What You Kill This Year Will Matter as Much as What You Build

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, the focus is on the importance of identifying and ending non-productive practices within church ministries as a strategy for growth in 2026. While creating and building are often celebrated, the episode discusses the crucial role of 'pruning' — ending outdated or ineffective traditions, roles, or habits. Host Todd Rhoades emphasizes that the courage to discontinue certain aspects can lead to greater capacity for new initiatives and prevent mission drift. Ending something well is posited as an essential leadership skill that opens up space for future opportunities.• Importance of ending non-productive practices in ministry.• Pruning as a necessary leadership skill in church settings.• Fear of stopping old practices and the courage needed to do so.• Correlation between ending outdated methods and creating space for new opportunities.• Encouragement to evaluate current practices for fruitfulness.

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Chapters

• 0:08 Welcome And Year-End Setup
• 0:24 The Hard Question: What Must Die
• 1:04 Pruning Over Building
• 2:10 Naming What No Longer Bears Fruit
• 3:15 Courage, Reflection, And Next Steps
• 4:03 Sign-Off And Contact

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Hey, welcome back to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We're rounding out 2025 with a series for the new year, and today's episode is gonna be a little bit of a gut punch, but hopefully in the best possible way, if that's possible. So everybody's talking about what they want to build in 2026. Maybe it's a new system, a new team, a new ministry strategy, maybe it's a new way of doing what they've always done. But no one's talking about this. What needs to die? Because what you're willing to end may define your ministry in 2026 more than what you try to begin. In leadership, we especially in church leadership, we celebrate creators and innovators and creators and builders and vision casters, and all those are great. I love doing all those things myself. But here's the dark side of that. Flip the coin over, okay? If you keep just building and building without pruning, you don't get any fruit, you get bloat. And Jesus even talked about this in the New Testament in John chapter 15. Every branch that bears fruit, the father prunes. Why? So that it can bear even more fruit. Pruning is not published punishment. Now you've probably preached this, right? Pruning is not punishment, it's wisdom. And sometimes the most courageous of leaders and their leadership moves isn't launching something new, it's killing something that's outlived its fruitfulness. So that could mean maybe there's a ministry that's draining your team and no longer multiplying impact. It could mean that there's a tradition that's quietly hurting now more than it's helping, even though it used to work in the past. And people still love it, but it probably needs to die. Maybe it's a process that just makes your staff roll their eyes, or a role that you created that no longer fits your structure. Or maybe it's just a personal habit that's burning your energy with no real return. Here's the truth that most leaders don't want to face. It's easier to start something new than to stop something old. But one build leads to momentum and the other leads to mission drift. Let's bring it closer to home, okay? Right now, as you're contemplating the new year starting tomorrow, right? Right now, there's probably something in your ministry or in your rhythm that just needs to die. And maybe you already know what it is. Maybe me talking so far is just you've got something in your head. You know it, but you're afraid of the conversations that you'll have to have, or who you're gonna disappoint, or possibly losing some short-term momentum, or admitting that it didn't work. But here's what I've learned over the years. Leaders who can end well create more space for what God wants to do next. Okay? Killing the right thing at the right time is one of the most underused spiritual disciplines in church leadership. Here's the bottom line for today. Your capacity to build in this next year will be directly tied to your courage to prune in January. What you kill this year might be what sets your whole team free. What are you holding on to in ministry that might just need to die this year? And what are follow-up question? What are you afraid might happen if you do stop? And what's the deeper fear beneath it? If you're a journaler, I'd love you to get out your journal and write down one ministry area, just one, or maybe one personal habit and one team rhythm that you need to evaluate in this new year and ask, is this still bearing fruit? And then have the courage to kill it. My name's Todd Rhodes. You're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Reach out to me anytime with your input at podcast at chemistrystaff dot com. Have a very happy evening.