Hiring Church Staff Shouldn’t Look Like The Bachelor… But It Does

Many churches approach hiring like The Bachelor – making decisions based on flashy first impressions and shallow questions, then experiencing regret months later. This episode explores a better approach to church staffing that prioritizes discernment over drama.

• Too many churches hire based on "vibes" rather than substantial evaluation
• Ministry leadership requires emotional intelligence, calling, team alignment, and theological compatibility
• Healthy churches define success metrics before beginning their search
• Structured interviews with consistent questions ensure fairness and thorough evaluation
• Using assessments helps identify personality, theology, and leadership patterns
• The Holy Spirit leads, but appreciates a solid hiring rubric
• Poor hiring decisions impact discipleship, evangelism, and can cost churches significantly

If you're struggling with your church hiring process, reach out to me at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com. This is what we do at Chemistry Staffing – helping churches create, hire, and keep healthy teams.

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

Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.

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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.

Chapters

• 0:09 The Bachelor Church Hiring Problem
• 1:30 The Rose Ceremony Mistake
• 2:13 A Better Way: Spirit-Led Strategy
• 5:20 Eternity at Stake in Hiring
• 6:59 Bottom Line and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Let me drop a truth bomb on you today. Okay, too many churches are hiring staff like it's the Bachelor. You know what I mean. Maybe you've watched the Bachelor Every once in a while about every third season. My daughter draws me into it. Dad, will you watch this? She's a rambunctious girl. She lives an hour away. But Dad, will you watch this with me? And boy, I try this. Last season, I think I tried. I don't even remember if it was the Bachelor or the Bachelorette. I think I made it about 15 minutes in. I'm just like no, I can't do this. But anyway, I digress. Many churches are hiring exactly like the Bachelor Flashy first impressions, shallow questions and somebody gets the rose because we felt peace about them, and then, six months later, regret. Does that sound familiar? Stick around.

Speaker 1: 1:00

We're going to talk about that today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi, thanks for joining me. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and I'm your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I don't know how you found us, but I'm glad you did. A lot of regular listeners here. Welcome back.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I think it's great that you spend a little bit of time with me every day and really appreciate it. So let's talk about the problem here. Okay, we're talking about the bachelor and how a lot of churches let's just say they romanticize the hiring process. Okay, churches love the idea of finding the one, the perfect candidate, the one that you're going to spend the rest of your I don't know. I'll stop with the bachelor analogies here, but you know what I'm talking about. We're just praying for the right fit, or we just didn't feel peace about them, or, my favorite, we think God is leading us to wait, but we also need somebody. Yesterday, we hear that quite a bit at chemistry. Sometimes the mindset often sounds spiritual, but it's usually code, for sometimes at least, we didn't do the hard work on clarity or planning or discernment at the very first part of our search. Okay, truth is you don't need the drama, you need the discernment, and that starts way before you do your first interview for this new position that you're thinking about hiring. Okay, I said I was done with the bachelor analogies, but I lied, sorry, because I do want to talk just briefly about what I call the rose ceremony mistake and what the rose ceremony mistake is, and tell me if you've ever done this. Maybe you were even hired this way once, who knows, in your career. The rose ceremony mistake is this You're hiring based on vibes.

Speaker 1: 2:47

The bachelor style hire is all about how someone makes you feel. In an hour-long coffee chat or on a Zoom call, you laugh at their jokes, you think they're funny, they have kids the same age as you, your first impressions, and then you fall in love. But ministry leadership you know this. If you think about it, it's not about vibes. It's not. It's about emotional intelligence and calling and clarity and team alignment and theology and mission compatibility. It's about conflict style and resolution and communication, and if you're handing out offers after one or two emotional convos, you're not hiring, you're gambling, and maybe you've paid the price for this in the past.

Speaker 1: 3:32

There is a better way, though, and that's what that's hopefully why you're listening here today. It's a structured, spirit-led strategy, it's a better model and it doesn't have anything to do with roses. It's about real alignment, and here's what the healthiest churches a lot of them that we get to work with at Chemistry Staffing here's what their process looks like. First of all, they define success before they even start the search. What does a win look like 12 months in? When I ask a church hey, what does it look like 6 months, 12 months in for this new staff member? What do you want them to accomplish? And they kind of sit back and scratch their head and say, we hadn't thought about that, you haven't done your homework. At that point, you need to define success before you even post the job, before you ever start the search and definitely before you ever do an interview. Okay, another thing that healthy churches do is they're going to ask the same questions to every candidate. Okay, this isn't favoritism, it's fairness and consistency. And they use assessments, chemistry staffing. We have one that's called our Final Fit, but assessments will help you to understand personality and theology and leadership style, team chemistry, and it'll help you to look for patterns, not just moments.

Speaker 1: 4:47

One great sermon or strong resume does not equal a staff fit. And here's another kind of a guiding principle that a lot of really healthy churches that do staff searches really well. The Holy Spirit leads, but he also appreciates a really solid hiring rubric. Okay, the Holy Spirit absolutely has a part, but you have to do your part as well, and here's why it's just that the real lives and real churches people's eternal destiny.

Speaker 1: 5:20

I know we talked about this earlier on the podcast, but even this week we talked about how what kind of stands in the lurch here? It's people's spiritual lives, it's discipleship, it's evangelism, it's outreach. It's where someone is going to spend their eternity. That's the state not to freak you out, but that's the stake. That's what's at stake when you're hiring new people. And if you're hiring like a reality, show it just it's going to lead to some really awkward staff meetings and it's going to lead to some misalignment. It's going to hurt your church's mission. You're going to be frustrated, people are going to get burned out. Relocation, heartbreak, broken trust, tens of thousands of dollars lost on a really bad hire that you probably could have avoided.

Speaker 1: 6:05

This is eternity that we're talking about here. There are some real important things that we're talking about here. So let's treat hiring like the sacred stewardship as it is. Now. That can seem burdensome and I don't know, maybe it is, but it's so stinking important that you hire, and you hire well and you hire for the long term and get that kind of this vibe thing out of your head. There will be a vibe, but you can't hire on vibe alone. Okay, so here's the bottom line for today Church hiring, church staffing shouldn't be a drama filled guessing game. Okay, when we slow down, when we use some real discernment, when we get clarity again, that needs to happen even before we start the search on who we need not what we want, but who we need then and only then can we build teams that are going to grow and last and lead well.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Okay, I hope you've liked this podcast today. I hope it's helped you and maybe you've been a victim of kind of hiring being the bachelor type of a hiring church. I'd love to hear your story. I'd love to see if there's some way that I can help. Maybe you're like Todd this is us, but I don't know how to get to where I need to be from where I am man. That's something that I'd love to have a conversation with you.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. This is what we do, this is what I've given my life to, and my mission is to help churches create and hire and keep really healthy teams. So reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. And thanks so much for listening or watching. If you're watching on YouTube, we have a growing audience over on YouTube as well. If you're watching, today is Friday. If you're watching on the day that it was released. If not, it might be any other day but Friday. But if it's Friday, have a great weekend and we'll see you right back here on Monday On the Healthy Church Snap Podcast. Hope you have a great weekend.