These are exciting days for The Unstuck Group. Our current project list includes engagements with over 20 churches throughout the country. Our consulting services have grown by close to 65% year over year. We’re proactively expanding both our full-time staff and our contract consulting team to prepare for continued growth. Within the last 60 days, we’ve had close to 50 churches inquire about our services. It’s certainly a win when we can help more churches have a bigger Kingdom impact.
That said, we’ve always been selective about the churches we serve. When they’re “interviewing” us to see if we’re a good fit, we’re interviewing them as well. It would be a waste of both time and money for us to work with a church that we’re not in a position to help. We want to be wise stewards of the church’s limited resources.
Because of that, there are certain “red flags” that we’ve identified that cause us to pause when we’re in the dating phase with a church. If any one of these factors pop up on the radar, it’ll lead to some honest conversations before we’re comfortable moving forward. You could consider this a list of reasons why we’d fire the church before the church hires us.
Someone other than the senior pastor contacts us. When that happens, we first want to know whether the senior pastor is on board or not. If not, we ask them to call back when the senior pastor is ready to lead the process. There’s nothing we can offer until the entire leadership team is bought in and that primarily includes the senior pastor.
They tell us how to fix their problems. Very likely if they’re stuck, the church doesn’t know what it needs. Likely they’ve tried to fix it on their own already. To be truthful, we won’t know what the church needs either until we start engaging the process we facilitate. I much prefer working with the church that’s asking great questions rather than the church that believes they already have all the answers.
They want us to survey the entire congregation to determine if the church is meeting their needs. This is a huge red flag, because it’s an indication that the church is inward-focused. We only work with churches that want to make a Kingdom impact. Because of that, we’re more concerned with what the church needs to do to become more outward-focused.
They want someone else to come in and deal with conflict they’re not willing to confront themselves. You’d be amazed at how many churches don’t practice biblical conflict resolution. The good news is that identifying clear mission, vision, values and strategy can help to unify a team. However, unresolved conflict must be addressed; otherwise, trust will never be established to pursue a unified mission.
They have the sense that we are another “silver bullet.” Or, it could be that they have a history of having consulting firms in but then they don’t do anything with the diagnosis. They’re addicted to information and not action. We do help churches figure out where they are today, where they believe God wants them to be in the future and what the priority steps look like to see that vision become reality. We can’t make it happen though. The church has to be willing to work to develop the discipline needed for good execution. They have to put the plan into action.
They don’t believe that numbers matters and do tell part of the story. In other words, they’re not willing to admit they’re stuck. They’re not being honest with themselves about the lack of growth. If the church is unwilling to acknowledge their situation and agree they can’t stay where they are currently, then it’s going to be next to impossible to help them chart a course for a new destination in the future.
That said, our primary mission is to help churches get unstuck. If you’d like to hear more about the solutions we offer around health assessments, strategic planning and staffing/structure reviews, don’t hesitate to contact us so we can start the conversation.
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