Most churches have a list of values. Fewer have a culture their team can actually describe—and even fewer have one their leaders consistently model.
At The Unstuck Group, we encourage churches to think about culture as a list of behaviors rather than a list of values. Behaviors make culture tangible. They give your team a shared understanding of what healthy leadership looks like in practice.
Culture Is Shaped by What Leaders Repeatedly Do
Every church already has a culture. The question is whether that culture is being shaped intentionally.
Your culture is reinforced through the decisions leaders make, the conversations they have, the behaviors they celebrate, and the behaviors they tolerate. Over time, those repeated actions teach the team what really matters—regardless of what your stated values say.
That’s why a value like “excellence” isn’t enough. What does excellence look like on your team? Does it mean preparing early? Following through on commitments? Asking for feedback? Refusing to settle for a last-minute solution when better planning was possible?
Until you define the behavior, different people will interpret the value differently.
Clear leadership behaviors remove some of that ambiguity. They help people understand:
- What is expected of them
- How healthy leaders operate on your team
- What gets celebrated and coached
- How leadership performance will be evaluated
The goal is to give your team practical language for the culture you’re trying to build, not just more corporate language.
Start With Your Leadership Distinctives
Bring your senior leadership team together and ask a simple question:
What must be consistently true of leaders in our organization?
Start by drafting six to ten behaviors. Don’t worry about making them sound polished yet. At this stage, you’re trying to identify the leadership distinctives that matter most in your unique ministry context.
You might ask:
- What really matters to our senior leader or senior leadership team?
- What behaviors have helped our healthiest leaders thrive?
- What leadership patterns create frustration or slow down ministry?
- What do we want every new staff member to understand about how we lead here?
- What behaviors will be necessary for the next season of our church?
Then let the list sit for a couple of weeks. Pray about it. Pay attention to what continues to resonate and what feels generic. You may discover that two behaviors are really saying the same thing—or that an important distinctive is missing.
Once you’re confident you have the right ideas, narrow the list to four to eight core behaviors.
Choose Clear Over Cute
After you identify the right behaviors, spend time wordsmithing them. Make each statement concise and memorable, but don’t sacrifice clarity just to make it clever.
For example, a church might say it values candor. That sounds good, but it still leaves room for interpretation. When the team defines the behavior as, “Speak the truth without being a jerk,” the expectation becomes much easier to understand.
That statement tells leaders what to do and what not to do. Be honest. Address issues. Don’t avoid hard conversations. But also don’t use honesty as permission to be harsh or careless with people.
That’s what a useful culture-shaping behavior does. It turns an abstract idea into a practical leadership standard.
Define What Each Behavior Looks Like
A short statement is only the beginning. For every behavior, identify what it looks like in the day-to-day life of your team.
Brainstorm two or three observable examples. Ask:
- What would we see a leader doing if they consistently modeled this behavior?
- What would indicate that a leader is struggling in this area?
- How should this behavior influence meetings, decisions, conflict, and communication?
- What stories from our team already illustrate this behavior well?
You might also attach a reflection question or a Scripture passage to each behavior. Those additions can help leaders internalize the expectation and connect it to their own growth.
Stories are especially powerful. When someone models one of your behaviors, tell the story. Celebrate the person and explain why the example matters. Stories show the team that these behaviors are already taking shape in your culture.
Build a Simple Way to Assess the Behaviors
If a behavior matters, leaders should receive feedback on it.
One simple approach is to create red, yellow, and green indicators for each behavior:
- Green: The leader consistently models the behavior and helps others practice it.
- Yellow: The leader models the behavior inconsistently and would benefit from focused coaching.
- Red: The leader regularly acts in ways that work against the behavior and the desired culture.
This gives a common framework for coaching and evaluation. It also helps team members understand that culture isn’t separate from performance. How someone leads matters just as much as what they accomplish.
Don’t Turn the Launch Into the Win
When the behaviors are ready, resist the urge to make the rollout a huge production.
You can create a polished presentation, unveil new graphics, and hand out branded materials…and still see nothing change.
Introduce the behaviors clearly. Tell the team why they matter and communicate that your leaders are committed to them. Then keep them in front of people in fresh, practical ways.
More importantly, build them into the normal rhythms of leadership:
- One-on-one conversations
- Staff meetings
- New team member onboarding
- Leadership development
- Performance reviews
- Hiring and promotion decisions
- Team celebrations
Culture is shaped when leaders repeatedly model, coach, reinforce, and celebrate the same behaviors over time.
The Real Goal Is Integration
Defining your culture-shaping behaviors takes real work. You have to move beyond generic language, have honest conversations about how your team currently operates, and agree on the leadership patterns you want to reinforce.
But creating the list is not the finish line.
The real goal is to integrate those behaviors throughout your ministry until they influence how people lead, how teams work together, how conflict gets resolved, and how decisions get made.
If you want to shape your culture intentionally, don’t stop at naming what you value. Define what your leaders will do.
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