Before You Go - Does the Church’s Culture Align with Your Values?

Exploring the intricacies of church culture is essential for anyone considering a new ministry role. The episode emphasizes the importance of aligning personal values with church culture through key assessments, covering leadership style, conflict resolution, openness to change, staff relationships, spiritual priorities, and work-life balance. 

• Understanding leadership style for cultural fit 
• Evaluating how conflict is resolved within the church 
• Assessing openness to change and adaptability 
• Observing staff relationships and overall climate 
• Identifying spiritual priorities that resonate with personal values 
• Ensuring respect for work-life balance in the church environment

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, welcome back to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom, and I'm really glad you're here today because we're gonna be talking about one of the most I think, one of the most critical aspects of considering a new ministry role. We're right smack dab, actually today's hump day If you're listening to this on Wednesday. We're right smack dab in the middle of a three-week series based on Wade Hodges' book. Before you Go Questions Every Pastor Should Ask Before Taking a New Role at a New Church, and today we're considering one of those most important aspects and that's how does the church's culture align with your values? Now, we talked a little bit about this on Monday, but today we're really going to dive into this culture issue and here's why Church culture can make or break your experience in a new role. Chances are, church culture where you are has made or broken your experience in your current role. So it's not just about what the church says it values. It's about how those values are really lived out day to day in the life of the congregation. And Wade makes a really good point in his book. And stick around to the end of the podcast, I'll tell you how you can get a free copy of Wade's book. Wade really emphasizes that understanding the potential church's culture is really essential to making a wise decision as to whether or not to go.

Speaker 1: 1:24

So I think there's about six things that he lays out here in the book, six key aspects of church culture that I think are really important for you to consider, and the first is just leadership style. I mean, is the leadership style? Is it more collaborative? Is it more top-down, hierarchical? My goodness, does it go top-down? Does the approach align We'll fix that in post production. Does their approach align with how you work best? So what's their leadership style? Are you going to be a good fit, culture-wise, with the leadership style, or are you going to be like a fish out of water?

Speaker 1: 2:01

Leadership style is number one. Number two is conflict resolution. How do they handle disagreements? Healthy conflict resolution is a sign of mature and stable culture. And if they're in the middle of a bunch of conflicts right now and you ask them that and they say, yeah, we've got this going on, we've got this going on, we've got this going on, it could be that they don't handle conflict really well and that should be potentially a yellow or even a red flag.

Speaker 1: 2:26

Another thing how open are they to change? Are they flexible? Is the church's culture flexible? Are they open to new ideas? Is it as a church? Are they resistant to change? This can significantly impact your ability to lead effectively. And how do they relate with each other? How are the relationships on the staff as you talk to people in the congregation? Are they warm and genuine? Do they feel reserved or strained or superficial? Those relational dynamics, are you going to fit there culturally? Is your family going to fit there culturally? Really important questions to ask.

Speaker 1: 3:01

And then spiritual priorities. Every church prioritizes or has. Sometimes they're hills that they'll die on. Other times they're just preferences, maybe they're theological, maybe they're just historical or heritage things that they prioritize, maybe they're more traditions, but every church prioritizes something when it comes to their spiritual priorities. So what does this church prioritize? Does it fit with what you would prioritize? Does it emphasize discipleship or outrage, or worship or something else? How do these what you're hearing, what you're seeing, and you get boots on the ground do these priorities align with your own values?

Speaker 1: 3:42

And then, finally, take a look at the work-life balance. Does it appear that the church respects boundaries and promotes healthy work-life balance for its staff. How do the staff feel? Do they feel healthy? Do they seem burned out? Are they working hard? Are they hardly working? Burnout often stems from unhealthy expectations, and if you inherit a staff that's unhealthy expectations, and if you inherit a staff that's unhealthy, it shows that the health of the church maybe is not nearly as good as what it needs to be.

Speaker 1: 4:11

So here's the bottom line for today, culture is not just what's written on paper. Churches can write a lot of really pithy and nice things on paper and make everything sound like heaven on earth, but what it's like in practice, that's what's really important. So you really need to go in and try and understand the church's culture and identify those different areas that we talked about and really determine is does this culture meet with who I am? Am I going to survive here, or am I going to thrive here, or are they going to spit me up and chew me out? Not every church is going to be a great fit for you and this discernment process of making sure that you fit the church's culture is incredibly huge, and you will call and thank me for doing this because if you don't, you're going to be calling me and saying, todd, help me find a job, because I've been here eight months and's I made a Todd, I've made a huge mistake, so I don't want. I don't want to get that call Okay.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So here's your call to action today. Are you evaluating the culture of a potential church? You need to write down those six areas I believe there were that I told you would be really important and really dig into those when you go for your site visit. You're going to learn a lot by what they say, but you're going to learn a lot by watching body language and what they do and just observing current staff, current leadership and current congregation. All right, I hope that's been helpful for you today. I hope you'll join us again tomorrow. We're back here every day, monday through Friday, for a short snippet from Todd. I always joke that maybe I'm the 60-year-old ministry guy that's telling you to get off my lawn. I hope I don't come across like that, but I hope that you'll join me again tomorrow right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast and I will.