Minimizing the Gap Between Ineffective and Fruitful Ministry

Ever wondered why so many church staff call it quits before they hit the five-year mark? The journey toward a fruitful ministry is fraught with challenges, and I, Todd Rhodes, along with my co-founder Matt, am on a mission to uncover the secret sauce for longevity in church service. Drawing from our combined experiences with churchstaffing.com and Chemistry Staffing, we get to the heart of the issue, discussing the importance of the five-year milestone for ministry effectiveness and the concerning trend of the average three-and-a-half-year tenure.

This episode isn't just about identifying problems; it's about providing solutions. We share our philosophy that the right leaders in the right churches can work wonders and discuss how upfront assessments can play a pivotal role in ensuring a match made in heaven. Whether you're a pastor relishing the rewards of long-term ministry, or a leader contemplating your next move, this discussion is packed with insights and strategies to help church staff and leaders avoid the pitfalls of a premature exit and instead, pave the way for lasting impact and transformation within their ministries. Join us as we navigate these waters, aiming to bridge the gap between a good fit and a great future in church leadership.

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

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Is Your Church Hiring?
If your church is searching for a new staff member, reach out to Todd for a conversation on how he might be able to help.

Are You Looking for a New Ministry Role?
If you are open to a new church role in the next few months, add your free resume and profile at ChemistryStaffing.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. Hope you had a great weekend and hope you're getting your week started on this Monday in a great way, if you are in fact listening on a Monday. If not, hope you're having a great way if you are in fact listening on a Monday. If not, hope you're having a great day, whatever day it is. Today we're going to be talking about how to minimize the gap between ineffective and fruitful ministry, and many of you who know me or may have followed me for the past decade who am I fooling here the last 20 or 30 years know that I've been pretty passionate about the church, and I'm equally passionate about the people that have been called and have dedicated their lives to serving vocationally through the church, and when I started churchstaffingcom man, that was way back in 2000, like 1999, I believe. The internet was a brand new way to help churches and individuals make a connection, and a lot has changed in the past almost 25 years, including the ways that churches and staff members connect. But something's been bothering me the past few years, and recent surveys have shown that the best, most fruitful years in ministry usually actually start after you've been at a church for five years. Now that sounds reasonable. You get past the honeymoon period, you work through maybe some tough years, but by the five-year mark you've usually got enough change in your pocket to be able to have people's respect and trust and be able to make changes, you're able to cultivate relationships, and so five years makes sense to me. It has for quite a while. But at the same time there's other surveys that say that church staff stay at their positions on average about three and a half years. So there's a gap there between really needing probably about five years not every time, but a lot of times five years to really start to be running on all cylinders in your church job. And yet a lot of pastors leave and church leaders leave three and a half years in, so they never make it to that sweet spot. There's a huge gap between when a lot of people are moving on from their church and the time that they, when the really cool, extremely fruitful period of ministry begins, and the honest fact is that many people leave too early and that bothers me.

Speaker 1: 2:40

I hear all the horror stories of bad fit and unmet expectations and bait and switch, and when Matt and I started chemistry staffing back about seven years ago, we just thought there has to be a better way. So we put our heads together, came up with what we thought at the time was a better solution, a way to connect churches and staff members that hopefully would be better and healthier and create long-term fits, which we at Chemistry Staffing describe a long-term fit as five years or more. We want to help a church and a candidate or a staff person get to that five-year mark where they can really start to enjoy all the benefits that a long-term ministry has to offer. So when the right leaders this goes back to what we thought when we started chemistry back these almost seven years ago here's our premises. When the right leaders are at the right churches, unbelievable things can happen. Families can flourish, churches can thrive, lives are changed.

Speaker 1: 3:39

What does this mean for you? I don't know where you are today. Maybe you've been. Maybe you're past that five year mark and you're experiencing some really fruitful ministry. Well, good for you. That's awesome. That's where we all strive and hope to be. Maybe you've never made it five years. Maybe you're 18 months in and you're already looking to move somewhere else or move on because it's just not a good fit. Maybe you're three and a half years in, maybe your last three churches. You've never quite made it. You'd hope to, but for one reason or another you've never quite made it to being there for that period of time where you can really experience great long-term ministry. How do you bridge this gap?

Speaker 1: 4:26

At Chemistry, what Matt and I have decided would be a first step in that is we do assessments on all of our candidates and all of our churches on the very front end. We think that assessments are really helpful for churches and candidates, but many times churches wait too long to do assessments. They fall in love with somebody. Then they bring them on site and then here, take this assessment and at that point it's too late because you already love the candidate, the candidate already loves you and we've seen this happen a lot. You'll overlook things that come back on a really well-designed assessment. You'll just overlook it because you really like the person. So here's been our solution and we've been doing this for about seven years now and it really, I think, does make a huge difference in helping us initially and the church and the candidate identify the potential for healthy long-term fit.

Speaker 1: 5:22

And this, I promise this is not a sales podcast. I'm not trying to get you to give you, to give me any business or anything, but I really feel strongly about this and we talked about this a little bit last week on one of the episodes about the four things that there just absolutely has to be, and these are the things that we do the assessments on there needs to be a theological fit, there needs to be a church culture and DNA fit, there needs to be a personality fit and there needs to be skills and experience fit. All four of those have to be in place if you want to get to that healthy, long-term five plus year place. So here's how you can take advantage of this and again, I'm not meaning this to be salesy at all, but if you're a candidate and you're looking at transitioning to a different church or a different role, go over to chemistrystaffingcom, submit your profile to us. It's absolutely free, the assessments are free and what we'll try to do is we'll try and match you up with one of the churches that we're working with. We're currently working with about, I think, 65 churches, 65 searches that we're doing right now. We'll try and match you up with a church that meets your theological stance, that meets your church culture and DNA, that meets your personality, that has a likelihood of success when it comes to skills and abilities. So if you're a candidate, absolutely free charge Go over to chemistrystaffingcom, submit your profile.

Speaker 1: 6:48

If you're a church and you'd like to have a little bit of help with your next hire, I would love to be able to have a conversation with you and work with you in the future. If that makes sense, you can reach out to me at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom and I'd love to have an initial call with you. But by assessing both candidates and churches for long-term health on the very front end of the search, we think both churches and candidates are starting to make more effective hires and find longer-term candidates and longer-term staff members for their kingdom work. And ultimately, as we said, if you as a church can find staff members that will be there in five years, that is a great asset for your church.

Speaker 1: 7:33

If you are a candidate or you're in transition and you're looking for a church, you really want to find some place where you can settle in with some roots and really find a place that you can serve for long term. So if there's any way that we can help. Any questions that you have, you can always reach out to me at podcast, at chemistry staffing podcast at chemistry staffing dot com. Hope you'll join us again here tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to be talking about church leaders who shade the truth. Uh-oh, this will be interesting. Join us here again tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.