Do you ever feel like your pastoral staff are underperforming? Are they missing deadlines, overlooking details, and fumbling decisions? Do you wish they would get more done so that you could get more done?
Well, pastor, you aren’t alone and there is one thing you need to do in order to boost pastoral staff’s performance.
Boost your pastoral staff’s productivity by owning your role as the cultural architect of your team by modeling productivity and fostering collaboration within your team.
Jesus Calls the Disciples
When Jesus started his ministry, he called his disciples to follow him. In Matthew 4:18 we see Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee. While he is walking along the shore, he sees two brothers, Peter and Andrew fishing with nets.
Jesus calls out to them and says these very famous words, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately the two men left their nets. Moments later a little further down the shore he called the brothers James and John and they also left their nets and followed Jesus
Usually, our attention on Jesus’ words falls onto the second part of the phrase, “I will make you fishers of men”. Instead, I want to draw your attention to the first part of Jesus’ words. He begins by saying, “Come, follow me.”
In the first century, the invitation to follow was common as rabbis would call young Jewish men to be their disciples and follow them. The rabbis would then spend their time pouring everything they had into their disciples, teaching them and mentoring them.
That’s exactly what Jesus did with his disciples for three years and as a result, his disciples changed the world. But, it started with an invitation for the disciples to follow him and a commitment on his part to teach and mentor them all the way through.
Why Own Your Role
For us as pastors, if we want to lead a team ready to change the world for Jesus, it has to begin with us. You want to lead a highly effective team, then it must begin with your commitment to own your role as the leader. The chemistry of your team, their level of productivity, and their ability to collaborate with one another will be directly tied to how much you as the pastor own your role serving as the cultural architect and managing the expectations of your team.
You are the Cultural Architect
As the pastor of your congregation, you have been called, empowered, and sent to lead these people into a deeper relationship with Jesus. You have been commissioned to lead them, which means you have been empowered to be the architect of the culture inside the church you serve.
When you look at your team of staff or volunteers, the culture you see is a direct result of your decisions, actions, and attitudes, or it is the result of your passive and uninvolved approach to leading. Either way, the culture of your team is directly tied to your leadership.
Now, if you like what you see, then congratulations on a job well done. However, if you don’t like what you see, don’t worry, by simply changing how you approach your role and responsibilities, you can have a direct result on your team culture, because, remember, you are the cultural architect.
What this means is that you must be highly effective as a pastor if you are going to expect your team to be highly effective. The most effective churches are often not the most cutting edge, technologically advanced, or have the largest teams. No, what sets them apart and makes them as effective as they are is the quality of their team culture built on a standard the lead pastor has modeled.
This means if you are working an obscene number of hours a week, feel tired, stressed, and overwhelmed, your team will choose one of two responses. The first response is that they will follow your example and eventually be tired, stressed, overwhelmed, and only a fraction as effective as they could be, just like you. You will most likely grow frustrated with their ineffectiveness leading to you letting them go or continuing to serve in survival mode. Neither option is what any of you deserve, nor what your congregation should receive from its pastors.
The other response is that they will see the results of your actions and decide they don’t want to serve in ministry being tired, stressed, and anxious. They will adopt a different approach to ministry that is out of harmony with the culture you have designed. This usually ends in that team member looking for somewhere else to serve that fits them better, or conflict on your team that may cripple your team and your church for years.
At the same time, if you are serving in ministry in a balanced way where church growth takes a backseat to discipleship, long hours takes a backseat to family time, and productivity takes a backseat to busyness, then your team will follow suit. Stress levels will be lower, anxiety will melt away, and your team will operate with creativity, productivity, and energy.
Remember, you are the cultural architect of your team, and developing a highly effective team begins with owning your role and setting the tone of what being effective looks like.
Manage Team Expectations
When you set the tone for your team, then you manage their expectations. In my years of ministry serving in churches of all sizes and consulting with pastors across the country, I have witnessed ministry teams fall apart simply because expectations were not clearly communicated and team dysfunction was the result.
Too many times, pastors who want to develop an effective ministry team approach it by bullying their team members. They demand things to be done, they poorly train, they don’t communicate clear deadlines, and they have little grace when mistakes are made. The team members feel like they are on their heels because they are uncertain what is expected of them, they feel ill-equipped and slightly disoriented as if they had been sucker-punched.
As the pastor, when you own your role and model effective leadership for your team members, then you create a set of expectations for your team to observe and follow. When you prioritize your family time, and your team members see that, they feel the permission to prioritize their families as well.
When they see you occasionally putting in a few extra hours to meet a deadline, or they see you block time for sermon preparation, it models for them how they should be approaching their deadlines and sermon preparation. This means when a team member is underperforming, you can point to your own approach to ministry as the model they can follow. When they miss a deadline and you communicate to them missing deadlines is unacceptable, you aren’t asking them to serve at a higher standard than you are willing to serve because they have observed you modeling that expectation already.
How to Own Your Role
Alright, so now that it is clear why you should own your role as the cultural architect and manage team expectations, it is time to unpack how exactly you are supposed to own your role as the leader of productivity.
There are many nuances we could explore to pastoral leadership and owning your role as an effective leader. However, most of those nuances and details can be grouped together into two behaviors you must prioritize: modeling productivity and fostering collaboration.
Model Productivity
Productivity can be very subjective. An artist may be considered productive by producing a piece of art every month. A fence builder may be considered productive by building a fence every day. A factory worker may be considered productive by putting together a hundred units an hour.
Ministry is no different. Quite honestly, productivity varies from church to church. One church may consider productivity in the number of people contacted by phone in a week, while another may consider productivity in the number of events thrown throughout the year.
Our focus here is not to define productivity. As the pastor, I believe only you can do that, with maybe some insight from your board or other governing body. So, instead of defining what your productivity should be, let’s talk about how you model your defined productivity for your team.
One of the biggest issues with ministry is that there is always more to do than any of us have time to do it. Pastors are overwhelmed, stressed, and struggling simply because they are trying to do too much.
Instead, your goal as a pastor is to focus on the things only you can do. If you are the primary preacher in your church, then that has to be a higher priority than managing the budget or making copies of the small group handouts.
What I am going to give you is a 6 step approach to modeling productivity for your team.
Step 1 List everything you do
This may take some time, but it will be well worth it and will serve as the foundation for modeling your productivity to your team as you develop them into being highly effective. So, block out the time to dedicate to listing every single thing you are responsible for, you spend your time on, and you are expected to take care of.
List both personal and professional. If you are responsible for taking out the trash at home, list it. If you are responsible for taking the kids to soccer practice, list it. If you are responsible for moving your podium on the stage each week, list it. Only when you list everything will you have a solid grasp on everything you are expected to accomplish.
Step 2 Eliminate, Automate, Delegate
Now that you have this daunting list in front of you with the mountain of responsibilities no normal human being could accomplish, it is time to start pruning. For this step, we are going to use a modified version of Rory Vaden’s model of purposeful procrastination to guide you through the mountain of tasks that now lie in front of you. You are going to go down your list of items and ask three questions, in this order:
Can I eliminate this?
Is the task you are looking at necessary or is it possible for you to cut it out? For instance, every week it takes you 20 minutes to build out notes for your online experience in YouVersion, but, you know almost no one uses them. You keep doing it “just in case” someone was to look on YouVersion for a church to visit. But if you were honest with yourself, if you stopped making those notes no one would really notice. This is something you probably need to eliminate.
Can I automate it?
If you can’t eliminate it, then is there a way to automate it? For instance, every Monday you send out an email to every new person that filled out a guest card. Depending on how many guests you have, this could take 20 minutes to 120 minutes. Instead, you can utilize a program like Convertkit or Planning Center to send out a prewritten email from you every Monday. In fact, I have utilized whole email sequences for guests over a 2-3 week period that boosts returns to Sunday morning services and increased overall engagement.
As ministry has become more complex and time-consuming, automation options are lifesavers. They make it possible to get a ton done, even add a few unexpected touches, and still allow you to work fewer hours without sacrificing productivity. Even if the tech is an obstacle for you, don’t allow that to stand in your way. Reach out to me and I will be happy to help you out.
Can I delegate it?
Okay, so the task you are looking at is too important to eliminate and there isn’t the ability to automate it. So, is there someone you can delegate it to?
This may be the hardest step for most of us pastors. We have a hard time delegating because we either don’t want to burden others or we want things to be a certain way and others can’t deliver completely. This was hard for me to learn, but my rule of thumb has become if someone else can do it 80% as well as I can, then I need to give it to them to do. If they can’t, then I train them until they can. Make sure it is within the purview of their job description or volunteer agreement, but delegate everything you can. You don’t need to be the one straightening the chairs before service.
Your goal should be to do the things only you can do. When your time and focus are on the things only you can do, then you are adding the greatest value you can to your church and allowing others to do the same.
Step 3 Assign Time Needed
Now that your list has gone through the gauntlet, you should now have a lot of things eliminated, a few things automated, a good number delegated. What is remaining in front of you should be the things that only you can do. Now, it is time to start putting the puzzle together.
Next to each remaining item, place the high number of minutes you think it takes to accomplish the task. For instance, if it takes you between 30-60 minutes to review the Sunday morning service on Monday, then mark the task as a 60-minute task. The reason you go to the top end is the more efficient you get, the more margin you will create because you are overestimating rather than underestimating.
Step 4 Prioritize
At this point, you have eliminated, automated, and delegated all you can. What is remaining on your list has a number next to it representing the total amount of time in minutes it will take you at the most to accomplish it each week. We are one step away from building your weekly schedule.
Now, it is time to prioritize your items from most important to least important. This may be a little bit of a difficult task but is absolutely vital for you to increase your productivity, create more margin, and be on your way to living your dream life in ministry.
By prioritizing your tasks now, when you are focused, calm, and free from distractions, you are able to make a clearer assessment of importance void of the emotions and demands of the moment. When we are in the moment when someone calls, or there is a knock on our office door, or whenever the interruption comes in, we make emotional decisions of reaction. Right now, you are going to prioritize accurately to guide your decisions later.
Once you have placed a priority number next to everything left on the list, then you are ready to start building your schedule.
Step 5 Add Big Rocks, then Small Rocks
Whenever you are packing things away into a container with limited space, you are supposed to pack the big things first to ensure they fit and then pack the smaller things around them. Well, your schedule has limited space and so the same rule applies here.
Every item remaining on your list has two numbers next to it: the number of minutes required for completion and the rank of importance. These two numbers are going to guide you through this building process.
Before you start building your weekly calendar, I want to say something about daily and weekly rhythms. If you don’t know these yet, you probably have a sense of it. What tasks are you more geared towards in the mornings and afternoons? What things fit your mood and mindset on given days throughout the week. For instance, my personal rhythms are hard thinking tasks are for the morning when I am calmer and more focused. Meetings, brainstorming, and event planning are better in the afternoon because I am more social and geared toward movement and activity. Knowing what your rhythms are will help you place items in the right places of the day and week to fit your workflow and mood better.
Now, you start building. Start at priority one, look at the amount of time it will take, and place it somewhere on your weekly calendar. Move on to priority 2, then 3, and so on. You go until you have placed everything on your weekly schedule or until you run out of time in the week. Once one of those two things happens, move to the final step in the process.
Step 6 Shelf the Remaining
Do not try to fit everything in. Do not try and adjust the times to squeeze more. These behaviors are what got you to the point you are right now. The goal of this exercise is to create margin, give you freedom, lower stress, and anxiety, and get your life on the right track. This means that if you have things remaining on your list, it is time to shelf them.
Notice I didn’t say eliminate them. Here is why. It is likely that if they have made it through this gauntlet and still remain on your list, they hold some level of importance. The reality is that you will likely have a lot of important things you can do, maybe even should do, but simply do not have the time for them. That doesn’t mean they all of a sudden cease being important. It means they need to go on the shelf until more time is found, more staff are hired, other projects are completed, or someone builds a time machine. For now, just place them on the shelf and revisit them again the next time you do the exercise. This is where Rory Vaden’s Procrastinate on Purpose concept comes from. We are putting them on the shelf for the purpose of procrastinating until they come back around at a later time.
Once you have finished this exercise and begin to execute it, your team will watch as your focus, clarity, and most importantly, productivity goes up. They will watch you as you own your role as the pastor and handle your own productivity, inspiring them to do the same.
Foster Collaboration
There are two driving principles about people: they want to matter and they want to help one another. Your team members can accomplish both of these if you own your role as a collaborator and foster collaboration in your team culture. The greatest accomplishments throughout the ages have not come at the hands of individuals but through the collaboration of teams. People coming together with a common goal, a shared desire, and a willingness to make it happen together has always triumphed over individual effort. As pastors, we must embrace a collaborative leadership approach with our teams and create opportunities for team members to work together. Just like organizations, churches that are siloed and cut off from one another, slip into unhealthy aristocratic realities that render them ineffective.
If your team has an increasing number of Millennials serving on it, then collaboration is not just a better practice, it is a necessity if you plan to keep your Millennials and benefit from what they bring to the table. Millennials have a default to collaboration, and when they are in environments where they are siloed, they tend to lose interest and stagnate.
Regardless of whether or not you have Millennials on your team, people are designed for collaboration. Just as Jesus could have carried out his ministry without the disciples, and could continue to reach the lost world without you and me as pastors, he chooses to collaborate with us. As reflections of His image, we are designed for collaboration.
Collaboration is most importantly built on relationships of trust. Your team members will feel safe collaborating with you when they know you trust you. When they believe you have their best interests in mind, and the interests of the church and its mission in your heart, they will look for opportunities to collaborate with you and the rest of the team for collective success and effectiveness.
Allow me to give you six opportunities for you to foster trust and relationships in order to have a collaborative culture on your team.
Weekly Staff Training
I am not talking about your weekly staff meetings, though this could be integrated into your staff meetings. What I am talking about is training your team. When you set aside 10-20 minutes a week to train your staff, investing in their personal development, future success, and individual quality of life, you build trust with your team. They believe in you, trust your influence, and embrace your leadership. Your desire to give to them for their benefit will foster an unselfish environment and communicate to your team that you value them beyond what they can do for you and the church.
Monthly 1-on-1 Meetings
At first glance, this can seem time-consuming, however, it can be the lifeblood of your team’s overall health and proclivity to collaboration. It doesn’t have to be a long meeting, but when you take time each month to sit down with each member of your team for 15-30 minutes, you strengthen the bonds of trust introduced in your weekly training. This meeting is not just you telling team members what you want them to hear, but it is a time for you to hear what they are wanting to tell you.
Though it may be hard, this is a perfect time for them to ask you questions, challenge some decisions made, and learn at the feet of someone who has advanced further than they have. It is also a great time to mend minor issues before they become major issues. It may be a little time-consuming, but it is certainly worth it.
Annual Staff Retreat
Your annual staff retreat should be an opportunity for you and your staff, including spouses if possible, to get away from the busyness of ministry and enjoy time together praying, playing, and relaxing. I recommend the retreat is not a time for training because this should be covered in small bits every week throughout the year. My suggestion is that this retreat is a time where everyone relaxes, has fun together, plays games, and enjoys each other’s company. This annual activity deepens relationships beyond a professional level and creates a deep bond that could last a lifetime, even if everyone ends up ministering in different places throughout their lives.
Provide Growth Material
Leaders are readers. We have all heard this before, but, what kind of leader depends on what you are reading. Your team is your most valuable ministry asset, and the key to you living a dream life in ministry, but you have limited time to train and develop them. At the same time, your team may come from various educational backgrounds. Some may have attended Bible college or seminary. Others came from ministry schools while still others came from the marketplace through your congregation and are now serving in a ministry capacity with no ministry training or experience.
Even though providing weekly training to your staff is important, it will unfortunately not be enough for their long-term, sustained ministry careers. They must always be learning and growing, and they must develop a habit of being a learner.
When you provide them with growth material, you are communicating to them a couple of things. First, just like with the weekly training, you are communicating you value them beyond their immediate performance and their ability to get work done. Second, you are communicating to them you are willing to financially invest into them and their success.
Growth materials don’t just have to be books either. They can be videos, courses, seminars, and conferences. Whenever it is possible to tailor the growth material to the individual, it is even more valuable because it is communicating your insight into them as individuals instead of just a collective team.
Conclusion
When you own your role as the leader of your team, you create a culture of trust and deep relationships. This is the kind of culture that changes communities and impacts lives. When you have a team that trusts each other because of their deep relationships, you can accomplish anything the Lord calls you to do. But it first must start with you owning your role. Set the tone for productivity and collaboration. Make it a priority to become skilled in both areas as a leader, and watch as your team members adopt a similar approach to ministry and team dynamics.