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Church Staffing Oxymorons (Part 1)

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We’re kicking off a new series today on the church staffing challenges that seem to contradict themselves. If you’ve ever felt the tension of inefficient staffing, roles that just don’t align, or leadership gaps that keep widening, you’re not alone.

We want to help you move from that reactive “we need someone now” approach to building a strategic staffing model that actually supports your ministry vision.

In Part 1, Sean and I explore a common staffing oxymoron that all too many churches face: teams that are simultaneously understaffed and overstaffed.

In this episode we unpack:

  • Why churches often end up with misaligned staffing
  • What this tension feels like for different ministry areas
  • Common but ineffective solutions churches try
  • How to properly assess your starting point
  • The importance of having true leaders in leadership roles
  • Practical next steps for evaluating and addressing staffing imbalances

Plus, we share real church examples, discuss assessment tools that can provide objective data about your staffing reality, and provide guidance for leaders who want to build healthy, sustainable team structures that support effective ministry.amples of effective and ineffective alignment, and provide guidance for leaders who want to create living, active ministry plans that drive results instead of static documents that sit on shelves.


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This Episode is Brought to You By Planning Center:

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Planning Center helps you build a sustainable and balanced volunteer schedule that aligns ministry needs with people’s availability. Then, you can connect with your team using chat, where you can coordinate ministry details, make announcements, and engage in fun conversations with your teammates.

Get started for free at planningcenter.com.


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Transcript

Sean:

Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean, your host here again with Amy Anderson. And we’re starting a new series today called Church Staffing Oxymorons. And I don’t know why this came to mind, Amy, but one of my favorite all time Michael Scott quotes from the office popped into my head, probably because it’s an oxymoron as well. But Michael was talking about leadership and he said, would I rather be feared or loved? Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.

Amy:

So Michael Scott, my son watched that show 24/7 when he lived at home. And still today when he comes home from Florida, it starts playing on a loop the whole time. It’s so cringey, but so Michael Scott.

Sean:

I love it. Well, in this series we’re diving into the staffing challenges that seem to contradict themselves. And if you’ve ever felt the tension of insufficient staffing, roles that just don’t align, or leadership gaps that keep widening, you’re not alone. So over the next three episodes, we’re going to help you move from that reactive, we need someone now approach to building a strategic staffing model that actually supports your ministry vision.

Amy:

That’s right. So we’re going to give you some straight talk about assessment, about hiring and building leadership structures at scale with some practical next steps you can implement right away. And so let’s kick it off with just a list of the contradictions we brainstorm. First and oxymoron, right? Like jumbo shrimp. Being overstaffed and understaffed at the exact same time. Or having both the right and the wrong people on your team. And then maintaining structures that don’t work for today or tomorrow. That’ll be a fun one. But we’ll unpack this first one this week and we’ll address the other two in the next two episodes.

Sean:

So this is the church staffing oxymoron. We’re unpacking this week, and it’s one we see all the time. The church can be sensing something like we’re an understaffed team with too many people on it. And how can both of those things feel so true at the same time, Amy?

Amy:

I love the way you worded that we’re an understaffed team with too many people on it. No, it’s such a common question that I’ve walked with pastors through this past year. In fact, in 2024, I worked with over 20 churches on their staffing and structure challenges. And this conflict of feeling both overstaffed and understaffed was a top issue for most of them. In fact, I was just with the church this week and in my pre-meeting with the executive pastor, he was sharing how the staff is feeling overwhelmed right now. They’re wearing 2, 3, 4 hats to keep the ministry moving. But when I ran their vital signs, they were actually allocating too much of their budget to staffing. Their attendance to staff ratio was low. We talk about this a lot. One full-time employee for every 75 people at the church, theirs was under 50. That data actually reveals that they are more likely overstaffed. And it’s funny too, because I think the most overstaffed churches I work with actually feel the most need for more staff. Now I don’t doubt that this church I’m referencing has a team that feels stretched and thin. That’s a real thing. They feel understaffed, but the opposite is also true that they’re overstaffed compared to healthy growing churches.

And here’s another one, Sean, related to that point, some church teams are both over and understaffed because of how they’ve structured and resourced their teams. Let me give you an example. One church I worked with, they had a staff team of about 30 full-time equivalents. And in reviewing their current structure, I discovered that they were dedicating like 20% of those FTEs to their adult discipleship team. So seven and a half people, and only 11%, 3.5 FTEs to their weekend experience team like music and production. Now, the average for these teams, for churches of a comparable size should be more like 12% for discipleship. That’s three less people on the team and about 15% for the weekend that would jump to over five FTE. So for them, they were over and understaffed. They were overstaffed in discipleship, and they were understaffed on the weekend. And by the way, these average staffing allocations that I’m quoting, they came from one of our quarterly Unstuck Church Reports last year.

And I mentioned discipleship in the weekend averages. But let me run through the other ones. And now most of our listeners, you’re probably driving, you’re out for a walk, or if you’re in Minnesota, you’re inside on the treadmill for a walk. So we’ll put this full chart in the show notes so that you can reference it. But for a church like this one that was over a thousand in size for their weekend attendance, here’s those allocations. Senior leadership, 11% worship arts 15% digital and communication 6%. Next gen ministries 22% adult men 12, operations 14. And then there’s this other bucket that’s 11%. So those percentages, by the way, they shift the smaller the churches. And instead of sharing all those numbers, which aren’t going to be meaningful until you can actually look at them, you can find those in the show notes.

Just a little plug here, Sean. If you find these comparative numbers helpful, please participate in our upcoming unstuck church survey. That comes out in April. That’s where these numbers came from from last year’s survey. And I’ll tell you what, the more churches that participate, the better our data’s going to be. And as best as I can tell, these comparative numbers that we put out last year did not exist until Unstuck started gathering the data. So set aside 10, 20 minutes and share your church’s information. It will help the Big C Church and ministry leaders assess their staffing structure. Just like I hope it will be helpful for you today to assess how you’re allocating your staff. So mark your April calendar, make it a priority, and then we’ll share with you the results in May.

Sean:

Absolutely. That’s a good word, Amy. And good encouragement because the more data, the more reliable the data is. Appreciate that. And they can look at, they can find the table for the breakdown of FTEs by church size, FTE allocation by church size in the second quarters report from 2024. So Q2 of 2024. And if you’re subscribed to the learning hub, you can go back and find the information there. Alright, that’s very helpful. Amy, can you share some stories, just kind of illustrate what this feels like on a church staff?

Amy:

What it feels like to be over or understaffed?

Sean:

Yes.

Amy:

I think it really depends on the cause of the over and understaffing, you know, for the church I just referenced that was overstaffed in adult ministries, my analysis was that they were primarily hiring doers of ministry. They had several staff that were dedicated to care and counseling. And these were great people, but they were hiring what should be filled primarily by volunteer leaders and volunteers. Meanwhile, the weekend team operated very scrappy, very lean, and this of course is the team that had to put on 52 events a year and that’s just the weekend service, but add in support for discipleship related events, other churchwide events that team was just out of gas and they didn’t voice this. But my guess is that the workload, the weekend load and the relentless nature of the weekend, my guess is it felt extremely unfair in that, in how they were staffed comparatively.

And then for the church that’s over or understaffed due to over-programming those churches, those teams usually feel like they never have enough volunteers. They wear too many hats. They’re under supported by the communications team, which by the way, is often understaffed and always strapped for resources.

Sean:

Right.

Amy:

But that’s what I experience on teams that are under overstaffed due to over programming. For the church that’s over or understaffed, but not necessarily over programmed. They often feel like they need more staff because they are likely doing most of the ministry. So this is so common in adult and next Gen ministries, when we don’t have those multiplying equipping leaders on the ministry teams, they are so busy, they are so strapped for people resources. And they might be talking about quitting because of burnout. That’s some of the things I hear on those teams. And then lastly for the over understaffed multi-site church. They often feel overwhelmed by the multiple hats they’re wearing. They don’t know who makes what decisions. They’re consumed by way too many meetings and they feel like they never have time to think and work on their ministry. So if any of those relate, those may be symptoms of an over understaffing.

Sean:

I’m sure those are all relatable to churches that are listening today. So what’s the most common solution that churches take when they kind of face this oxymoron?

Amy:

Well, the most common solution is just to rearrange where everyone sits on the bus—that’ll solve it.

Sean:

Yeah. Right, right. That is a classic church move for sure. What’s the better solution then?

Amy:

I’m kidding. As a solution. But I’m not kidding that it’s the most common solution or some version of it. And if you’re listening today, and we’ve hit on some of your pain points right now, instead of dashing ahead and taking action, I actually want to encourage you to slow down. I want you to do some analysis and some planning on what needs to happen next. Making staffing and structure changes on a team is a stressor for your organization. Even good changes cause a lot of stress on a team when we’re talking on the people side. So this is not an area to go fire, ready, aim, we want to take our time.

So my first advice would be start with assessment and perspective. In other words, know your starting point and a common tool out there is the four helpful lists. It was developed, I believe by Tom Paterson. But he just has four simple questions. What’s right, what’s wrong, what’s confused, what’s missing? So start there. And whether you do this by yourself or you assemble your leadership team, start with the question, what’s right, like, what is working? And I want you to do this because most of us as leaders, we love to jump on the problems and that’s where our brains go. I want to encourage you just instead take a few minutes to assess where are we healthy. After all, you don’t want to lose that secret sauce that you have on your team as you make changes. So make note of what’s going well, and then I would ask what’s wrong or what’s not working? And these are the things you know you need to change. And don’t try solving them by the way, as you’re brainstorming the problems, just write them down.

Some common things that I would put in this category are things like, again, what’s wrong, what’s not working? Staff communication. We’re spending too much money on staff. There’s a poor use of our time. There’s inconsistent time off. Whatever it is. Drain your brain and get those things in writing.

The third one, what’s confused or what’s confusing? This decision rights decision-making often falls in this bucket. Like, where are the lines of authority and decision-making? Or for a church, you know, that’s experiencing this and they’re about to go multi-site. How will we lead two sites we don’t know yet. Why aren’t we developing more volunteer leaders? That would be a question. Where are we? Overstaffed and understaffed. It’s all examples of what can be confusing. By the way, confusing ones are often stated as a question because we don’t know the answer.

Sean:

Sure.

Amy:

And then lastly, what’s missing? And again, we are just brainstorming. So it’s not that we’re going to add all these things or these positions, but as you assess your team, what’s missing? And maybe it’s a specific role like a leader over spiritual formation. Maybe it’s a missing ministry, like we don’t have a clear leadership development path or what’s missing performance feedback. We don’t have a system for that. So I would just encourage you all to start there. And then the next priority would be to get or ensure that you have leaders and leadership roles in all the crucial ministry areas. This is a keystone step because people with the leadership gift must be in leadership positions. You are not ready to be making any staffing changes until you have the right leaders around the table in the right roles. So get that leader wrong by putting someone with a lower leadership gifting than the role requires. And you will make little progress on these challenges.

Sean:

That’s really good. Amy, before we move on though, I want to take just a moment and thank  this week’s podcast sponsor: Planning Center. Planning Center is an all-in-one software that helps you organize your ministries and care for your church. It has easy-to-use, efficient platforms of products where you can organize event details, create signup forms, schedule volunteers automatically and much more. You can actually get started for free today at planningcenter.com. That’s planningcenter.com.

So let’s share some immediate kind of next steps that our listeners could take today. We have a few tools available online that can help with the assessment and perspective part on this.

Amy:

These are the ones I’d encourage you to dive into. Number one, the Vital Signs assessment. This will give you clarity on whether you’re overstaffed or understaffed from a budget standpoint. Again, we should be spending about 45 to 55% of our overall budget on staffing. You need to see where you’re at. Another great resource is the Unstuck Teams assessment. This will give you clarity on the health and performance of your team from that macro level before you start making decisions. There are a lot of learnings and I know some of you also use Best Christian Workplace—you can use that one too. But just get your staff’s input through a survey where they don’t have to be named, but they can provide their input so you can get a clear picture on what the team is reflecting back to you as the leader.

And both, like you said, Sean, both are available in the Unstuck Learning Hub. And you can find that on our website at theunstuckgroup.com. And the last thing I’d say is just get some outside eyes on your staffing and your organizational structure. One of the reasons our staffing and structure process is so popular is really just because we can help you look at structure objectively.

I want to share some recent feedback, Sean, that we received from a few churches that we serve. But I just want to be clear to our listeners, my point here is not to pat ourselves on the back, we don’t deserve that these pastors do because they leaned in and they address their staffing and structure pain points. One church in the Atlanta area said, restructuring our team in an effort to maximize gifting and passion while simultaneously preparing for multiplied growth that they’ve been seeing and expect to continue to see in the days ahead. They just said it is not an easy task. Unstuck provided a ton of insight and made this process seamless and pain-free. I would turn to them again in a heartbeat. That does kind of warm my heart that they were satisfied. I like this line too.

Another church said the assessments were valuable, the consulting and feedback were invaluable. We are better equipped as a team and especially as a leadership team to move forward with implementing the mission. And this last one, the biggest takeaways from the overall unstuck process this pastor said, for us came in the staffing structure to give us confidence moving forward that we are doing the right things and heading in the right direction. So just get some outside eyes on your plans, whether it’s unstuck or another trusted organization. You’re going to learn some things that you didn’t think about. And the reason I called out that last one, Sean, is I love how you said it gave us confidence to move forward. Again, this staffing, structure changes is a very stress filled process for an organization. So we want to help give you that confidence that you’re taking the right steps and support you.

Sean:

That is so good to hear. It’s encouraging, but again, kudos to those pastors and churches. For taking the needed steps they had to. In order to address those pain points. Alright. Amy, before we wrap up today, any final thoughts from you?

Amy:

If you’re feeling the tensions we talk through today about being over and understaffed, I just want you to know that this is normal. Your team is normal. This is a headline tension for many, many churches right now. And I also want to tell you that this topic of being over understaffed today is just one part in a series. So please don’t jump into any major restructure out of one podcast. Instead, just take one of those objective next steps, like vital signs or the unstuck teams assessment, get some objective data on your current reality. I really want you to have clarity around the real problem and the priority problems that need to be addressed. And also, with our show notes, I’m going to also include a link to a free resource on restructuring your team if that’s something you’re sensing that will help take the conversation down the road a little bit further.

Sean:

That’s good. Well, the reason that we do this is people problems are uniquely challenging on a ministry staff team and leading your people through them. Like you said, Amy, it’s hard. But we do want to help take the pressure off of that and solving church staffing challenges. It’s high stakes, but you can lead through it with confidence and come out stronger on the other side. So we’d love to help you position your team and to do ministry at your highest potential. You can learn more about our staffing and structure review process at theunstuckgroup.com. And next week we’re back with part two of this series. So until then, we hope you have a great week.

Amy Anderson -

Amy has served on the lead team at The Unstuck Group since 2016, including eight years as the Director of Consulting. During this time she has served over 150 churches, helping them design ministry, staffing & multisite strategies that aligns and fuels their mission. Prior to joining the Unstuck team, Amy served as the Executive Director of Weekend Services at Eagle Brook Church in the Twin Cities, helping the church grow from one location of 3,000 to six locations with over 20,000 gathering each weekend. Her husband is the Lead Pastor at Crossroads Church in Woodbury, MN.

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