The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Silent Alarm: The Interim is Not a Pause Button
The interim period between church staff members isn't just dead space to endure—it's a strategic inflection point that shapes your church's future. Todd Rhodes explains how this critical time either heals what's broken or hides it deeper, with no neutral middle ground.
• Churches often treat staff transitions like a pause button while redistributing roles and waiting for a new hire
• The interim isn't about holding down the fort—it's a formative period that will make or break your next hire
• New staff don't walk into a blank slate but inherit whatever environment the interim created
• Name and process the grief associated with departures, regardless of whether they ended well
• Clarify roles during the transition with realistic expectations to prevent resentment
• Reassess your organizational needs—don't just reuse old job descriptions
• Consider bringing in outside perspectives during this transitional period
• Identify and address ministry areas that are fragile, toxic, or underdeveloped
• Invest in the health of remaining staff who carry extra burdens during the interim
• View the interim as a stewardship opportunity to rethink direction and clarify culture
Grab your copy of "Silent Alarm: The Quiet Collapse of the Church Staff Pipeline and How to Rebuild it Before it's Too Late" at chemistrystaffing.com/silentalarm. If you need help navigating your church's interim period, reach out to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
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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?
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Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at Chemistry Staffing, and you are catching Episode 9 in our Silent Alarm series. So we started this series last week and we are ending it tomorrow, unpacking the quiet claps of the church staff pipeline and what we can actually do about it. It's based on a brand new book, my first book ever that I've written, called Silent Alarm, and if you stick around, at the end of the podcast I'll tell you how you can grab your copy of that book. Today we're going to be talking about the season that nobody really wants but every church eventually faces, and that's the interim. I'm not talking about an interim pastor, although an interim pastor does fill in the interim. What I'm talking about is the time from the moment, from the time that your current staff person leaves, until the next staff person comes. I'm calling that the interim.
Speaker 1:Today, and for a lot of churches, the interim is just treated like a pause button. The lead pastor leaves, a student pastor resigns, the worship pastor steps away and the instinct is okay, all right, let's just wait a little bit, let's just keep things going, let's keep things afloat, let's not rock the boat. Matter of fact, we're going to wait andloat. Let's not rock the boat. Matter of fact, we're going to wait and the new person will let them rock the boat. So we duct tape a little bit, we duct tape Sunday Solutions together, we redistribute roles like we're drafting fantasy football players, and we keep smiling and silently praying. Somebody shows up to fix all of this. But here's the truth. The interim should not be a neutral season. It's incredibly formative and, for better or worse, it can be a great formative time or a really bad formative time. It's all according to how you tackle it. So again, let me redefine the interim. It's not just holding down the fort. The interim is really an inflection point. It's a strategic window, okay, where your next steps will either prepare your people for healthy leadership or and I've seen this happen too many times it can sabotage your next staff hire before they even show up.
Speaker 1:Most churches just kind of totally throw up their arms and just kind of waste this interim period by avoiding any hard conversations, by relying on exhausted volunteers that are only going to get more exhausted the longer the search goes, by postponing necessary organizational challenges, by failing to reassess their needs or their culture or their expectations, and even by ignoring the wounds that were left by the previous person that just left. You just totally ignore those and think they're going to go away. Guess what? They're not. Here's some of what I've seen. The next hire doesn't walk into a blank slate. They walk into whatever the interim season has created, and too often that's just a little bit too much confusion or resentment or disorganization or false expectations. Here's your truth bomb for today. The interim will either heal what's broken or hide it deeper. There's no neutral. So I'm going to propose to you today and I do in the book as well a better way to use this interim period.
Speaker 1:And if you're in an interim period right now for any of your roles at your church or maybe you're getting ready to head into one here's how to make it count. Okay, first of all, you just have to be honest and name the grief. Okay, somebody left. Maybe it was a good departure, Maybe it was a horrible, nasty, awkward, devastating departure. Whether it ended well or not, your team needs to process it and if you ignore the loss, it doesn't help you move forward. So you got to name the grief and there's going to be grief, whether it was a good ending or a bad ending. And then, after you do that, you need to clarify the now, Clarify the now.
Speaker 1:That interim period Don't drift. You need to assign clear roles, but they need to be realistic expectations and there needs to be a sense of purpose. Unclear interim expectations are going to create resentment every single time, whether it's with your volunteers or with your other staff members and your other team. Maybe you need to revisit your organizational chart. Was the last role a good fit for your needs today? Or has your church changed? And if your church has changed, don't just pull out the last job description and start looking for the next person. Sometimes the next person you need is going to be a totally different role, and maybe you need to use some outside voices. Maybe you need to bring in a coach or a consultant. I'll raise my hand here. Maybe you need to bring Todd in for a meeting with your leadership team.
Speaker 1:The interim is often the best time to gain some perspective from someone without skin in the game and sometimes, honestly, as pastors and I've been there you're just so close to the situation that you can't see the forest from the trees. You can't really see what's clear. So maybe you need to bring in some outside set of eyes and ears, and I'm open to do that Love, to partner with you in that you can reach out to me for a conversation on how to do that podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. But don't be afraid to use outside voices, especially during this interim period, because it can save you so much heartache in the near future. Maybe you need to do some spiritual triage. Maybe you need to identify what's fragile and what's toxic and what's underdeveloped in this area of ministry.
Speaker 1:Fixing these things now and not waiting until your next hire comes makes your next hire exponentially more successful. Don't hand them problems on day one that you should have taken care of during the interim, and the interim is a great time to invest in staff and in your staff health. Your remaining team is likely going to carry some extra weight during this interim, both emotionally and practically, and even spiritually, so make sure that you care for them and that you communicate often and don't just assume they're okay. The longer the search goes, the more you're going to need to check on them, and remember this. Here's the bottom line. The interim is not a mistake and it's not a setback. It's a stewardship moment, and get this. The interim might be the best chance you have to rethink your direction and to clarify your culture and to build trust and to reframe what your next leader is actually stepping into. And if you treat the interim kind of like a hallway, don't be surprised when your next leader is actually stepping into. And if you treat the interim kind of like a hallway, don't be surprised when your next hire feels like the door, like a door that gets slammed shut. All right.
Speaker 1:This idea that the idea that the interim is a strategic opportunity, not just dead space, is one of the things that I really hammer in on in my new book called Silent Alarm the Quiet Collapse of the Church Staff Pipeline and how to Rebuild it Before it's Too Late. If you've been through a rough transition or you're in one now, this chapter alone might change everything about how you move forward. And if you're on a church search team and you're in this interim period, some of this advice hopefully will help you as well. You can grab your copy of the book today chemistrystaffingcom. Slash silentalarm. And again, if there's any way that I can help you or your church, feel free to reach out to me. You can email me at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom.
Speaker 1:This has been a fun series, at least for me. It's one of my passion areas. I'm so passionate about it I think I wrote a book about it. But tomorrow we're closing our final episode, 10. And in our final episode we're going to be talking about one of the biggest obstacles to rebuilding your church staff pipeline, and that is trying to do it all alone. Man, church leaders, especially pastors, carrying too much, deciding too much, feeling too alone in the process. And tomorrow, as we close out this series, it's going to be your invitation to step out of that isolation and into something better. So I hope you'll join me tomorrow right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I hope you have a really great, really outstanding.
