The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Courage to Lead When It's Easier to Coast
The most dangerous season in leadership might be when everything feels fine, leading to comfortable coasting rather than courageous direction. Leadership fatigue often comes not from crisis moments but from the slow, steady grind of keeping everything afloat when courage is needed to disrupt stagnation.
• Warning signs of leadership coasting include avoiding overdue decisions
• Relief when your team stops asking questions indicates potential problems
• Not initiating tough conversations for months suggests building issues
• Recycled vision talks signal operating on ministry autopilot
• Leadership autopilot doesn't crash immediately but quietly drifts off course
• Courage often looks like having that difficult one-on-one conversation
• Sometimes leadership means challenging programs that have outlived their purpose
• Saying no to good things to make room for better things requires conviction
• The difference between leaders and caretakers is choosing discomfort over ease
• Teams don't need perfect leaders—they need courageous ones
If this resonated with you today and you'd like to talk through your specific situation, reach out to me at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com. I'm passionate about helping churches develop healthy teams and would love to explore ways we might partner together.
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Hey, it's easy to coast in ministry, especially in ministry, the drill. Things aren't always great, but they're not always awful. Attendance is okay, staff is hanging on, nobody's quitting, at least, but nobody's thriving either, but at least the place isn't on fire. So we tell ourselves, let's not rock the boat right now. But the quiet truth is sometimes the most dangerous season in leadership is the one where everything just feels fine, and that's what we're going to talk about today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes and you're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
Speaker 1:If we're being honest with ourselves today, leadership fatigue is real and for a lot of church leaders I talk to, it's not the crisis that's exhausting. Those are really exhausting. Sometimes it's just the slow, steady grind of keeping everything going, keeping everything afloat. It's when everything is mostly working. That's when it takes the real courage to ask some of the hard questions or to make the unpopular decision or to disrupt something that's comfortable but stagnant. But that kind of courage it's not loud and it doesn't get the standing ovation, it's quiet and it's steady and here's the thing it's often very lonely. Let me give you an example. Let's say you're a lead pastor and you've got a staff member who's been with you for a really long time, faithful kind. They show up, but deep down, they're just something's not right. They're just not in the right seat anymore. Their ministry is stalling. They're coasting and, if you're honest, so are you, and you know what needs to happen, but you know that there's going to be a relational cost. What needs to happen, but you know that there's going to be a relational cost, right, and it feels massive. So you wait, and weeks turn into months, and months turn into, possibly, years, and this is what I mean by the easier path, right, the slow drift of kind of coasting, the slow fade of conviction. So there needs to be a gut check. Are you leading from conviction or are you managing from convenience? This is not about being reckless or impatient. We've all met reckless leaders. We've all met impatient leaders. I'm not asking you to do this. This is, though, about choosing movement when stillness has turned into stagnation.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's take a look at a few of the warning signs that you might be coasting. Okay, let me give you a few indicators that I've seen over the years that you might just be kind of taking it easy and coasting. Maybe you're avoiding a decision that you know you need to make, and actually you needed to make it a while back. It's long overdue, and you're avoiding making that decision. Maybe your team is just asking fewer questions and you're relieved, not concerned.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've initiated a tough, or maybe you have not initiated a tough conversation in months. That could be an indication that things are just stacking. Maybe your vision talks have started to feel recycled. You're like Solomon in Ecclesiastes there's nothing new under the sun. None of these things make you a bad leader, but they might be signals that you're starting to operate on autopilot. And here's the thing about autopilot in church leadership. Okay, it doesn't crash right away. You're still moving. You're still going 35,000 feet above 500 miles an hour. What it does, though, is it quietly drifts off course until you realize that you're no longer where God originally called you okay.
Speaker 1:So how do you get this courage to reengage? We talked about boredom a couple of days ago, and this is the same thing. What does courage look like here? How do you re-engage? And here's some examples. Maybe, sometimes, it just looks like a hard one-on-one conversation, and maybe you're thinking of something right now and you're like dang, why are you talking about this Because I've got somebody in my mind, somebody that I really needed to have a one-on-one conversation with for the last six months, and I just haven't done it. Maybe it looks like having the conversation. Maybe it means asking your elder board to reevaluate a ministry that's outlived its vision, even though you know that it's going to be a hard conversation. Maybe it's saying no to something that's good so that you can say yes to something that's better. And maybe maybe today, out of this podcast, you get nothing more than just finally admitting to yourself look, we've been coasting, I've been coasting and it needs to stop, and it needs to stop today. That's the courage to lead that I'm talking about. It doesn't always feel brave. Most days it actually feels like choosing a little bit of discomfort over ease, but that's the decision that separates the leaders from the caretakers.
Speaker 1:Okay, so here's the bottom line for today. If you're feeling stuck, or you're feeling bored, or maybe another way to put it is you just feel numb in your leadership, if you're feeling any of those ways today, right now might be the time to ask and maybe you write down this question when have I stopped leading and where have I started drifting? Because you don't need a scandal to go off course. A scandal can do it. I wouldn't recommend it, but you don't need a scandal to go off course. Sometimes all it takes is coasting a little bit too long. But there is good news. You can make a decision today, a new decision today to re-engage your team's watching and they don't need a perfect leader, but they need one, that is, they're actually very desperate for a courageous leader.
Speaker 1:All right, if this hit home with you today, or you're just like Todd, I need somebody to talk this through with. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. I am all about helping churches and helping leaders become really healthy and developing healthy teams. So if there's any way I can help you or your team, I'd love to find a way, see if there's a way that we can partner together, and you can reach out to me anytime podcastatchemistrystaffingcom. All right, that's it for today. We will be back every weekday, monday through Friday, with a brand new episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you have a great day. This is Friday if you're listening, on the day that this is released, so I hope you have a great weekend and a great Sunday services, saturday services. Whatever you do you, he's a super cool guy. Have a great week.
