Have you ever stood at a crossroads, wondering which path to take for a future you can't yet see? That's exactly where we found ourselves at New Hope, amidst a leadership transition that demanded deep reflection and clarity. Join me, Todd Rhoades, as I unpack the transformative experience of defining our church's identity during this challenging time. We'll explore how we embraced a 'both-and' philosophy, capturing the essence of being both attractional and missional. This approach helped us create an invigorating space for all—welcoming non-believers while providing rich soil for believers to grow. Our journey through crafting a ministry statement and reshaping worship services and small groups reveals a blueprint for churches seeking to navigate leadership changes without losing their core.
Next week marks a pivotal moment for our church with the launch of the Healthy Church Staff Assessment for 2024. I'm thrilled to guide you through this profound evaluation of our church teams' well-being, promising a clear-eyed look at the heartbeat of our community. The insights gleaned from this process will set the stage for learning and growth, propelling us toward a more vibrant and resilient church body. Make sure to catch next week's episode for all the details on how you can participate in this opportunity for transformation and renewal. Whether you're deeply invested in church leadership or simply have a heart for seeing your church community flourish, this assessment is a key step toward fostering a thriving environment for all members.
Have you ever stood at a crossroads, wondering which path to take for a future you can't yet see? That's exactly where we found ourselves at New Hope, amidst a leadership transition that demanded deep reflection and clarity. Join me, Todd Rhoades, as I unpack the transformative experience of defining our church's identity during this challenging time. We'll explore how we embraced a 'both-and' philosophy, capturing the essence of being both attractional and missional. This approach helped us create an invigorating space for all—welcoming non-believers while providing rich soil for believers to grow. Our journey through crafting a ministry statement and reshaping worship services and small groups reveals a blueprint for churches seeking to navigate leadership changes without losing their core.
Next week marks a pivotal moment for our church with the launch of the Healthy Church Staff Assessment for 2024. I'm thrilled to guide you through this profound evaluation of our church teams' well-being, promising a clear-eyed look at the heartbeat of our community. The insights gleaned from this process will set the stage for learning and growth, propelling us toward a more vibrant and resilient church body. Make sure to catch next week's episode for all the details on how you can participate in this opportunity for transformation and renewal. Whether you're deeply invested in church leadership or simply have a heart for seeing your church community flourish, this assessment is a key step toward fostering a thriving environment for all members.
Hi there, thanks for joining me for this edition of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. Today we want to talk about what I call the both and church and really defining who you are. And a few years ago, the church that I served as an elder was in the middle of a lead pastor transition and, rather than speeding directly to the pastor search, we decided that this was a great opportunity to explore who we were as a church and where we wanted to go during this next chapter of ministry. Let me pause there as we just get started here, but I think whenever there's any kind of a staff change at your church, whether it's at the senior leadership level or even in a second chair position, it's a great opportunity. I wish more churches would do this to take some time, before you go posting that job posting and job opening anywhere, to really do some reflection and determining who you are as a church and where you want to go and what this new position is going to bring to your church and to your ministry. But anyway, that's a side note, don't get me started.
Speaker 1:
We sat around the table. We all shared our dreams for the future, our disappointments from the past, the reality of the present, and what we decided was that we were going to put on paper our ministry at least going to try to put on paper our ministry direction and philosophy of ministry, and our thought was that it would be helpful to us as leaders but also insightful for our next lead pastor, who we didn't know who he was We'd never met him. So today I thought I'd share with you some of what we came up with. We grabbed bits and pieces from other churches here and there, but mostly we were able to put down in writing kind of the DNA of the ministry philosophy of our unique local church. And we're a diverse community of people. Everybody's on their own spiritual journey, but while some have known Jesus for decades still, others were just beginning to investigate the claims of Christ for the very first time. So I'm going to share with you some of the things that we said in our philosophy of ministry statement, and this is really what we led with besides our job description. We made sure that any person that was interested in the lead pastor role took an opportunity and some time to really read about what we were all about. So this is what we said.
Speaker 1:
And we said we normally don't care for buzzwords or stereotypes and we find it important from an organizational standpoint that we wanted to present a clear vision for the style of ministry and the type of church that we wanted to strive to be. And while the ministry perspective is somewhat wide in scope, it does provide a framework and some tangible direction to the church and the church we want to become in the future. This is the way we put it. The church's name was New Hope and we said New Hope is not an either-or church. We're actually a both and church, and this is how we described it. We said we consider ourselves to be both attractional and missional. Again, we don't like buzzwords, but those are the buzzwords that we were passing around at the time. Everybody knew what those meant and we think that the church should be for believers and non-believers. We believe that we should be all about evangelization and discipleship and we think that worship should be celebratory and reflective. We believe that messages should be biblical and relevant and we affirm that we should be a come and see and a go and be church. We fully commit to being a church inside and outside of the church walls. We feel it's our responsibility to mobilize our people for the service in the church and in the community. So you responsibility to mobilize our people for the service in the church and in the community. So you can see there, just when we described our church's stance, it's not either or it's both, and it's attractional and missional. It's evangelism and discipleship, it's biblical messages and relevant messages. So that's how we set this out and for anybody that wants a copy of this, I can send it to you. I'll give you instructions at the end of the podcast.
Speaker 1:
But then we went on and talked a little bit about our worship services. We said our worship services are attractional, and by that we mean that we want people in our community to come and see what Jesus is up to. And we desire our church family to invest in their friends and invite them to our weekend gathering as part of their spiritual search. Family to invest in their friends and invite them to our weekend gathering as part of their spiritual search. And in doing so we promise our church to present Jesus and the gospel in a way that will resonate with these people. Our music style is something that they'll enjoy. Our worship will be compelling and inviting to the non-believer. Our messages will be relevant to both mature believers and those starting their spiritual journey. Each weekend will inspire and motivate people to take their next step, whatever that looks like for them, in order to become a more mature follower of Jesus.
Speaker 1:
So we broke down the attractional piece and then we went on to a little bit more of the missional piece and we said at the same time again both and not either or both and at the same. We consider our church to be missional. We want our church not to just come and see, but also to go and be, and that means that we put a high value on disciple-making and mentoring in every level of ministry. And our end goal is to develop true Christian leaders in our home and in our church and in our community and to increasingly make mature believers and followers of Jesus. And we think small groups and missional groups play a crucial role in that development. We want to raise up an army of people who are able to serve Jesus both inside and outside the church walls.
Speaker 1:
We continued on. We said we think that the church in Acts 2 is both attractional and missional, and New Hope will strive to keep a balance of both, knowing that without the missional aspects of our ministry, we would have the tendency to become a weekend show without substance and without the attractional aspects of our ministry. We would miss out on an important opportunity and mandate we have as a church to share the message of Jesus with our community however possible. So that's how we set out the DNA and the philosophy of ministry and then we walked into a little bit more of what we were looking for as far as our next senior pastor, and here's some of what we wrote here. To maintain this balance, we work as a team. The lead pastor, executive pastor and elder board are constantly evaluating ministry programs and outreach so that we stay on mission. We also seek to regularly communicate with our staff, our lay leadership and attenders the value of our both-and strategy.
Speaker 1:
We realize that there's a constant pull and tension in being the kind of both-and church that we're describing in this document, and we say that the ministry and philosophy statement comes out of both our steadfast commitment to obey and apply God's word for his glory. But we also realize that this is a living document that might have to constantly be evaluated. You know, yesterday we talked about trimming the silence. Or a couple days ago we talked about cutting the fat and trimming the silence, and we realized that this document is a living document and it may need to change my guess. And let me first talk about the result. We found that this document that we shared with the person that ultimately became our lead pastor was very instrumental, with him being excited about the role he felt and he told us that, hey, once I read this document, it felt, no, this is the place where God is calling me, this is the place that I want to serve. And the result is the lead pastor is still there, church is doing amazing work, church is healthy and it's growing and it's thriving. But a lot of that had to do with this document kind of setting the tone for the type of church that we were.
Speaker 1:
So, does your church have a document? Here's my challenge for you today. Does your church have a document like this? I mean something on paper, not your constitution, that's something totally different. We'll do another podcast on that someday but something on paper that kind of keeps your church on the rails during the good and the bad times, and some document that kind of states what's important, that states what you're attempting to measure, that kind of declares the distinctives of your church and why you exist.
Speaker 1:
And here's my premise and my hypothesis, because I know we didn't. I think most churches don't. They don't have any kind of written philosophy statement, and this kind of statement can be a great help to your current and future leadership. In fact, at Chemistry, when we work with churches that are searching for new staff, we always do what we call a church and candidate profile before we start an actual search process, and this allows the church to do much of what we did these years ago. With this both-and kind of statement. We can help you, guide you through this process.
Speaker 1:
Like I said earlier, if you would like to see just a sample of what we wrote, I'm happy to send that along to you. Just send me an email at podcast at chemistry staffing, I'll be happy to send that on. You can rip off accordingly whatever language you want to, but you're going to want to tweak it because your church is probably different than ours was. But if you would like a copy of that, send me that email podcastchemistrystaffingcom. If you would like some help, I would love to. I was energized. I remember being really energized by being able to help my church work through this. But if you would like some help. Working through this process. We've helped a lot of churches come up with their profile and to come up with a philosophy of ministry statement. We can do that in conjunction or even totally outside of a staff search, so you can just email me at the same email address. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. I would love to be able to have the opportunity to work with you and to give you any input on your maybe your current philosophy of ministry or church DNA documents.
Speaker 1:
Hope you have a great weekend. We'll be back here again next week. I'm really excited. We're starting our 2024 Healthy Church Staff Assessment and I'll give you more instructions. Be back here on Monday. I'll give you more instructions on how to be a part of that Absolutely nothing and you'll get to learn a lot about your current state of health in your church and hopefully learn a little bit more about how your church is doing as well. Talk to you then.