- Published on
The Hard Transition Staff Must Make for Their Church to Grow
- Authors
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- Name
- Brandon Kelley
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The church I get to serve at (The Crossing) has been experiencing year over year growth from the beginning. In the last four years, we have more than doubled. This has created many challenges because a church of 300 is quite different than a church of 600+ (in the summer).
We’ve had to reinvent ourselves about every two years. We’ve had to refocus, hire new staff and create processes/workflows. We are in the midst of another one of these reinvention periods. Because of our situation (recently moving into our first permanent campus), we are expecting to see an explosion of attendance in the fall and moving into next spring. We’re excited to see what God does. But we also know we have work to do as a pastoral staff. Here’s what we’re focused on:
A Necessary but Difficult Transition Pastoral Staff Must Make to See the Church Grow
In order to be good stewards of the church body God has allowed us to serve, we as a pastoral staff are beginning to make a transition to becoming very intentionally focused on the recruitment and development of those who call The Crossing home. Now, recruitment and leadership development are buzz words in ministry. We’ve all read countless articles on them. We’ve probably even gone to a conference or a workshop or even a webinar on the topics. We’re familiar with the words. But I don’t know about you, but it has always felt to me that we in the church are really good at talking about the topics, we’re just not really good at actually doing them. And I think I know why. We love doing the work of ministry. That’s why we do what we do. We love to be servants in God’s church. And that’s great and we should. But it’s also why we aren’t getting the people in our church equipped and developed to be the servants God has called them to be. After all, our purpose is to equip the saints for works of service (Ephesians 4). When we don’t do that, when we don’t value it enough to prioritize it, we are failing to live out our purpose as ministers of the gospel.A Mindset Pivot
From the time I came on staff at The Crossing to now, we have been flying a plane we are still building. It’s been adventurous, hectic and messy. But we can’t continue to operate in this way. We’re going to keep our heartbeat and passion. But in doing so, we’re going to be driven to make a mindset pivot—one that is vital to us keeping and spreading that heartbeat and that passion. Here’s what our mindset pivot looks like practically:- Instead of settling to bring on team members who are willing to step into a role, we’re working toward bringing on team members who are wired for the role they are stepping into.
- Instead of making sure we are completing our responsibilities every week, we’re working toward including more and more people in the process toward completion.
- Rather than prioritizing building task completers, we’re working toward equipping people to become leaders.
- Rather than simply sending emails to team members, we’re working toward investing in face-to-face and high impact communications (like hand-written notes).