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 Heart-Head-Soul Executive: Leading Beyond Just Operations
In this episode, the discussion revolves around the diverse roles of executive pastors in churches, particularly those who excel in business operations but struggle with ministry aspects. The podcast emphasizes the importance of combining business acumen with pastoral duties to create a holistic approach that benefits church culture and operations. The episode concludes with practical advice for executive pastors to integrate spiritual leadership with their operational responsibilities.• Executive pastors have varied roles depending on the church's needs.• Focus on combining business skills with pastoral responsibilities.• Challenges of executives transitioning from business to ministry roles.• Importance of integrating heart, soul, and head in church leadership.• Practical steps for executive pastors to engage with staff spiritually.
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Hey, we're gonna talk to executive pastors today. Some executive executive pastors are interesting. I love them. But according to what church you're in, if you're an executive pastor, your job description could be totally different than if you were in a different church. Perfect. You never quite really know when somebody says, hey, I'm an executive pastor, what exactly their role is. Are they a ministry role? Are they a business role? Are they purely a financial and finance role? Do they preach? Every church has a little bit of a different idea of what their executive pastor is. A lot of times it's because those roles were written specifically for the needs of the church. Today we're going to talk about something that I see sometimes that happens when a church goes out and they they look specifically for a business person to handle the executive pastor role. And a lot of times that's because, hey, we need somebody to handle our finances, or hey, we need somebody that can do project management, that can watch our facilities and manage the business areas. So they might have really incredible business skills that were proved over decades in the business community. But when they come into the church, they they have trouble with those more ministry type roles. And if you have an executive pastor like this, or maybe you're an executive pastor, I think you're going to find today's episode really interesting. Hi there. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com, and you're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Today we're talking about executive pastors and particularly ones that are really good at businessy stuff, but not as comfortable, maybe, with ministry things. And part of what I want to do today is encourage you and challenge you if you're in that area, because your role, even though you're more businessy, your role still has the name pastor in it. So you can't get away from you work at a church, you're doing all the businessy things, but you're also going to be called upon. And you're, and even if you're not called upon, you're going to be looked upon as a pastor, part of the pastoral staff. Okay? So you can't forget that is a really important part of your job. Most pastors, executive pastors, were probably hired more for their organizational skills than their ministry skills, particularly if this was this type of a job description. You may have been hired, you may have hired your executive pastor because they can build systems and manage timelines and just make all the trains run on time, which is incredibly important in a church. But somewhere along the way, something shifted, and you started, they started leading more like a chief operating officer instead of a pastor. Most churches, hey, we want this business person, but we also want to merge this with the ministry mindset. And that's just incredibly difficult for somebody that doesn't have a ministry background. So here's what that might look like on your team. Okay. First of all, how do you know if this is a problem, something that you need to address? Or maybe you're sitting in that executive pastor chair and you want to know, am I doing what I should be doing here? And again, every church context is different. But here are some warning signs. Maybe when your operations become everything, maybe staff meetings become project updates instead of ministry conversations. As an executive pastor, you absolutely have to have those project updates. Those are important, those are a key part of your job. But it all has to fall within a ministry conversation or a ministry context. Maybe team members are getting managed instead of pastored. And this is really difficult if you've got a business background and not a ministry background, because business, man, business can be harsh. And sometimes when you're leading a team, that harshness will get misinterpreted or it just doesn't fit into your ministry context. Maybe your problems get solved with new processes instead of understanding people. Ministry's a people, people job, right? You need to be able to work with people rather than just make business decisions. Maybe the executive pastor starts seeing staff as resources to optimize rather than souls to shepherd. Again, this just happens sometimes. Now listen, this isn't what I'm not saying is that you need to abandon good operations. That's what you were hired for if you're the executive pastor. If you have an executive pastor, that's what you hired the executive pastor to do. A lot of the operations and executive pastory type things. Churches need executive pastors that can execute. But they also need an executive pastor that has a heart and a soul and a head integration. All three of those things. The best XPs operate from all three of those: the heart, the head, and the soul. They still nail all the logistics, they still make sure all the trains run on time. That's the head part, right? But they also lead with emotional intelligence. That's the heart part. And they remember that this is sacred work. This work, not the business isn't important, business is absolutely important, but church work has it's sacred work and it has eternal implications. And that's the soul part of it. So they ask, how are you? and actually wait for an answer, and they pray with staff members, not just for them in meetings. When you merge all three of these together, they see team conflicts as discipleship opportunities, not just business problems to solve. Say, okay, I see what you're trying to paint here, Todd, but what's this actually look like, practically speaking? Give me some examples of what this might actually look like. In staff meetings, maybe you start with the spiritual check-ins before you dive into the task lists. Okay. When a project fails, maybe you ask about the person first and about the process second. That might be not your first nature. Might not be your second nature, but it's something in ministry that just makes a difference. Maybe there's coffee conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with deliverables. This would drive a business guy crazy or a business gal crazy, right? But sometimes you just have to have those conversations in ministry that really have nothing to do with deliverables. They're how are you doing spiritually? How can we help you? You have to remember that staff development isn't just skills training, it's also that soul care. So your church culture flows downstream from how your executive pastor leads. The XP role is a huge role. And if they're all head and no heart, your staff is going to become very mechanical. If they're all systems and no soul, your ministry is going to lose over time its sacred center. But when they integrate all three of those together, something beautiful happens. And I've seen this happen when executive pastors just mold all three of these together. Efficiency starts serving relationship instead of replacing it. So here's your bottom line for today. The most effective executive pastors I know. Never forget that they're shepherds who happen to be really good with spreadsheets. So this week, here's your challenge. I want you to have one conversation if you're an executive pastor with a team member that has absolutely nothing to do with their job performance or project deadlines. Ask them how they're doing spiritually. Ask about their family. Ask how you can pray for them. Just put everything aside and just shepherd them. Your operational gifts, executive pastor, are a blessing to your church. But don't let them be the only tool in your toolkit. If you do, you're just running a business and a cutthroat business at that. I hope this has been helpful. Any questions on this, any pushback, I'd love to hear from you. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. We're here every weekday, Monday through Friday, with a different discussion, hopefully, word of wisdom and encouragement for you throughout your day. And you can catch me every day right here, same bat times, same bat channel. Hope you have a great
