The Comparison Trap: How Social Media Is Poisoning Church Staff Culture

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the impact of social media comparison culture on church staff dynamics. He highlights how constant exposure to other churches' success and polished highlight reels can foster resentment and distraction within church teams. Todd emphasizes the need for awareness and intentional discussions within staff meetings to address these issues and maintain focus on a church’s unique mission and values.• Church staff often compare their work to highly publicized successes of larger churches.• Exposure to curated content can lead to dissatisfaction and envy.• Social media algorithms perpetuate feelings of inadequacy among staff.• Staff meetings can unintentionally become sessions of comparison and critique.• Promoting awareness over strict policy can help mitigate negative impacts.• Fostering discussions on social media's influence can clarify church mission and values.• Building a healthy church culture requires focusing on unique church attributes rather than others’ successes.

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Transcript

hen Staff Meetings Turn Into Critique

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Your worship pastor just spent 20 minutes showing you the videos from Elevation's latest series. Your youth pastor keeps warning you on TikToks from that church that they follow in Texas. And your kids pastor's asking, why can't we do BBS like the church that I follow here on Instagram? And all of a sudden you're sitting there wondering when your staff meeting became a highlight real critique section. Sound familiar? We're going to talk about it today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at ChemistryStaffing.com. And I am glad that you're here for the Healthy Church Staff Podcast today. Every church in America is posting their wins, and nobody posts their Tuesday staff meltdown. You see their Easter overflow crowd, but you don't see their worship pastor crying out in the parking lot, right? They don't post that. But your staff is consuming all of this only positive stuff from usually these huge churches that you can never compete with as far as programming. Your staff's consuming this 24-7. And it's maybe starting to create a little bit of resentment, a little bit of toxicity that you might not even realize. So let's talk about that. What's really happening to your people? And this just isn't a church thing, right? This isn't a church staff thing. This is a social media thing. We talk about it all the time with how terrible social media can be for particularly young people and impressionable young people and how they get their cues from all these influencers. Guess what? There are influencers in the church world too. And some of it is really good stuff. But when you get to the point where you cross the line to where you almost envy the resources and what other churches are doing, it can really bring out some dark stuff in your soul. So here's really what's happening to some people. You need to know your team, you need to know your staff and their vulnerabilities, right? But comparison culture is huge. Like I said, not just in the church, which it is, but also outside the church, especially outside the church. But let's talk about it today. When comparison becomes a part of your church culture, your staff starts measuring your church against everybody else's best day ever, because that's what they're posting. And even subconsciously, they begin questioning decisions that they just used to support. And suddenly nothing you do feels innovative enough or creative enough or big enough. And team meetings can become subtle campaigns for why you should be more like that church. And before you know it, your staff culture shifts from gratitude to grievance. Why can't we be more like elevation? Why can't you speak more like Andy? Good luck with that, right? But the shift starts from mission-focused to almost jealousy-fueled. And it's a really subtle shift, and it happens over time. But I've seen it happen in churches. Now listen, your staff is not trying to be difficult. They're being discipled by algorithms designed to make them dissatisfied. They're being discipled by algorithms that show them things maybe that work great in South Carolina or Atlanta, but they're never going to work in your small town in rural Ohio with a church of 200. So, how do you break the cycle? Because everything looks so good, so polished, so innovative. Man, we got to do this. We got to take every idea and do it right here or try to do it right here. How do you get away from that? How do you break that cycle? I think one way is just to start to name this and your staff when you see it. Hey, I say something like this. Hey, I know we all see amazing stuff online, but let's talk about our actual context here. Let's talk about our actual vision, missions, values at this church, right? And um maybe even create some kind of a social media awareness policy, not rules. I'm just saying awareness. Help your staff curate their feeds a little bit more intentionally. And this would be a great topic for a staff meeting. I'm not asking for micromanagement, I'm not asking for any kind of policy. I'm just saying have the conversation, maybe in a staff meeting. Say, when a lot of people bring I ideas, just say, hey, we're gonna talk about social media and how it impacts us, how it impacts our minds, how it impacts what we do here at this church. When Andy Stanley decides, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna use a table and a bar stool. Are we gonna do that? That was the big trend a while back. Everybody was using a bar table and a bar stool because Andy did it. And you know what? It's fine. And that's one thing that, you know, is binoculars. You can use that in a church of any size, but it just goes to show how much influence we have from outside people outside of our church. Maybe ask a question like this of your team when you're talking about this, okay? This would be a great topic for a staff meeting. What social media accounts, just ask your staff, what social media accounts are you following that maybe, if you think about it, make you love our church less or make you feel a little inadequate in your role here. And here's the big one stop feeding that monster, right? If you are having these feelings when watching Elevation Stream or what else, whatever else there is, moderate that. And when you share those highlight reels and meetings, you're training your staff to be dissatisfied. So you gotta stop feeding that monster maybe in yourself first before you even go about trying to get your staff to deal with it. Here's the real issue though, okay? We'll close with this today. The real issue, just it's not all about social media. It's about discipleship, okay? Your staff is being formed by something every single day. The question is, what's doing the forming? Here's your bottom line for today. You can't build a healthy staff culture while your team is being discipled by everybody else's highlight reel. That is the bottom line for today. Great discussion for a potential staff meeting. Put that on your list if it's something that you think would be helpful for your staff. Your church doesn't need to be anybody else's church. Your church needs to be who your church needs to be and help your staff to remember that. I hope that you will come back here again tomorrow for a little bit more Todd time here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We're here every Monday through Friday for you, and I will talk to you again tomorrow. Thanks so much.