The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

The Superhero Executive Pastor Trap_ Why Your Team Needs You to Be Human

• Episode 529

Share episode
In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the 'superhero complex' often found among executive pastors. He urges leaders to embrace their humanity by involving their team in decision-making processes, demonstrating vulnerability, and not portraying themselves as infallible. By doing so, leaders can foster independence and leadership skills within their team, creating a stronger and more sustainable church environment.• Executive pastors often assume a 'superhero' role, trying to solve all problems.• This behavior leads to dependency and lack of development among the staff.• Leaders should demonstrate vulnerability and involve their team in decisions.• Fostering an environment of growth and leadership is more sustainable than creating dependence.• Embracing humanity and showing the decision-making process strengthens the team.

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.

- - - - -

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.

SPEAKER_00:

You walk into the Monday morning staff meeting and three people need you to solve their weekend disaster. Two others want you to green light their decisions that they should have made themselves, and everybody's looking at you like you're the only one in the room that has all the answers. And you smile and say, sure, I'll handle it. Sound familiar? If you're an exp and executive pastor suffering from what I call the superhero complex, this episode is for you. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes. I am one of the co-founders over at ChemistryStaffing.com, and you're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Let's talk about this superhero complex that many executive pastors, if you've been in your role for a while, find yourself in, right? You're trained to be a fixer. A problem comes up and you handle it. If there's a crisis, you're the calm presence in the room. You calm everybody else down. When the staff is overwhelmed, you absorb that. And here's what happens though, really, behind the scenes. Your team is learning to do something that you never meant to teach them. Call it the drift. They stop bringing you real problems, just the safe ones, and they quit making decisions without you, and they maybe even start hiding their struggles because you never show your struggles. And your competence becomes their incompetence. And then when you finally hit a wall, they don't know how to function. So, now listen, you can become an executive pastor because you're good at solving things. That's not the problem. You can be a really good executive pastor exclusively because you're good at solving things, but that's not the problem. The problem is believing that leadership means never being human. The team doesn't need a superhero executive pastor. They need somebody who shows them how to think, not just what to think. They need to see you process uncertainty, not always be incredibly certain of yourself. They need to watch you wrestle with decisions. And sometimes we hide that from our staff. And we just show them that we've made the decision. They don't see how difficult it actually is. Say, I don't know, when you don't know. Ask your team for input on decisions that you're facing. Share when you're learning something new. Let them see you change your mind when you get better or more complete information. And show them that you're what your thinking process actually is and that you actually have a thinking process, not just your own conclusions. Okay? So when you're a leader, you're you need to train your team to be leaders also. And when you just come off as perfect, they just learn to be followers. The strongest churches have executive pastors and leaders who develop other leaders, not the executive pastors that develop dependency on themselves. So here's the bottom line for today. Your humanity isn't a leadership weakness. In fact, it's one of your big tools in your toolkit. This week, I'd love for you to pick just one decision that you'd normally make all on your own. You just tell everybody you made the decision, and invite your team into your thinking process. Don't just tell them what you decided. Show them how you're deciding what you're deciding. Your team needs a leader, not a superhero. And that's actually great news because being human is way, way more sustainable. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope this has been helpful to you. Whether you're an executive pastor or a second chair leader, or maybe you're a senior pastor reaching out for your team. I'd love to be able to help you and your church during 2026. Particularly, my specialty is in the area of helping churches find healthy staff. So if there's a way that I can come alongside your church and help uh with finding healthy staff or any kind of healthy staff initiative, I would love to be able to do that. Reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right. Pate, uh, tomorrow, if you'll join me again on the podcast, get a little bit more Todd time in. Question When's the last time you heard someone's somebody say church secretary? We just don't use that word anymore. It almost feels like a relic. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about how technology basically has erased the church secretary role and what might be even bigger moving forward. So I hope you'll join me again tomorrow, right here on the Healthy Church Stack Podcast.

Head Shot

Todd Rhoades

Host