The Generational Handoff: When Your Church Has Too Many Chiefs and Not Enough Indians

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, the host discusses the challenges of unclear authority within church leadership and the impact it has on staff. The episode emphasizes the need for clear delineation of roles and authority to prevent confusion and staff turnover. • Explores the confusion caused by overlapping leadership and authority within church staff. • Highlights real-life examples of contradictory directions from various church leaders. • Suggests documenting authority structures clearly to avoid ambiguity. • Warns of the negative impact on staff morale and retention due to unclear leadership. • Recommends setting specific timelines and responsibilities to ensure smooth transitions and operations. • Offers assistance through Chemistry Staffing to help churches establish clear leadership structures.

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Transcript

The Staff Meeting Whiplash

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Oh, today's gonna be a good one. I'm glad you're here. You walk into a staff meeting. Imagine this. You walk into a staff meeting, and there are two conversations that you over here. On one hand, one side of the table, the founding pastor's talking about the vision that he's been carrying on for 20 years. On the other side of the table, the executive pastor is talking to another staff member and is presenting the strategic plan he's been working on for six months. And the worship pastor doesn't know which one to follow. The youth pastor's getting conflicting direction from both. And everyone's protecting pretending that this is just normal, and maybe it is. This isn't about age, it's about authority. And we're going to talk about that today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I love taking topics that are almost the forbidden topics to talk about. We just care. It's just you and me here. We're just having a ministry conversation, and we're going to talk about age versus authority here on the podcast today. You've got leaders who think they're leading, you've got other leaders who think that they're leading, but nobody actually knows who has the final say on what. Maybe this is how it is at your church. Maybe it's the total opposite. Everybody knows who has the say. But sometimes it's just blurry. And

When Authority Gets Blurry

SPEAKER_00 1:28

when you're in those kind of situations in those kind of churches and you're on a staff, it's almost like having kind of two imagine two GPS systems giving you different directions. Pretend you're in a car and you're trying to navigate, you're navigating on Android. Your wife, this happens to us sometimes, she's navigating on her Apple Apple maps, and it's giving you two different voices, two different ways to get to the same place. And that sometimes is what happens on a staff. And and as a staff member in a church like this, you start getting whiplash because you're trying, you're hearing both, you're you're trying to follow both, but sometimes it's just conflicting information. Nobody wants to have the conversation about who's really in charge because you know it's not you. You're just hoping that those above you get their act together so that they know who's leading. The old leader says, I'm mentoring, but let's be honest, he's still making all the decisions. The younger leader says, I'm learning, but gets frustrated when their ideas get shut down. And staff members start picking sides without even meaning to. Sometimes meetings become exercises in more reading the room about who's in charge instead of actually moving the mission forward. Now, this is not about disrupting disrespecting the founder or the long-term senior pastor or rushing any kind of successor. It's just about clarity.

Write The Real Org Chart

SPEAKER_00 2:56

And somebody needs to draw the org chart with actual lines of authority. Not the org chart that you wish you had, the one that reflects reality. So if the founding pastor still has veto power, I'm a firm believer. You gotta put that on paper. If the executive pastor actually does run the day-to-day operations, put that on paper. Make that crystal clear. Your staff should not have to guess who they report to, whose directions they take on any given Tuesday morning. And we talk to candidates all the time, and that tell us that where they work is just confusing. They have their senior pastor giving one direction, their executive pastor given a different direction, and they're caught in the middle. And guess what they're doing? They're calling Todd and they're saying, Todd, help me find a new position. I need to transition out of here because it's confusing and it's exhausting.

Dates And Decision Handoffs

SPEAKER_00 3:56

So transitions, you have to remember this, transitions don't happen overnight and they're always messy, but they can't take forever either. You have to get some specific dates for some specific handoffs. And I'm a firm believer, whether we're talking uh a succession type of a situation, or we're just talking about, hey, nobody's going anywhere, but we just need to know who's in charge of what and who's gonna have the final say and who's gonna make the decisions in these areas. I'm a firm believer you gotta have that down on paper. If you don't have it down on paper, things are gonna go well until they don't go well. And when they don't go well, they will not go well at all, believe me. So things like what do you put on paper? By January, all hiring decisions will go through the executive pastor. By June, the founder steps back from weekly staff meetings. That type of thing. Give people a roadmap, not a mystery. And it's not just for your staff people, it's for the people that are making the decisions. They need to be crystal clear. I'm in charge here, I'm making this decision, I'm in charge here, I'm making this decision. It's good for the people that are making the decisions, so there's no ambiguity. It's also just pivotal and absolutely you just have to do this for your staff. Give people a roadmap, not a mystery.

Clear Lanes Protect The Mission

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Permission structure. Create clear lanes where each leader has authority. Maybe the founder keeps preaching and casting vision. Maybe the successor or the executive pastor handles all the staff and the operations. But make sure that those lanes don't overlap in ways that create confusion. I've seen it happen in far too many churches. They're just in a state of confusion. And when you operate, you can do that for a short period of time, but when you're going on three months, six months, eighteen months, and there's confusion, people will leave and people will just not be happy and they won't be successful at the mission of the church. Your staff cannot thrive when they don't know who they're actually reporting to or who they're actually working for. Your chance your church can't move forward when the leadership team is stuck in neutral. It's not about hurting feelings, it's about helping the mission. And the longer you wait to clarify authority, the more talented people you'll lose. Take it from me. I'm a co-founder of a staffing company. And a lot of the candidates that we get, a lot of the people that come to us and say, help us, Todd, help us, chemistry staffing, help us find another role. It's because in their current role there's no clarity. There's no clarity. So that's probably the biggest thing you can do. One of the biggest things you could do. Great leaders don't stay in environments where they can't succeed. Here's the bottom line for today. You can't have a healthy team, you can't have a healthy plan without clear authority structure, and your staff knows the difference between a clear structure and a blurry one. So have an honest conversation with your leadership team. Who on our team has authority over what? Write it down. Make it clear. Stop making your staff guess who's really in charge. So the next generation is watching how we handle leadership. Let's make sure that they're learning how to lead well, not just how to survive leadership chaos.

Help, Coaching, And Closing

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Maybe you need some help. Maybe your church needs some help. And we are here at Chemistry Staffing. I am here to help you in any way that I can. Maybe it's a coaching engagement, maybe it's a consultation, maybe it's just hoping on a call and you tell me your story. But if this is an area where your church struggles, where there's no clear lines of authority, and your staff is confused and you're starting to lose staff because of this ambiguity, reach out to me. I'd love to walk through with you how we might be able to come alongside and help you. You don't have to do this on your own. There are people out there. I can help you. There's other people, chemistry, there's other uh other firms, other people that that really can help you do this. And sometimes you just you just need that extra little bit of hand holding, a little bit of an outside set of eyes and ears. This is a wise way to do it, or this is I wouldn't do that. So if there's any way that I can help you, if you just want to have a conversation about that, reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. Always here to help, always love to help. That's my passion is helping churches and their staffs become healthy. That's what we're all about at Chemistry Staffing. All right, that's it for today. If you're listening to this on a Friday, I hope you have a great weekend. We'll be back here on Monday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. If you haven't subscribed, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I'd love to be with you every day right here on the podcast.