Bored or Blessed? Finding Fulfillment in Your Church Role
Apr 29, 2024Season 1Episode 81
Todd Rhoades
Have you ever caught yourself pondering whether your daily work in the church truly matters to you and to those you serve? Well, you're not alone. Join me, Todd Rhodes, as we delve into the fascinating findings from our 2023 Church Staff Health Assessment to uncover the truth behind job satisfaction in church workplaces. We'll celebrate the 64% who are soaring with contentment, closely investigate the disheartening 18% who are struggling, and shine a light on the 19% teetering on the brink of indifference. It's a candid exploration of the highs and lows that define our experiences as church staff, and you won't want to miss the insights we've gleaned.
As we dissect the components of a fulfilling church role, you'll discover that it's not just a job, it's a calling that thrives under supportive leadership, meaningful work, and the camaraderie of a united team. For those feeling less than enthusiastic, I offer actionable advice for leaders to better connect with their teams, including the profound impact of conducting exit interviews. Whether you're leading a flock or supporting from behind the scenes, this episode is a treasure trove of strategies and stories that will equip you to foster a healthier, happier church staff environment.
Have you ever caught yourself pondering whether your daily work in the church truly matters to you and to those you serve? Well, you're not alone. Join me, Todd Rhodes, as we delve into the fascinating findings from our 2023 Church Staff Health Assessment to uncover the truth behind job satisfaction in church workplaces. We'll celebrate the 64% who are soaring with contentment, closely investigate the disheartening 18% who are struggling, and shine a light on the 19% teetering on the brink of indifference. It's a candid exploration of the highs and lows that define our experiences as church staff, and you won't want to miss the insights we've gleaned.
As we dissect the components of a fulfilling church role, you'll discover that it's not just a job, it's a calling that thrives under supportive leadership, meaningful work, and the camaraderie of a united team. For those feeling less than enthusiastic, I offer actionable advice for leaders to better connect with their teams, including the profound impact of conducting exit interviews. Whether you're leading a flock or supporting from behind the scenes, this episode is a treasure trove of strategies and stories that will equip you to foster a healthier, happier church staff environment.
Hi there, welcome back to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I guess I shouldn't say welcome back If this is your first time. Welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Either way, my name is Todd Rhodes, I think, and I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. Last week, we started a brand new series If you missed anything, you can go back and listen but we started a brand new series on healthy church staff environments. Last week, we talked about communication and this week we're going to talk about job satisfaction all week. So you want to come back every day this week for this, but today we're going to tackle back every day this week for this. But today we're going to tackle a topic that affects all of us and that's really finding fulfillment in our roles within the church. Are we bored or are we blessed? Sometimes it's a matter of mindset, so let's dive in.
Speaker 1:
Last year, we did our 2023 church staff health assessment, did our 2023 church staff health assessment and we asked the question. We actually gave a statement and asked for feedback based on this statement, and the statement was very simple, just a few words. It said I am happy in my current role at the church and I was very. I found the findings to be very interesting. They're, overall, a strong sense of contentment among church staff, about 64% expressing happiness in that role. And by 64% being happy, I mean that they either agree or strongly agree with that statement of I am happy in my current role at the church. 64%, that's not bad, but because that's a significant majority, that's great and that's something to celebrate. However, not everybody's feeling fulfilled and we had over a thousand people, I think 1,064 people that took the church staff health assessment last year and of those 1,064 people, 18% are discontent and 19% are neutral about their job satisfaction, and these figures paint kind of a complex picture of staff experiences across the board. So let's dive in a little bit today and take a look at this.
Speaker 1:
Let's look first of all at the positive responses. For those that say that they're happy, that they agreed or strongly agreed with that statement I'm happy in my current role at the church. For those who are happy, what's working this is what we heard from the respondents of the Healthy Church Staff assessment last year. It seems that supportive leadership plays a huge factor. Meaningful work that means they know what their job is, that they're in the right seat on the bus, that their work is not only meaningful, but they're in the right seat on the bus, that their work is not only meaningful but they're making a meaningful impact and positive work environments, the team that they work with those are all key contributors. It's about more than just job functions. It's about feeling a part of something bigger. We heard that over and over again. I feel like I'm part of a great team. I feel like the'm part of a great team. I feel like the church is doing some really cool things and we're being impactful with our church family and with our community. So those are the positives.
Speaker 1:
Let's look at those that are discontented and again, we can't overlook these, and every church is different. So some churches are extremely healthy and that 18% number is much lower. Some churches are extremely dysfunctional and that 18% is much higher of those that are discontented. But what can we do to address the concerns of those that are discontented? If you're in a leadership role, if you're on a leadership team or you're a senior pastor, it's essential to engage with these staff members directly. First of all, you have to know who they are. You probably know who's happy on your team, who's maybe neutral you're not sure of, and then who you know right now is really struggling.
Speaker 1:
One of the things you can do retroactively if you've had people that have left, let's say, in the last two years is to make sure that when you have people that leave, do those exit interviews. They're very rare in the church world and I don't know why. I do know why because people don't want to know the reasons why people are leaving. It's always the standard God called me to another place, but really you peel back that God called me to another place, but really you peel back that God called me into another place. I'm not minimizing that answer, because that is absolutely true a lot of times. But a lot of times you peel that back and there are other reasons.
Speaker 1:
So part of being able to address those 18% on your staff that may be unhappy might be to understand exactly what they're unhappy about. You can find that retroactively through the people that have left, through what you've heard, but you can also find it by just taking some people out to coffee and saying hey, I see you're struggling, what's going on? How can we help? Sometimes you've got to reassess job roles. Maybe people are just, they're great people, they're called by God, but maybe they're not in the right seat and maybe you need to reassess that. So those are some of the areas to address the discontent, but you have to address it. You can't stick your head in the sand, leader, and expect people that are discontented just to automatically autocorrect. They will autocorrect eventually, but it will probably be not with your team, unfortunately, or fortunately in some cases, probably from your perspective. But you've got to have that communication.
Speaker 1:
Going back to what we talked about last week, all right, so those are. We talked about the positives, those that are happy, those that are discontent. Let's talk about the neutrals, and it's 19% that said that they're neutral. That means they're neither unhappy or particularly fulfilled. So for these people and these are 19%, that's two out of 10 people If you've got a smaller staff, one out of five people. If your staff is normal and, again, not every church is normal, it could be higher or lower.
Speaker 1:
But those neutrals, the people that are neither unhappy or fulfilled, how can we tip the scale for them? And sometimes it's maybe as simple as maybe injecting some new challenges into their roles. Sometimes the neutral people are just bored or just don't feel like they have any real challenges. Sometimes it's because they're confused. There's not a clear path for even what their job role is, or maybe they're just neutral because they feel like they're in a seat that really has no way to progress to anything different. So engaging this group, again, communicating with this group, could really transform those people.
Speaker 1:
And again, these are the people that are on the fence. So some days we might ask a question and they might be I'm great, I'm satisfied. Other days, we might ask a question and they're like nah, it's just blah, I don't like it at all, I'm very discontented. Again, this is and we're going to talk about this probably every day for the next few weeks as we go through this church staff health series when you are today is not where you should be tomorrow. You've never arrived. So we just need to acknowledge that there's always room for improvement and there's always room for first steps. If you've really sucked in this area of helping your staff feel needed and wanted and happy, you can take some steps today to make that. If you're really good at it, there are some things that you can do better. So, as we further engage our staff by implementing some of these steps, that's going to help things along much better.
Speaker 1:
Last Friday, we talked about staff meetings, and one of the things that can make staff really discontent is just irregular communication, lack of staff meetings or staff meetings that are just on autopilot or are really boring. But the biggest thing you can do for the neutrals and the discontents in particular is just talk to them, have some communication with them. If somebody's struggling, take them out to coffee and see what you can do. If you're not a leader that wants to build into people, you will lose people, all right. So let's sum this up Really, the majority of staff in most of our churches say that they're content, all right, and it's our continuous effort and striving to improve that will help ensure everyone feels valued.
Speaker 1:
Obviously, you want to keep those people that are highly zoned in and happy. You want to keep them happy and satisfied, but you also need to really work. If you're going to move the dial here, leaders, you need to work with those that you maybe have a hunch, are dissatisfied or those that are in the process of being neutral or disconnecting. It's not just good practice, it's good leadership to be able to maintain good communication with those people. Okay, so this week, all this week, we're going to be able to maintain good communication with those people.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so this week, all this week, we're going to be talking about job satisfaction in the church, and let's see what we're talking about. Tomorrow we're going to be talking about your staff's why and how you can engage them for greater impact. All of this comes from our discussion on church staff. Health is really hopefully encouraging you to take our 2024 church staff health assessment. It's absolutely free. You can take it over at churchstaffassessmentcom and we're going to ask you about 50 questions. At the end of that, you're going to get an email that gives you a custom score based on your answers between one and a hundred on how we feel like you're doing on our church staff assessment scale. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you'll join us again tomorrow for the podcast here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Have a great day.