Developing an Effective Senior Leadership Team
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As we’ve learned in the last decade or so, a big personality might draw a weekend crowd, but it takes a team to create healthy strategies and systems that foster sustained growth and opportunities for life change.
In my experience, the people who hold the senior leadership positions of your church are the only chance your church has to achieve the vision and mission God designed your church to accomplish at this moment in time. You may think this position to be too strong. But my concern is that we aren’t thinking deeply enough about the people who hold the most influential positions within the life of a church.
With so much depending on the senior leadership team, I think it’s worth taking some time to have a conversation around how to build a healthy leadership team that will take the lid off your church. This new series is designed to help you do just that.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A SENIOR LEADERSHIP TEAM
If you feel stuck in your ministry, you might want to stop looking at your frontline staff, volunteers, and general membership, and spend a little more time evaluating the health of your senior leadership team.
In this episode, Amy and I will dive into the importance of developing a healthy and effective senior leadership team on your church staff. We’ll discuss:
- How Jesus modeled team-based ministry
- The most important decision you’ll make as a leader
- Where to find your senior leadership team
This Episode Is Sponsored by Ministry Brands:
You may think you know Ministry Brands, the parent company of industry-leading brands such as ShelbyNext, FellowshipOne, and easyTithe. But wait until you hear about their brand new flagship solution, Ministry Brands Amplify: a cutting-edge all-in-one Church Ops solution helping empower healthy churches, connect, engage, and grow their Ministry while boosting member engagement, allowing church staff and volunteers to focus on their calling.
Empower your Ministry today with this all-in-one Giving, People, Streaming, App Builder, and Website solution. Learn more at ministrybrands.com/unstuckgroup.
Other Episodes in This Series:
- How to Choose Your Senior Leadership Team – Episode 317
- 7 Roles Your Senior Leadership Team Can’t Delegate – Episode 318
- Navigating Changes on Your Senior Leadership Team – Episode 319
Leader Conversation Guide
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Transcript
Sean (00:02):
Welcome to The Unstuck Church Podcast, where each week we are exploring what it means to be an unstuck church. More than anyone else, Jesus understood that he needed the right people around him to spread the gospel and impact the future church for generations to come. He carefully selected the right people, invested in them and developed a team that would eventually change the world. On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy begin a new series on church senior leadership teams and how you, too, can take the lid off of your church. If you’re new to The Unstuck Church Podcast, we invite you to go over to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast and subscribe to get the episode show notes. When you do, you’ll get an email each week with our Leader Conversation Guide, access to our podcast resource archive and some bonus resources you won’t get anywhere else. Again, that’s theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Now, before this week’s conversation, here’s a word from Tony.
Tony (00:58):
You may think you know Ministry Brands, the parent company of industry-leading brands such as Shelby Next, Fellowship One and easyTithe. But wait until you hear about their brand-new flagship solution. It’s called Ministry Brands Amplified, and it’s a cutting-edge, all-in-one church ops solution, which is helping empower healthy churches to connect, engage and grow their ministry while boosting member engagement. And that’s allowing church staff and volunteers to really focus on their calling. Empower your ministry today with this all-in-one giving, people, streaming, app builder and website solution. Learn more at ministrybrands.com/unstuckgroup.
Amy (01:50):
Well, welcome back to our listeners, and good to see you, Tony. You actually got to go to your kinda home ground.
Tony (01:56):
That’s true.
Amy (01:56):
Is that the term home ground?
Tony (01:57):
Well, I don’t know if it is or not, but I was up in Ohio and got to visit some family but also work with some great churches, some great pastors at a gathering, just kind of talking about trends that we’re experiencing as churches these days. And then, specifically, they wanted to hear about how to cast a new vision, set new direction, and which is a big topic we’re hearing from a lot of churches these days that are looking for that.
Amy (02:23):
Yep.
Tony (02:23):
And then, specifically, talking about volunteer engagement and leadership development and some of those topics, which we’ve actually talked a little bit about that even in recent weeks on the podcast.
Amy (02:34):
Yeah, yeah.
Tony (02:34):
But it was, it was fun to engage those conversations with some great churches, pastors, church leaders over these last couple of days.
Amy (02:42):
You mean you’d rather talk to a bunch of church leaders than just look at my face on the Zoom screen while we record it? And I got the word. It’s stomping ground. That’s what it was.
Tony (02:52):
There we go.
Amy (02:53):
For all the people who’ve been yelling at the radio what that word was, thanks for sending me those, those cues. Well, today, Tony, I’m excited. We’re kicking off a new series that’s all about developing an effective senior leadership team. And this is one area that we work with churches on quite frequently, but I think it’s actually been quite a while since we addressed this topic in our content. So maybe just kick this off and explain why we’re addressing this topic.
Tony (03:19):
Well, Amy, as we’ve learned in this last decade or so, a big personality might draw a weekend crowd, but it takes a team to create healthy strategies and healthy systems that will foster sustained growth and opportunities for life change. And in my experience, the people who hold the senior leadership positions of your church, they really are the only chance your church has to achieve the vision and mission God designed your church to accomplish at this moment in time. And you may think that this position might be too strong, that that might be an overstatement, but my concern is that we aren’t thinking deeply enough about the people who hold the most influential positions within the life of the church. And with so much depending on the senior leadership team, I think it’s worth taking some time, and we’re gonna do that over the next few weeks, to have a conversation around how to build a healthy leadership team that will take the lid off your church. And if you feel stuck in your ministry, you may wanna stop looking at your frontline staff, your volunteers and your general membership, and instead spend a little bit more time evaluating the health of your senior leadership team. And that’s what this series is designed to help you do.
Amy (04:33):
Yeah. And a lot of the content we’ll be covering is based on an ebook that you wrote about senior leadership teams called Take the Lid Off Your Church. And pastor Craig Groeschel actually wrote the forward to that ebook. And I thought I’d take a minute to share what Pastor Craig had to say about this topic because, you know, hey, if our listeners don’t listen, listen to us, maybe they’ll listen to Craig. But here, here’s what he said. He said, “More than anyone else, Jesus understood that he needed the right people around him to spread the gospel and to impact the future church for generations to come. He carefully selected the right people, invested in them sacrificially and developed a team that would eventually change the world. Jesus’ model of leadership must be duplicated in every form of organizational leadership, especially within the church. While every team within a church is important, it’s critical that healthy teamwork is modeled by the team at the top. When your church isn’t operating at optimal levels or a culture shift is needed, too often the attention is addressed by tweaking programs, ministry strategies or events when the real action needs to be given to the senior leadership team. So as Life.Church has grown, our senior leadership team has had to pivot at many points along the way. These changes were never easy but always necessary. And I’m completely convinced that if we hadn’t faced our internal organizational lids and made some intentional changes to the who, what and how we approached our senior leadership team, we would not be the church today.”
Tony (05:59):
Wow. Maybe we should just stop this podcast series right there because that was phenomenal. Good job, Craig Groeschel.
Amy (06:07):
Thank you, Craig. All right, well, we’ll start off our conversation today, Tony, by having you first explain a little bit about what we mean when we say senior leadership team. We use that term all the time. We know what it is, but I wanna make sure we have clarity about what we’re talking about and also what we’re not talking about. So let’s start there.
Tony (06:26):
Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So, in our work consulting with churches, we’re often involved in conversations about shaping and empowering the team at the top of a church’s organization. And I’ve seen this team called several different names. It might be the senior management team, the executive team or the directional leadership team. But for this conversation, we’re going to refer to that team as the senior leadership team. And this is the team of leaders that usually includes the senior or lead pastor and then a group of leaders that oversees the day-to-day operations of the church. In some instances, the church’s governance also recognizes this group as the elders. And scripture identifies a number of specific responsibilities of elders in the church. Every church needs elders, but that’s not what we’re talking about in this series. Instead, I want to focus on the role specifically of the senior leadership team. And that may or may not also be the elder team in your church. Additionally, I know some churches have a board of overseers that includes people from outside the church. Again, that’s not the team I’m referring to when I’m talking about the senior leadership team. An outside board will never have enough knowledge of the local church to provide the leadership and influence required to oversee day-to-day ministry. And as a side note, I’m honestly not a big fan of outside boards of overseers. I’ve seen too many situations where senior pastors lack support, and they lack accountability because they don’t have the leaders directly involved in their ministry and in their life. And that’s a maybe a topic for another episode, Amy, but that kind of gives you a sense of where I’m coming from when it comes to board oversight—really wanna see that local and not from outside the, outside the church.
Amy (08:23):
Right. Yep. Got that. All right, well, hopefully that clears it up. And it’s also pretty clear, Tony, that you believe this team is necessary for most, if not all, churches. Can you explain why? Because I’m guessing a lot of leaders listening might assume that this only pertains to bigger churches.
Tony (08:37):
Yeah, you’re right, Amy. If you’re a senior pastor listening to this and especially a senior pastor of a large church, well, this team probably already exists for you. And if your church doesn’t have one and you’re a large church, it’s never too early to begin developing your senior leadership team. But the primary reason I believe every church needs a senior leadership team is because Jesus modeled team-based ministry from the very beginning. Jesus hand-selected his 12 disciples. Then he invested even more in his relationships with Peter, James and John. And then Jesus also routinely sent out his disciples and teams. So I firmly believe God designed ministry to be done in teams and primarily because that’s how Jesus modeled it. But to address the matter of church size, yes, as the church grows, this team also needs to change. Early on in small churches, it’s common for everyone on paid staff to serve on the leadership team, but at some point, that becomes impractical.
Amy (09:41):
Mm-hmm.
Tony (09:41):
You’ll eventually have too many people sitting at the table if you just continue to add every staff person to this team. So once you have more than seven or eight people on this team, it becomes difficult for everyone to be fully engaged in the conversation and in the decision-making that’s necessary to move the church’s mission forward.
Amy (10:01):
Yeah, I like that you mentioned that it needs to change as the church grows. You know, over my 13 years on our leadership team that saw growth from 2,000 to over 20,000 people attending, our team shifted many times throughout that journey. And it needed to; you know, growth begets new structure. And new structure often requires a shift in how we design the leadership team. Sometimes, people move off the team; sometimes, we add to it. But each shift is really an opportunity to assess the strengths and diversity of the team for the next run. So, and this kind of strikes me as a timely conversation coming out of our series on Empowering Next Generation Leaders. Was, was that on purpose, Tony?
Tony (10:41):
Well, we didn’t totally intend to time it that way, but you’re right, Amy. It, it just makes sense to connect these two big-picture conversations together because if we wanna build a high-impact senior leadership team, leaders need to begin identifying and mentoring other leaders from the very early stages. That may mean that you’re mentoring young people with leadership capacity who aren’t currently ready to lead, and then, over time, as your church grows and you continue to mentor and raise up leaders, you’ll begin to select people who have demonstrated spiritual maturity and leadership capacity to help lead the day-to-day ministries of the church. So, as the church grows, it will also require different leaders with more leadership capacity to serve on your senior leadership team. And the church will always need leaders with different levels of leadership capacity and certainly people who have different gifts other than leadership. But these people will have a bigger ministry impact and ultimately be more fulfilled if their ministry role better matches their gifts. And that means many people in our churches, including those we pay as pastors or directors, should not be on the senior leadership team. So take this advice: Do not settle for people who are available but not spiritually mature, and do not settle for people who will give you time but do not have the leadership gift. The capacity of this team will determine the potential impact of your ministry. Let me say that again. The capacity of this team will determine the potential impact of your ministry. If it’s just you and no one else, your impact will be limited. But if, if it’s just you and a group of people who aren’t fully qualified to lead, your impact will certainly be limited.
Amy (12:33):
Yeah. We like to say your team is the greatest asset you have towards accomplishing your vision. So I would agree; don’t settle in any of your staffing roles but definitely not when it comes to your senior leadership team. And, Tony, I feel like I can hear our listeners asking, “That sounds great, Tony, but where can I find these leaders in my church?” And I say that because I think I hear that question with almost every church that I work with. Where do we find these leaders?
Tony (12:57):
Absolutely, Amy. And I would go as far as to say that the decision about who will be on your senior leader leadership team is probably the biggest determining factor of health and success for your church. And so this decision is much bigger than those about discipleship strategies or series planning or building new buildings or budgeting. Determining who is on your senior leadership team will shape every other decision that you make. So, to answer your question about where those leaders are hiding, I’m still a big believer in identifying people from within the church, either current staff or current lay leaders, whenever that’s possible. They’re more likely to embrace the mission, the vision, the values, the strategy that your church embraces, and you’ll have a better sense of how they’ll fit the chemistry of your existing team. You’ll also have a better awareness of their skills and capacity. And in theory, your leadership development strategy has been working, and you’re already raising up leaders from inside your organization. Again, if, if you’re not sure how to develop new leaders and younger leaders, go back and listen to the series that we just wrapped up. The reality, though, is that sometimes inside hires just, they don’t work out. Sometimes, it’s because there hasn’t been enough time or enough forethought to truly develop those leaders. Sometimes, you need a leader from outside the organization to help you make a, a strategic or cultural shift. Sometimes, you need an outsider with a specialized skill or experience or leadership capacity. So, for those churches who need to look outside their organization, I recommend you partner with an agency like Vanderbloomen or Slingshot Group or somebody that does this on a regular basis to assist you with that hiring process.
Amy (14:53):
Yeah, for sure, Tony. You know, you and I have both seen firsthand how the right person, right, can really propel a church forward. And we’ve also seen how the wrong person, though may be talented and gifted by God, can, can actually disrupt culture and growth. And for all those reasons you just mentioned, it’s critical that churches understand who needs to hold the senior leadership positions in their church. But because of this, although it’s hard, I think it’s important, too, to mention that you really should go slow in the hiring process when you’re hiring for these roles, particularly right for people on your senior leadership team. There needs to be multiple interviews with many different people in different settings. You need to give careful consideration to their past success, their past failure because that’s the best predictor for their future performance. And you need to have conversations with people who know them well. You know, the first book I read when I went into ministry, Tony, was your book, Simply Strategic Stuff, which is kind of funny that I’m serving with you now. But I remember one of the chapters was Hire Slow. You know, it was like, hire slow, fire fast. I probably changed that, but it’s, you know, slow beginnings and fast endings. So, anyways, praying for God’s wisdom throughout that whole slow process is critical, too.
Tony (16:07):
I agree, Amy, and these decisions about who should be on your senior leadership team will likely be the most important decisions you make in ministry. So be diligent, lean on God and follow his direction when it comes to selecting the right people for this specific role.
Amy (16:24):
Well, Tony, I know we’re just scratching the surface. It’s just beginning this series, but I’m really glad we brought this topic back to the podcast. It’s a timely conversation, I think, for churches right now, and we have lots more we’re going to get into throughout this series. But any final thoughts as we wrap up today’s conversation?
Tony (16:41):
In the following episodes of this series, Amy, we’re going to dive deeper into more specifics around how to identify who should be on your senior leader leadership team and whether those leaders already exist in your organization or if you need to look elsewhere. We also want to obviously hit the role of the senior leadership team and a lot more. But for this week, if you hear nothing else, hear this. The capacity of this senior leadership team will determine the potential impact of your ministry. And if your church does not currently have an effective senior leadership team in place, the time to start changing that is right now.
Sean (17:21):
Well, thanks for joining us on this week’s podcast. At The Unstuck Group, our goal is to help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them to align their vision, strategy, team and action. In everything we do, our priority is to help churches help people meet and follow Jesus. If there’s any way we can serve you and your church, reach out to us today at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week, we’re back with another brand new episode. So until then, have a great week.
