The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The January Comparison Trap - When Other Churches' Success Stories Steal Your Joy
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You're scrolling that Instagram and that church's baptism video. You know that church. 127 people baptized the first week of January. The pastor's grinning ear to ear. Meanwhile, you had 12 people show up to your new year's service. Half of them weren't visiting grandparents. And now you're wondering what you're doing wrong. Or worse, wondering if God's given up on your church. Does that sound familiar? Maybe it's an overstatement, but we're gonna talk about that today, right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Thanks for joining me. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at Chemistry Staffing.com. Hope you'll check us out this year at chemistrystaffing.com. Here's what January does oftentimes to church leaders. January is peak church marketing season. Every ministry posts there. God did this in 2025 videos. Conference speakers are booking their victory lap tours. Social media becomes a highlight reel on steroids. But here's what you're not seeing in those posts: the 47 small faithful moments that built their breakthrough. You're not seeing the three years of patient groundwork that nobody else filmed. The context that makes their win seem like it might be able to make sense. And that's where the trap gets set, because you start questioning your strategy instead of trusting your assignment. You Google how to grow like Andy Stanley or those kind of things, and you pitch their programs to your team who's already maxed out. You try to carbon copy what you're working other places, and you feel like a failure because your context doesn't match their context, and it never will. And your people sense your restlessness and they start questioning too. And yes, believe it or not, it could if you don't put these together in your mind, but a lot of times this can start from some di some simple doom scrolling and see that comparison trap on somebody's Instagram or Facebook post. Now listen, wanting to learn from other churches isn't wrong. Okay? But there's a difference between learning and copying somebody else's homework. Okay. God didn't give you their church. He gave you your church. Your neighborhood. Your people. Your Reeses. Your resources, or your lack of resources. And he puts you in your season, because that's exactly where he wants you for this season. The 87-year-old widow who prays for you by name every single stinkin' day. That's not happening at the Instagram church. The teenager who finally opened up to your youth pastor, that didn't make anybody's highlight real. And it's not gonna make yours. That family that just got through their dad's cancer because your church showed up. Man, that's a win. So stop measuring your obedience by their outcomes because here's what truth faithfulness looks like in real life. Faithfulness isn't always flashy. And sometimes it's staying when other people would leave. Sometimes it's loving the same 200 people or the same 20 people for 20 years. Sometimes it's building slowly instead of growing really fast. Sometimes it's saying no to good things so that you can say yes to God things, the things that God really wants you to do. Your assignment might be preparation, not celebration. So here's the bottom line for today. If you only take one thing away from the podcast and our time together today, it's that stop trying to grow their church and start stewarding your church, exactly where God has put you. So this week I'd love you just to get out of piece of paper and write down three wins from your church that would never make it on social media. Matter of fact, it would be inappropriate to share on social media. Those quiet victories, the slow progress, those faithful moments where you've seen God at work. Put that in a list somewhere that you'll see when the comparison trap starts calling your name and your doom scrolling and see something that just makes you think, oh man, I wish that was me. Your church is not a mistake. Your assignment where God has you, where God has put you, where God has called you, is not a second class assignment. Keep building what God gave you to build. And hey, if this helped, I hope you'll share it with another leader who chances are probably needs to hear this as well. That's it for today's Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I hope you'll build the Healthy Church podcast every weekday into your daily rhythm. And tomorrow, we're gonna talk about the tendency that maybe your church feels less like a church and more like a nonprofit lately. Maybe the metrics and the language and the strategy planning sessions. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about this, maybe a bit of an identity crisis that I'm seeing happening in churches all over the country. We're gonna talk about that tomorrow. So I hope you'll join me actually on Monday. This is Friday. So we'll talk about that on Monday right here on the Hell Big Church Staff Podcast. Have an absolutely great weekend.
