It's Possible That People Just Aren't Listening to You That Much Anymore

Have you ever felt like your message just isn't landing with the energy and impact it once did? You're not alone. As a church leader in these rapidly changing times, it can be disheartening to sense our words getting lost in the digital noise and societal shifts. That's exactly what we're tackling in this episode with Todd Rhodes of chemistrystaffing.com. Todd doesn't shy away from the frustrations many pastors face, but he also shines a light on the path forward—adapting our communication strategies to the evolving landscape to make every word resonate.

This is more than just commiseration; it's about actionable change. Inspired by marketing guru Seth Godin, we explore how to speak with clarity, brevity, and genuine care to truly connect with our audience. From rethinking the traditional sermon to retooling our social media tactics, we lay out practical tips to help you cut through the clutter and reach your congregation where they're at. It's a must-listen for any church leader striving to communicate effectively in this new era, filled with encouragement and strategies to ensure your message doesn't just speak—but is heard.

Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

It's possible that people just aren't listening to you that much anymore, and that can be frustrating. Let's talk about that today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes and I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. Okay, let's unpack this. Let's talk about this. The Church Leader in many cases, people just aren't listening as closely to us as Church Leaders as they have in the past. As I said, that can be extremely frustrating and I think it's entirely fair to say that if you're communicating the exact same way that you were 10 years ago, the impact of your communication is not nearly as effective as it used to be. Let me even hone down a little bit on that. If you're communicating the way that you were four years ago, before the big event that we went through four years ago, if you're communicating the same way that you were prior to the pandemic, chances are people are listening less. It's entirely possible. It makes sense that people just aren't listening as closely to you anymore. When I read the thoughts of Seth Godin, who wrote a blog post talking about this whole thing people don't listen to you as much as they used to I just felt like he was reading my mind and probably the mind of thousands of pastors. It's so frustrating. I hear pastors talk about it all the time irregular church attendance, people that haven't come back after COVID, all the clutter on social media, the increase in media options. There's cultural shifts that have made the church and its leadership less impactful and, honestly, less relevant. These all contribute to people just not listening or seeming to even care as much as they did a decade ago, as much as they did four or five years ago. I think it's extremely fair to say that we just need to change the way that we communicate if we want to have real impact with our communications. That's a breath of fresh air, todd. Thanks so much. That's really encouraging, isn't it? So what do we do? What do we do? Fortunately, seth Godin also gives some advice and he says perhaps there's an alternative. Maybe, instead of insisting that people listen more closely, maybe we could speak more clearly, ouch. In other words, rather than blaming the participant, which actually doesn't change anything, maybe we should try to adjust ourselves. One way to do that is to speak more clearly, add, more concisely, more accurately and more caring toward those we're trying to communicate with. I'm not sure that there's any one champion in the church that is doing this really well, maybe at least. Yet In many ways we've changed just about everything in our churches in the past decade, and particularly boy, in the last four or five years, but we continue to communicate our message almost in exactly the same way. If we want people to listen, we must speak clearly and concisely, and differently. We need to speak in different settings. We need to adjust. Maybe the 45 or 50 minute message isn't the best way to communicate. Maybe what you were doing on social media four or five years ago is not the same way that you need to communicate as well. If you go back to Seth Godin's initial statement, it's entirely possible that people just aren't listening that closely to you anymore. I think it's true. As you unpack that today, I just want to leave you with that thought, because I know that lots of church leaders are frustrated. It seems like you're running 90 miles an hour and sometimes it just seems like nobody's listening and that you just have a lot more troubles than what you used to.

Speaker 1: 4:13

The task today is evaluate how you're communicating. Are you doing it exactly the same way and getting less results? Maybe you need to figure out ways, and I can't tell you what those ways are. You have to figure this out. Maybe you need to go in, like we talked about a couple weeks ago, deep work. Maybe you need to do some deep work and figure out how can I communicate better, how can I communicate more effectively and more clearly? Can you do it? How can you do it? That's the challenge for today. I hope this has been helpful to you. Take some time today, really think about what can I do this week to communicate more effectively, more clearly, more concisely? How can I help people to understand what I'm saying and to listen?