We’re trying something different on The Unstuck Church Podcast.
It’s our first ever “Ask Anything” episode!
The idea for this came from our free webinars, where we typically save time at the end for live Q&A. Some of the gold from those events always comes in that live conversation, and we wanted to bring that fun and magic to the podcast.
How do you define culture, and how do you change it? How do you balance the power of the board? What do you do when the right people are in the wrong roles on your staff?
In this episode, Sean and I respond to these questions and more that YOU, the listeners, have submitted by leaving a voicemail on our Ask Anything phone line at (615) 398-9171, or by messaging us on social media, or through our free live webinars.
Pray for your pastor and just ask that God would be revealing to them the things that they are uniquely wired for so they can find their gifting and perfect fit within the body. [episode 437] #unstuckchurch Share on X Vision really is the responsibility of the lead pastor. [episode 437] #unstuckchurch Share on X The culture is really defined by the top four or five leaders at the church. [episode 437] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean here with my teammate Amy Anderson. And Amy, we’re doing something very different today. I hope this goes well, otherwise, this might be the first and last time we do this, but we’ve been looking forward to it. This is our first ever Ask Anything episode. So we’re gonna spend some time today responding to questions from directly from our listeners that have submitted some questions, either by leading, leaving a voicemail, or sending us a message. We actually have a phone line now where people can call in and leave voicemails and leave questions. So it’s gonna be fascinating to hear some of these questions. And you and I are coming in completely unprepared. We don’t know what the questions are.
Amy:
We do not. Tiffany likes to make me feel uncomfortable.
Sean:
Well, it’ll be fun. So let’s jump right into it. I’m gonna play the first voicemail we received, and then, you and I’ll respond. So here it is.
Question 1:
Yes. My name is Nick Decker. I’m a pastor in Greensboro, North Carolina. And I’m in an established church where there is definitely a culture that has been set for many years now. And first of all, I’m wondering what is the easiest definition that you would give for culture? Like, how would you define it easily? And then what are some necessary steps that a pastor can take to change the culture in an established church? Thanks so much.
Amy:
So how we talk about culture is that it’s a set of behaviors, meaning this is how we behave as a team. And so you can’t, you can’t try to reset culture around things that don’t exist. That would be aspirational. But because every culture, you know, Sean, jump in if you want, but the culture is really defined by the top four or five leaders at the church.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
So the good news, if you’re a leader in the church, you’re already setting culture. Whether you’ve named it or not, the way that you’re behaving is what people are watching and they’re understanding this is the way I need to behave to be successful here. So if you wanna shift your culture, what I would do is, and how we lead churches through this, I would assemble a team of about four to eight people that Nick, you go, these are the guys who live out a culture I wanna see replicated throughout our entire team and gather together and list out these unique behaviors of the team. And I would avoid what we call permission to play behaviors. So things like, we pray, we follow the Holy Spirit, we trust God. Those things are very important. But we would call that permission to play, mean permission to even being in ministry. Those are the the things that we need to do, but these ones are more distinctive. I dunno. Can you think of a couple that you’ve done lately, Sean, distinctive behaviors that churches have named?
Sean:
Yeah. Well, I think we believe the best. We choose to believe the best in each other. So we’re not gonna make assumptions or operate out of suspicion, but when our teammates do something, we’re gonna always believe the best in them. I always love when I work with churches where fun is a part of their culture, where enjoying their work and enjoying working together is a key part of it. But again, the key to what you said, Amy, was that the culture actually flows from that senior group of leaders, whether you’re in a big church and that staff, or you’re in a smaller church and that’s a pastor and some key lay leaders. It comes out of who you are. And I think sometimes pastors even feel guilty about that. Like that’s maybe there’s a little bit of selfishness that’s built in. But it’s true regardless, it’s just who we are as human beings. And as you said before, this is a perfect way to say it, we’re either setting that culture intentionally or not. So what you’re describing here brings more intention to it.
Amy:
You know, on our staff team, we say it a little differently with some of our internal Unstuck language, but the basic gist of it is we always try to make things better. So if you were a person who joined our team and you love the status quo and you don’t like change, you really wouldn’t fit on our team. And Nick, just because the way you ask the question about, you know, you’re in an established church, a very established culture, you might be defining culture more broadly, you know, like into the congregation, this is the way we’ve always done things, this is how we do things. I would say this exercise is still the one to start because you need to have people on your team that reflect the culture that you’re trying to set, as a lead pastor, you are the culture bearer for your church.
When we get the other side of talking about if it’s, if it’s more global in nature with your church, this is where I would encourage you to read through, The Unstuck Church book because it is likely that you are on the right side of the church lifecycle where we really don’t wanna change things and the culture is that we wanna keep people happy. And that would be a little bit more on the planning side of things, the vision side of things that would need to be addressed in order to address that type of culture issue.
Sean:
One other recommendation on reading that came to mind on culture, Amy, is just our friend Lance Witt, his book High-Impact Team. It’s not 100% about culture, but it has some brilliant thoughts on culture within that book. So that’d be another great one to pick up. Alright, let’s move on to our second question. So I’m gonna play it for you, Amy, and then we’ll respond.
Question 2:
I have two questions. One is, what do you do when your pastor, your senior pastor, won’t really discuss defining a vision or kind of getting narrower. We have a very broad mission, but we don’t have a specific goals or measurements for what we’re doing right in the specific area where God has put us. And so we’ve kind of, are butting heads about this all the time. The second question is, what do we do when beloved people are on our staff but are in the wrong positions, have the wrong job titles?
Amy:
Well, those are some big challenges. So if it feels big, let me just put you at ease and say those are big challenges and not easy answers, but let me respond to having a leader that won’t discuss kind of defining vision, narrowing mission a little bit. This is all about the work of aligning the ministry. And again, we talk about this a lot, but when you look at our model of the strategic alignment pyramid, the foundation just is all about your core theology. It’s about your mission, and it’s about who you’re trying to help people become in Jesus. And my guess is you have that down.
The next level is the directional level. And this is where we talk. The first conversation we encourage pastors to have is just what, what is our vision? Meaning where do we believe God’s calling us the next three to five years? Or maybe you said, what are some of the bold moves that God’s calling us to? The level after that is setting those goals. So if you have a lead pastor who just doesn’t want to embrace those things, it’s gonna be hard to get the work of the church, right, aligned and getting traction. Because that’s the directional level is what communicates to everybody. Here’s where we’re going, here’s what success looks like, here’s our strategies to do that, and now we’re gonna structure in order to get that done. You can’t hope your way out of those challenges.
Sean:
I would add to that, Amy, you know, in a decade now of, nearly a decade of working with churches and, and senior pastors specifically, part of what I’ve learned is that most senior pastors will admit to you in conversation that they aren’t a visionary leader. That they aren’t gifted with dreaming and thinking about the future. And it makes sense to me. Pastors got into their roles because they love shepherding. They love teaching. It wasn’t because they love dreaming about what might be someday and then creating a plan to get there. So many of them feel inadequate in talking about vision even though they feel the responsibility and weight of it. So my encouragement for churches where the pastor maybe doesn’t have that visionary gifting is to, first of all, pray for your pastor to start there and just ask that God would be revealing to your pastor the things that they are uniquely wired for so they can find their gifting and perfect fit within the body.
But secondly, is there a group of leaders that you could bring around your pastor to think about strategy? And you mentioned some specific goals and measurements. Maybe we’re not gifted in a visionary sense, but maybe we can begin to put some targets around what we might hope to accomplish in the next 12 months. That would be a great place to begin and may lead you to something more in the future. So I think part of it is just acknowledging. I think there’s really very few people who are actually gifted visionary leaders. Many of us lead more by what can we get done right in front of us? And that’s okay too.
Amy:
Yeah. I wanna talk about kind of that they’re struggling to narrow down what we’re doing. This is a real challenge if you’re gonna be a healthy growing church. If you don’t regularly prune and really get focused on what’s most important, it’s just one of those things that expedites a church’s, gosh, just sliding down the right side of that lifecycle. Moving from maintenance to life support. So again, if you’re digging for momentum or reasons to have these conversations, you know, whether it’s with your session with your lead pastor is we need to do a few things really well. And what are those things we wanna do? Well, those are your ministry strategies. And again, trying to get a start on some of the pruning side of things. I say it all the time, all ministry is good. You don’t cancel things ’cause they’re bad. You just have to pick what are the best things that God’s calling us to do in order to reach the mission field where he’s placed us.
The second question about having the wrong people, in the wrong seats, maybe on the wrong bus, maybe the positions have really outgrown who they are. Again, this is a normal part of an organization. None of us really are born to sit in one role our whole life. Sometimes, the job changes; sometimes we change. And so again, this will take an intentional process. This is what we do with staffing and structure reviews. But you, it takes a lot of courage to move into the people-side of things.
Sean:
Amy, it’s a difficult question to answer, especially the people-side of their questions, when you don’t have clarity around the directional part of the pyramid that you started this conversation with or answering this question. And our strategic alignment pyramid tool is created just for that. We have some downloadable resources on our website that you could grab to use and even facilitate that conversation with your team.
Amy:
At a very, at a very minimum though, I really believe that anybody who’s on a staff team, what we owe them as their leaders is clarity around what success looks like and then feedback around how that is going. We have to give people the opportunity to improve and close the gap because if they can’t, well then we’re walking with them and we can be generous and helpful as we move them to another seat or if they have to be moved off the team. But when we just make blatant cuts or shifts without them ever having any inkling that this is coming, that’s where we serve people wrong. Remember God has put these people into our care. I think we’re all temporary interim people in our roles. God will move. But your first step, if you’ve got people issues is to really get clarity around what success looks like for their role and what they need to do to close the gap. That will at least start the conversation.
Sean:
Alright. Let’s move on to our third question. It’s another voicemail that was sent in by one of our listeners.
Question 3:
Hi. My question is around church governance. Specifically, we are in a transitionary period with no senior pastor as we are on track to hire a new senior pastor through a search firm. My question is, in this season, the board is especially burdened with feeling like it is up to them to fill the gaps, answer the questions and take on all the responsibilities. How do we hold the board accountable to not overreaching in this season and not feeling like they need to take on all of the operational responsibilities and filling all of the perceived gaps?
Amy:
Again, another great question. I feel the pain of our listener asking this. It is so common in churches when they are without a lead pastor for this lay leadership team to feel the burden to step in, grab the reins, start to drive. And well, these times where there is a gap like this, the board sometimes just doesn’t know any better. And so, you know, the board’s job of course in its perfect state, when there is a lead pastor, their responsibility is to model spiritual maturity, provide wisdom and input to the lead pastor, and to, you know, give input on big decisions, financial decisions, and then, then hold the team accountable. Or at least, you know I often talk about them being up in the booth for a sports team, make sure we’re running towards the right end zone, staying in bounds kind of stuff.
So when the lead pastor’s gone, ’cause that’s their only direct report, they are probably doing what they think is best. They are probably very burdened. They’re probably needs to be some sort of meeting between the top leadership and the board to really work out how let’s plan in advance how we’re going to operate in, you know, in the gaps. And I would recommend bringing a facilitator in for this conversation between the board and staff just to talk through what are decision rights going to be in this season? When do we need to inform the board of things? Because I’ll tell you what, they probably don’t wanna overreach. They probably don’t, but they feel responsible for it.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
So, it just takes a lot of communication. I’ve seen so many mistakes made in the absence of a lead pastor, so I would get someone gifted in this area of governance to facilitate a conversation between the two teams so that you can bring clarity in this time of uncertainty.
Sean:
You’re exactly right, Amy. And we’ve actually worked with a number of churches where there is a gap in that senior pastor role. Some churches it takes them quite a while to find the right leader to fill that senior pastor role. And so we’ve stepped in to help bring clarity to the team and the board on what can be done in the in interim, and then what does success look like for us maybe in the next 12 months. And you as a staff team, you should have clarity on it; if not, going through an exercise like that’ll be really important for you. But then, sitting down with a board, helping make clear to them, these are our goals, this is what we’re working on, this is what we’re doing to accomplish those goals. So they can walk away with a level of confidence that you have clarity, that they have peace that the church is gonna continue to move forward and that there’s not a communication or information gap for you because I’m sure from their position there is a high sense of care for the staff team as well. So I think exactly what Amy said there, I’m just reiterating it: creating a plan, specific goals, actions to accomplish those goals and communicating that clearly can help to alleviate a lot of those concerns from the board’s perspective.
Amy:
Once those kind of rules of engagement are set, then you have to also define how are we going to nurture it going further? Because it would be great if you had a lead pastor in place in 12 months, and if that’s the case, the plays that you’re gonna be running are the plays in your current playbook. This would not be a time to implement a lot of change that type of stuff. But if you’re six months in and there’s no one on the horizon and this is gonna run longer, you’re probably gonna need a different solution for a longer term gap. And what I would make sure you do not do is do not allow plurality in leadership to come into the interim model. It’s very hard on staff when there’s plurality in leadership there. There just probably needs to be more of a board representative who’s kind of being the leader of that team in the interim time.
Sean:
Yeah. Yep. That’s a good point, Amy. It’s important structurally for still one person from the staff to report to the board, whether that’s the executive pastor, another senior leader, and then for the rest of the staff to report up to that senior staff person because we’ve seen a number of churches where the reporting structure has gotten confused during that interim period, and then when a new senior pastor steps into place, it’s hard to unwind it. It’s hard to pull that back. So, that’s a great observation.
We had another listener just write in a question, and Noah asked, and this is related but different. What is the role of the elder board with the overall strategic alignment pyramid? Is staff, senior leadership responsible for direction? Where would your process place volunteer elder boards or equivalent overseer boards involved in designing the alignment pyramid?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, of course the board probably had voice into the theology, whatever board was there when the church was set and launched. I’m sure the board had input into what’s the stated mission of the church, and then on the discipleship outcomes, who we want people to be becoming. Again, those were probably set long ago. They’ve maybe been wordsmithed. So I’m gonna just take us right up to the directional level that starts with vision. Vision really is the responsibility of the lead pastor. So we are out of board ranks now, and we’re into senior staff.
However, a good lead pastor is gonna run the vision and get input from the board before that cement is dry. That you want the wisdom of those players, plus any vision that you have to roll out, this is the first kind of, the first kind of group you’re talking to about it. And you can get some sense on how excited they would be about it when it comes to setting the goals for the church. That’s another thing that you might inform the board. Like, here’s what we’re shooting for this year, aligned to our mission and aligned to our vision. What the board should be doing through that process is really checking alignment. Are these things lining up with why we exist and where we believe we’re going the next three to five years, what you’ve said we, where we’re going for the next three to five years.
And then we get into ministry strategies. Again, that’s really the responsibility from the lead pastor and their team. Again, if you’re making a big switch in strategy, it’s always wise to let the board know and to get their input, but that’s really the level that they’re participating in. I like, again, I mentioned Jonathan last week too, but Jonathan Smith, he talked about his board when, if you know the Working Genius, right? We wonder what we should do. We invent solutions to it. We discern the right way to do it; we galvanize it. Then, we get into enablement and then tenacity to land the project. He wants the board at the discerning level and the galvanizing level. He doesn’t want them wondering what we should do and where to go. He doesn’t want them inventing new ways we should do ministry. He wants them to bring their discerning gifts at the level that they fly at. And then of course galvanizes people who help rally the church around where the church is going. Anything you’d add, Sean?
Sean:
Yep. I totally agree with you. I was thinking about our smaller churches as well as you were describing that for smaller churches. It’s not as uncommon to have representatives from the board or a group of elders at the table as you’re developing vision. That does happen, but they really need to make sure they empower the pastor, the senior pastor, with the implementation of that vision long term. And I’ve seen that in certain church structures, whether it’s denomination or just how they’re organized. There is more of a tightly held sense of that vision by the board. And the senior pastor never really feels fully empowered to run with that, accomplishing the vision and with their team. And so organizing goals, what success looks like, strategies or how you’ll accomplish your goals, that never gets accomplished because they don’t feel full ownership of the vision. So, that’s true for all sides of churches. You need to make sure that you’re clearly empowering your lead or senior pastor with the implementation of the vision.
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Amy, here is another question from one of our listeners. This church also in the lead pastor transition season, Ben said we’re looking at a lead pastor transition in the next two, two and a half years. The last 10 years we’ve been stuck at around 1,000 in attendance. What tips would you give a church that’s stuck at around a thousand and looking to transition? So I think this is really a question about that 1,000 attendance barrier.
Amy:
Well, if you have been stuck at the 1000 mark for 10 years, that is a red flag. That is a red flag. And again, I just don’t wanna tell every listener to read The Unstuck Church book, but it’s such a great book.
Sean:
It’s a great book.
Amy:
It helps you so much evaluate where you are on the life cycle. But if you have a new lead pastor, coming in in the next couple of years, I still would not say delay the work of figuring out why you’re stuck. And of course we serve churches with that all the time. The book can help you. But this lead pastor has a few years left to really cash in their chips and help this church get back to a place of health and momentum. And so you’re probably at a place where we need to renew our vision. Where’s God calling our church? We probably need a, a lot of evaluation on our ministry strategies, in particular your reach strategies because if you’re stuck at a certain attendance, it means there aren’t new people coming through our door, which means we’re probably in the maintenance side of the life cycle.
We’ve been probably keeping people happy. They’re not leaving; we’re staying at a thousand, which means we’re not disrupting the apple cart. But my speculation would be that you’ve got a reach issue. And so that’s where I would encourage you maybe to start the conversation with your leadership team is how many people have we really reached with the gospel? I mean, like where people have made decisions to follow Jesus; they’ve taken steps to get baptized. And if that number is flat, that’s where I would start to put what’s our primary strategy to reach people under the microscope. For most churches, it’s the weekend service. It’s invite culture. It’s things like that, but it’s a bigger problem. That’s why I really do recommend that you at least read through that book or start looking at some of the content in our Resource Hub to get an understanding of what are the things we need to do next.
Sean:
Amy, you said start with an evaluation of why you’ve been stuck at a thousand. I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think that the 1000 barrier is the most difficult barrier for churches to break. And a big reason for that is they’re moving from being a smaller church, functioning like a smaller church. Everyone knowing everyone, having higher control from leadership into becoming a bigger church where some of those things need to change dramatically. And my guess is that there’s one or many of those areas where the church has gotten stuck and never been able to fully move through for whatever reason. So, doing an evaluation, getting an understanding of what those areas are and then developing a plan to get on the other side of it will be really critical.
The risk in this is it sounds like you may have been in what we would call the maintenance season for about 10 years now. I’ll bet there have been some great successes. There’s also been a lack of growth. There have probably been some significant plateaus or declines in other areas. And because of that, you could easily slip into what we call preservation. That’s when people start to leave, and it’s really hard to get them to return. And so, identifying now where you’re stuck and what you need to do is gonna be really critical before you slip down the right side of the life cycle to a place where it’s gonna be harder to recover from.
Amy:
You know, we did a podcast on breaking that thousand barrier within the last nine months. It’s episode 413. I don’t think that’s the answer for a church that’s been stuck at a thousand for 10 years.
Sean:
Right, right.
Amy:
I think that that provides answers for churches that are in a momentum growth and they wanna break through that 1000 barrier. So just for clarity.
Sean:
Alright, Amy, another question, just a couple more here for our episode today, Crystal asked, “Is there a particular financial amount needed to set to be set aside before considering launching a multisite campus, either from the main church location or from the capacity of the launch group, the people helping to launch this first location?”
Amy:
Yeah, that’s a big question and one I know that we get a lot. I’m actually gonna Sean throw this one back to you because I know you walk a lot of churches through this.
Sean:
Yeah. And you know the answer that I’m gonna give is no, there’s not a set financial. So, and here’s why: Every campus launch looks a bit different, right? So, as we look at different cities and different locations across the country, obviously cost is different. We’d have to figure out are we launching portable? Are we launching with a build out in a leased space? Are we building a facility? Those questions, once we answer those, will all have implications about the equipment that we need to purchase. And so there is not a tried and true, here’s what a campus launch costs.
Now after you do it a couple of times you’ll have a better idea and then you can begin to build budget for it. But the first time you’re launching a location, we really need to do the hard work of answering those questions, determining the right strategy for you. And of course we help churches with that all the time. What’s the right way to launch our first location and then build a pattern for how you launch into the future. So unfortunately my answer is there isn’t a good answer for that.
Alright, so let’s make this the last question, Amy, and I’m gonna throw this your direction. I think this is a great one for you. When it comes to assigning a leader over the front door of our ministry strategy and then another leader over the discipleship part of what we do, where does something like Growth Track or that Next Steps class process fall between those two leaders, between your reach strategies and your discipleship strategies?
Amy:
Great question. So, and I’m gonna add one more in there ’cause sometimes people ask this question too. Where does First Impression sit? Who has a responsibility for that?
Sean:
Oh yeah.
Amy:
So here’s what I would say. Your leader over the front door, your weekend experience, your primary responsibility is what happens inside that auditorium. So they are over music production; they’re partnering with the lead pastor on message processes. They’re coaching everyone who’s on the platform, off the platform to be the very best they can. They’re building systems; they’re leading people. They’re overseeing your ministry brand inside that auditorium.
Your discipleship leader is over all of the next steps we want people to take out of that experience. What next steps do we want them to take after they’ve come to church? And because of that, the first part Growth Track or first steps of engagement, those would be things that the discipleship path leader would be over. And even things like First Impressions because I know it feels like it’s part of that weekend experience and it certainly is, but you want your discipleship leader to be leading the teams that are doing First Impressions, greeters, ushers, all of that because that’s where so many people take a first step to serve. And serving is a big step on our discipleship pathway. So just like you could make the argument kids are the weekend too, and they are, we need a leader over our kids area and discipleship picks up First Impressions and all of those next steps.
Sean:
Totally agree. This has been a lot of fun, hasn’t it, Amy? Did you enjoy it?
Amy:
It is, yeah. More than I thought I would.
Sean:
Yeah. Good.
Amy:
Just kidding.
Sean:
Good. Okay, well I think we’ll do it again, unless no one downloads and listens to this, then maybe we’ll abandon it. But.
Amy:
Or if they never ask another question that would be a sign, too.
Sean:
Or if not, yeah. Yeah. Well we’re gonna try to do this every quarter and that’s our plan for now. So if you have questions that you’d like to send to us, you can submit your questions by calling our hotline. Is it a hotline? Our hotline.
Amy:
Our bat line?
Sean:
Yeah. This is area code (615) 398-9171. Again (615) 398-9171. You can leave us a voicemail there or you can send us a message on Instagram or on X, and we’ll answer those questions during our next Ask Us Anything episode. We love helping pastors lead Unstuck churches. You can learn more about what we do and the other ways that we can help at theunstuckgroup.com. And next week we’re back to start a brand new series called, I’m excited about this one, Amy: Are We Doing Multisite Right?
Amy:
Ooooh.
Sean:
Really looking forward to that. So we hope you’ll return and listen again next week.
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