Leadership Network recently published an article by yours truly on the topic of staffing the post-pandemic church with volunteer leaders. Here’s an excerpt:
I think the church has gotten staffing all wrong.
Over the past 50 years, the staffing approach for most churches in America has slowly, but dramatically drifted away from a biblical model. To be fair, the Bible doesn’t contain a lot of prescriptive commands about how to organize a church, but there are plenty of transferrable principles that go largely ignored when the pressure is on to bring on the next youth pastor or tech director.
When it’s time to hire, the pastor, board, or search committee often begin with the tried-and-true strategies of modern business recruitment. It starts with an email to the pastor’s personal network, maybe a ping out to the denominational headquarters with a job description and a desperate plea, “we’re in need of a worship leader, pronto!” If that doesn’t work, the search might move to recruitment websites – Indeed.com, churchstaffing.com, churchjobs.com, I’mdyingoverhere.com, “we’re looking for a skillset and hoping for a fit.” Churches with a more robust budget can default to hiring a talent search agency who will hopefully convince Sally-the-video-gal to move her family from the Bible Belt to the Snow Belt to pursue God’s sacrificial calling on her life.
And why are we hiring in the first place? Well… so that more ministry can happen, obviously! The answer to church momentum problems is always to hire more staff. In big churches, we need to keep the machine going. Every hole needs to be plugged and every role filled. In small churches, we can’t take the next step until we make that next hire. The pastor is already overwhelmed, and we’re paralyzed until we can bring in the perfect associate.
But maybe there’s a better way…
If you’d like to read the full article, you can do so by clicking here.
