thing then is that this team, this leadership team, needs to model the culture and set the direction for the ministry. So a senior leadership team, it’s future focused. It’s not week of focus. So if you’re in your senior leadership team and you’re talking about this weekend, you’re talking about the wrong thing. So make sure we, you know, we get higher thinking and then this team brings clarity to what success looks like for the organization. That’s what we need to be thinking about. You know, things like setting the annual goals. This team is gonna determine or confirm what our primary ministry strategies are for the church, and then they make sure there’s unity on the team, making sure everyone’s pulling in the same direction.
And what I mean by that, if you have a men’s ministry leader, they have the responsibility to lead that ministry, but that men’s ministry leader should not have decision rights when it comes to the strategies or the plays that are being run in that ministry. That’s really a senior leadership team decision. So we need strong ministry leaders, but we need to go back and say, remember the senior leadership team has to guard and protect the whole church and keep them aligned. And that’s why decision-making on strategy needs to be around that table.
Sean:
Amy, let’s talk a little bit about the tension pastors have to manage as they’re leading these changes, because we don’t wanna downplay how challenging this is. You’re gonna step on some toes, but where are some of the sticking points that pastors need to be anticipating and kind of getting out in front of?
Amy:
Yeah, so again, we’re talking about church leaders who kind of feel like they’re in the maintenance mode now. And they really wanna lead their church back over to a place of strategic growth. So that’s a backdrop of all this. And I mentioned it earlier, but you may have to reassign or let some staff go. You’ve had the leaders around you to this point that have gotten you to where you are and there needs to probably be some disruption there if you’re gonna get back to a place of growth. You at least have to have a roadmap, right. That’s gonna make room for some other gifted leaders around the table. And, you know, part of this move requires fresh vision, but it also requires fresh structure. Again, we’re creating some disruptions so that we can create kind of a new destination for ourselves. So inevitably there will likely be changes needed on the team if you’re gonna accomplish the fresh vision that God has for your church, because again, you’re perfectly structured right now to accomplish what you’ve been accomplishing. So that’s one of those things to get out in front of.
And along those same lines, you might have to bring some younger leaders onto the senior leadership team. They still have to have a high capacity of leadership. But those younger leaders will bring some fresh perspectives to you and to the team as you work to get the church back on track.
On the ministry side, the programming side, you’ll likely need to be pruning some ministries. So yeah, I have a church I’m working with right now and the executive pastor is literally going through their church calendar. They’re currently in maintenance, but they have some fresh vision they’re going after. And so they’re starting the work to get back over to a place of strategic growth. And he just said he had no idea how many events and programs and ministries that were being run, funded and led. He’s like, “Some of these are 40 years old, Amy.” So they are creating this long list, and they’re looking to bring alignment to all of this activity.
Sean:
Good.
Amy:
Their goal is to do less but accomplish more. So you might be, if you’re in maintenance now, you might be in the same boat and need to put an end to some ministry programs. And I say this all the time, you know, pruning, it’s so biblical, but churches are historically so bad at it. But we’re gonna have to sunset some good things we do. So we can do some great things.
And then lastly, I would anticipate you might have to change up how you’re allocating some of the funding to different ministries. Maintenance churches, when they do a, a dive into how they’re spending their ministry budgets, they’re often skewed towards overfunding the discipleship side of their ministry and underfunding the reach strategies. So you might need to be allocating financial resources from your current budget lines to some new initiatives.
Sean:
Yeah. Alright. So Amy, let’s shift and get practical here. And we’ve already alluded to some of this, we’ve developed some resources around this, but there are really kind of four key areas that we see stand out that senior pastors absolutely cannot delegate. If they wanna lead their church out of the maintenance mode. Can you describe those?
Amy:
Yeah. And you’ve heard ’em before if you’re a podcast listener. It doesn’t matter if your church is 10,000 people or a hundred people, these are the four things that you cannot delegate. First, you need to be the vision caster. Casting vision is your job as senior pastor. You’re the primary voice in helping people understand where the church is going. Others can contribute to shaping the vision, but it’s on you to clearly and consistently communicate it in a way that gets people on board.
The second thing, of course, you are the main spiritual leader and teacher, and you can’t delegate the spiritual leadership of the church. So that means making your teaching excellent, studying hard, refining your delivery and seeking feedback. And again, while a team can support you, you will still need to be the central voice most of the time here.
Third, just remember leadership starts with you. So again, no matter how big your team is, you carry the weight of leadership development and modeling what great leadership looks like. And Sean, you said it earlier, if lead pastors aren’t growing as leaders or empowering others, that ripple effect will hold the church back because we often replicate what’s modeled to us.
Which leads me to the last one, which is you’re the primary culture setter. Meaning culture doesn’t form by accident. So you have to define it, live it out, and call others to the same. And if the team doesn’t see the values modeled in you, by the way, they won’t adopt ’em. So these are not aspirational values to define your culture. They’re just the real things that come out of you.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
And beyond, honestly, beyond these four responsibilities, lead pastors, I would delegate as much of everything else that you can. When I’m working with senior pastors in the maintenance phase, I literally work with them, with their calendar, Sean, to make room for those four priorities. So I’ll sit down with them and ask ’em like, what’s your best studying/writing time? What steals your time and tension away from message prep? What’s your weekly rhythm? You know, are you a Monday where you just, you need to go sit at that computer and start writing? Or is Monday like, I need to recoup from the weekend? So we actually go through the calendar and we block out the times for those four main things and then we limit the rest of that time and work with their executive assistant to figure out how to manage these. I had one pastor once he had meetings every week with congregants who wanted to talk about this or that, and I said. You just have to put a limit. You’ve got two hours a week. Sure. And when that time’s full, it’s full kind of thing.
Sean:
So, Amy, those are the four specific roles that senior pastors need to focus on. What other adjustments come to mind when senior pastors are kind of taking their church and getting it moving forward again in this maintenance phase?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, similar to what I kind of just outlined. Senior pastors need to get focused on fulfilling their role. And there are a few key steps that we’ve identified that help pastors move churches from maintaining to momentum again. So first, when it comes to vision, refocus your church on a clear and compelling vision. You know, lead a small group of strategic leaders to give input, to renew and clarify the vision for the church and then communicate it boldly to the staff, volunteers, and congregation. Now I just said that in two sentences, it takes time to develop this. It takes intentionality. So the church that’s going through their calendar right now, you know, we, we scheduled a meeting and we had a team provide a bunch of input and then we gave that lead pastor, you know, a month, maybe six weeks to pull those thoughts together to confirm it with a board. And now we’re starting to work on what’s my communication plan, but our churches to get out of maintenance and back into a time of growth. We need something compelling to go after. We need something that rallies us.
When it comes to shifting the church’s focus from kind of internal to an outward focus, this is where I’d say you’re gonna need to do some work to realign ministries and get the church on board with prioritizing, reaching new people and advancing the mission again and moving away from just maintaining comfort, in our existing congregation. Also, when it comes to leading churches through these changes, you also need to create some urgency around the need for change. You need to help the church see that maintaining the status quo is gonna lead to decline. And you need to be communicating why that change is necessary and why it can’t wait. So we have a compelling vision, but part of that story is helping people understand why we can’t stay where we are right now. Right?
Sean:
That’s good. Yeah.
Amy:
Just a couple more. One, you have to expect resistance as you go through this process. Expect pushback and the possible loss of some people ’cause it will happen. But in a sense, you are choosing who’s going to leave as you go through this process of shifting your church. So as you make kind of bold, mission-aligned decisions, you’re gonna have some people who are gonna lean in, step up and it will rally their engagement in the church. And then you’ll have some who might opt out.
Sean:
Sure.
Amy:
But again, you’re choosing who will stay. And lastly, I would just encourage you to empower and mobilize other leaders through this process. People who are aligned with you, don’t go it alone. Engage key staff and lay leaders in developing and implementing strategies. It’s fun as you do start to make those shifts and just be sure to celebrate those early wins as you’re building momentum.
Sean:
That’s really good. Amy, you talked about earlier kind of the senior leadership team and we’ve just seen that that relationship between the senior pastor and, and the senior pastor’s role and that leadership team is so important during this transition. Years ago, our founder Tony Morgan, he wrote another, another really good book called Take the Lid Off Your Church, where he looked at the senior leadership team role and kind of listed out some of the specifics of who to identify as the right leaders to bring on the senior leadership team. So I thought we’d share that in some of what he wrote.
First of all, is this person fully bought in? You need people that are 100% aligned with the church’s mission, vision, and strategy. Not almost there, but a hundred percent there. Are they strong leaders? This team is a team for high capacity leaders, the kind that can lead at big picture wide impact level. Can this person see the big picture? You want people who care more about the whole church than just their own area.
Amy:
Really quick, Sean. That is a headline one right there. I mean, I hope that’s really discerning because if we have people who just care about their ministry area, which was a classic description of churches and maintenance mode, really go after that one. Can they take off their ministry hat and put on your church’s hat?
Sean:
That’s good. Are they strategic thinkers? They should be future focused, not stuck in just the weeds of daily tasks. Do they build teams? You need developers, not doers. Leaders who equip others, not just get stuff done themselves. And you should look for evidence of that. Do they show evidence that they’ve built teams? Do they reflect our diversity as a church? Look for a mix of backgrounds, gifts, personalities, different voices including both men and women. Do they give you energy? If someone drains you or constantly pulls in a different direction, they’re probably not a good fit. You’ll be spending a lot of time together. So make sure it’s somebody whose life-giving to you as a senior pastor.
Amy:
It’s a good list.
Sean:
You’ll also need to create healthy accountability. Set clear expectations and have candid conversations about performance with them. And then also model the changes that you wanna see. Leaders reproduce who they are. You mentioned this earlier, if something is off with your team do some self-reflection and maybe invite someone from the outside of your team, to kinda share what they see in you. It’s great to give somebody permission to do that. It could be that your leaders are actually emulating something that you are modeling for them. Alright, so let’s talk about some specific next steps from here. What are some of the first steps pastors can take to begin to shift their leadership approach?
Amy:
I think I would say, start by auditing how you spend your time. And with within that, identify what you can delegate to others. So, I mean, delegation isn’t dumping things, right?
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
We actually wanna clear up your schedule so that you can do what only you’re doing. And if you’re kind of a control freak, like some of us are also try to let go of that belief that you have to do everything for it to be done right. Part of empowering others is just releasing some control and being a little more comfortable that they may not do it just like us. And then everything else beyond those four responsibilities, you know, the vision, teaching spiritual leadership, culture, see if we can get it off your calendar and onto somebody else’s.
Second I would say schedule regular time for strategic thinking and planning. Strategic planning, we often coach churches, you need to do this annually. Take a few days where we kind of assess where are we today, and then talk about where do we need to go over the next 12 months. And then out of that, come up with your key initiatives for the year. That’s just a discipline. If that’s not a muscle you have as a church, it’s a muscle you need as a church especially as you get back to growing. This is something obviously that unstuck does with churches every week. But whether it’s us or a different model, you know, you should be having initiatives that you’re running 90 days at a time to make sure you’re actually doing some of this work outside of just the weekend.
And then lastly, I would say, you know, schedule some meetings one-on-one with key leaders to build alignment around change that you’re considering. You know, you’re gonna be working through a lot of things. You’re gonna wanna be switching, get some wise advisors around you, you know, check in regularly with these leaders. Ask what’s working and what’s not. If you’ve got a great senior leadership team, this is where to have this conversation. But if you don’t find some others.
And then of course make sure you’re celebrating wins as you’re moving through and course correct when needed. And any of those mistakes. Maybe things that you’ve let other people lead. When those mistakes arise, really think of them as growth moments. Not reasons to take things back, but just to help that person fail forward and learn from challenges that are, you know, changes that are happening.
Sean:
That’s good. That’s a good reminder. Alright, so those are kind of the practical leadership shifts. But I also think there’s some mindsets, some ways we approach this from a mental perspective that need to shift in this season. What are some of those, Amy?
Amy:
I would say, except that making these changes will create some tension. So tension in this process of moving from maintenance to strategic growth will create tension. I just want you to know that’s normal and necessary. Our founder, Tony Morgan, used to say, fresh vision will compel some people and repel. So just remember that. Second, I would say resist the urge to micromanage. Trust your leaders enough to truly delegate. Take some risk there. And the last would be a mental shift to focus on outcomes rather than getting caught up in all the process and details. So delegate the outcomes you wanna see, not just the tasks in. In other words, instead of just saying do this, explain why it matters and what success looks like. And let your leaders carry some of the responsibility on how it’s gonna get done. So you’re giving ownership if you’ve got trusted leadership around you, not just a to-do list.
Sean:
That’s really good. Alright. So it’s been a great conversation. Any final thoughts before we wrap up today?
Amy:
Yeah, I would just remember that leadership adjustments take time. This is not a microwaved process. You didn’t get here overnight. And you’re not gonna get out of it overnight. So be patient, but be persistent, you know, get a plan and keep your focus on the mission and vision God has given your church. And I would add, if you can, don’t try to make all these changes alone. Get help from some outside perspectives as needed. You know, if you don’t have that strategic planning muscle, get someone in who does have it. Any of the things we talk through, if those are not your skills right now, get some help, get some coaching so that you don’t feel like you’re leading through this alone because you’ve got a lot of good people around you, you’ve got a lot of good people and skills in your church and you don’t have to go it alone to make these changes.
Sean:
That’s a great reminder. Well, listeners, thanks for joining us today. We know you don’t want your church to get stuck in the maintenance phase. Churches that do can be stuck there for some time. So next week we’re gonna conclude this series with another important helpful conversation. Hope you’ll come back for that.
And if you haven’t yet, you can sign up for our free webinar that we have coming up on June 26th. We’re gonna do a deep dive into the differences between strategic growth and maintenance phase churches, and then how you lead change towards sustained health. If you’re listening to this on release date, that’s actually next week. So sign up soon. You can sign up for free at theunstuckgroup.com/webinar. And then don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast show notes. You can get those at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. And we’ll see you next week.
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