232: The Most Influential People in Your Church Might Not Be the Pastor

We spend a lot of time talking about pastors, church leaders, and people with titles. But what if I told you some of the most influential people in your church will never stand on a stage, lead a meeting, or sit on a board? 

In this episode, we're talking about the people shaping church culture every single week - and why the future of many small churches isn't sitting in the pastor's office.

In this episode, we're talking about:

1. Why influence and authority aren't the same thing
2. How everyday people impact a church's health
3. Why the future of your church isn't sitting in one office
4. What influence actually looks like in a small church

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Join our free Facebook Community

Get the Ministry Bundles here!

Transcript

Laurie Graham Ertl 0:01
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I’m your host, Laurie Graham, let’s dive in.

Laurie Graham Ertl: Hey, hey. Welcome back to the Small Church Ministry podcast. If you are new here or just finding us, welcome. This is the place where we have honest conversations about small church ministry today, volunteers, leadership, and building healthier churches all around.

And today we’re kicking off a brand new series. This month is a little bit special because Small Church Ministry is officially celebrating six years. Six years, which honestly sometimes feels a little impossible to say out loud. Six years of conferences, six years of resources, six years of amazing community, [00:01:00] of conversation, of podcasting, six years of meeting incredible people serving faithfully in small churches all over the world.

Now, over the next couple weeks, I wanna share some things that I believe even more strongly today than I did six years ago, not less, but more, things six years of serving small churches have convinced me are true, not just because of my experience in small churches, in large churches, in mid-sized churches, being in ministry in a variety of positions and levels since I was 22 years old.
Today’s belief that we’re gonna be talking about is that the most influential people in your church might not be the pastor. Now, before anybody gets upset, pastors matter. They matter a lot. I’m married to a pastor. I spent most of my adult life serving alongside pastors. This is not a ‘pastors don’t matter’ episode. It’s actually the opposite.

[00:02:00] I care really deeply about pastors, which is part of the reason I started Small Church Ministry in the first place. So years ago, I had served at large churches, if you know my story, and then mid-sized churches, and then I found myself in a small church, and I had this realization. I was one of the only lay people, at the time I was not on staff, I was one of the only lay people in the church who had any type of ministry training, and I remember looking around thinking, “Wow, this is normal.” You see, until I was in a small church, I had served in big churches or mid-sized churches, often on staff, and there was a large staff, and so you had a person who was actually trained in children’s ministry. You had people, trained musicians leading worship. I had several churches where there was a counselor on staff, an actual licensed therapist.

And so we had all these experts leading different ministry [00:03:00] areas, and when I found myself in a small church, I was like, “Oh,” like, “there’s no one here with training for any type of ministry.” And I started thinking about the pastor, like, wow. What do they do? If they can’t do all the ministries, they don’t even know all the ministry areas, and why would there only be one person in a church who’s expected to know all this stuff? Like, maybe if you’re lucky and you’re in a small church, maybe you have two pastors.

But typically, one pastor, one ministry degree, and one person is expected to know how to build teams, handle conflict, train volunteers, lead meetings, disciple people, recruit leaders, teach kids, or at least find somebody to teach the kids and then teach them how to teach the kids, navigate church dynamics, create a healthy culture, and overseeing ministry areas where very likely they don’t have all the gifts or all the experience to do [00:04:00] so.

And honestly, even if that pastor knew all those things, they don’t have the time to train everyone else. They’re shepherding people and visiting in hospitals and preparing sermons. And it just made me think, like, what if 10 people in this church were growing and learning ministry skills and were, like, handling their areas well?

What if 50 people were growing? What if all 100 people in your church today were developing in leadership skills and weren’t just helping out or doing what they’re asked to do, but actually had the skills and the ability to do so many things that we depend on the pastor to do? Like, imagine a church where children’s ministry volunteers were becoming better teachers on purpose, not just filling a spot, or small group leaders are becoming better facilitators, or worship leaders were growing in their craft to pick out singable [00:05:00] music and put them in the right keys.
Volunteers were learning how to handle conflict. People understood healthy leadership. Like, what if ministry knowledge and skill wasn’t concentrated in one office? What if growth wasn’t concentrated to a small little handful of the leaders or the board? What if influence wasn’t concentrated in that small little segment?

So that’s why Small Church Ministry exists. That’s why we started this thing. I was totally convinced that healthy churches are built on lots of people growing, not just pastors, not just designated leaders by title, but all the people. And honestly, six years later, I believe that more than ever because we’ve seen it happen.

We’ve seen it happen throughout people who’ve been in the network taking back skills, literally someone with no [00:06:00] title going back and leading a team in how to handle conflict, or, what is empathy and why does empathy matter? And so this is what I wanna talk about today. There’s a problem in, I would say, most churches that we’ve accidentally created a culture where influence and growth and learning and development and leadership belongs to a select few.
Now, I don’t think we did that intentionally, but we have done it practically. And when that happens, when the influence is concentrated to one or two or five or even 10 people, pastors typically are carrying more than their share and more than they need to. Volunteers often underestimate themselves, what they bring, their importance in a church.

And I think more importantly, that I’ve become so aware of because [00:07:00] we literally have been interrelating with thousands of churches every single year, thousands of churches, smaller churches, mid-sized churches. One of the biggest things that happens when influence is so concentrated or so tightly held, churches become really fragile. They’re very breakable in a different way. Oftentimes, people are waiting for someone else to lead, or there’s a feeling that if we hire just the right pastor. So over the next few weeks on the podcast, I just wanna challenge some of the ideas that have become really common in church culture, like that phrase, “I’m just a volunteer.”

Or maybe something we don’t say as much, but we see it acted out, that important people are the ones with the titles, that influence belongs to leaders, which I wanna blow totally out of the water, that the future of [00:08:00] the church depends on a few, a small handful of people, or I almost wanna say the heroes, like, we need a hero.

And so today in this episode, we’re gonna start at the foundation, really talk a little bit about influence, because if we misunderstand influence, we really misunderstand everything that comes after that. So when we think about influence, we tend to look up. I don’t think most churches set out to do this, but it happens over time, maybe slowly, maybe suddenly, but oftentimes without us really noticing.

But when we start thinking influence equals the pastor, the board, the staff, the titled ministry leaders, paid or unpaid. And honestly, this makes sense because those people matter, and they matter a lot because they’re visible We see them so much more often, but that [00:09:00] visibility almost makes it feel like that’s where influence is held.

But visibility isn’t the same as influence. It’s not equal to it. It’s not the only thing that helps us pull out who’s influential. But let’s be honest, like, we’ve all heard things and even said things like, “That’s above my pay grade. Nobody asked me. I’m just helping.” Even that, that feeling of I’m glad I’m not the responsible one.

I’m glad I don’t have to make those decisions. I am happy to do what I’m told, or I’m not really a leader. So if you haven’t said those things, maybe you’ve thought them, maybe you’ve heard them in actual discussion. But in real life, sometimes we confuse visibility with influence. You know, a pastor announces a new direction, a leader launches a new ministry program, a board makes a [00:10:00] decision.

All those moments are very visible, so it’s pretty natural to assume that influence belongs to whoever is standing up front to the things that we can see and the people. But most churches, and hear this, spend far more time developing leaders than developing all the people Think of leadership retreats. Are leaders going on, you know, having special meetings or learning new skills, having retreats, putting together vision statements, developing leaders? We spend so much time developing leaders, but then we’re surprised when leadership feels limited or there aren’t more people stepping up. But we haven’t developed those people to step up.

We’ve developed the leaders that already exist. And part of this really does match that we’ve [00:11:00] confused visibility with influence. But just because somebody isn’t visible, you know those people who stay under the radar a little bit? It doesn’t mean that only the visible people are shaping what happens.

Because honestly, influence is not just happening at the top. One of the things I share about oftentimes in conferences and on the podcast, I even end most podcast episodes with ‘be a light’. The reason I say that is because I believe we are all called to be a light because that’s what Jesus said. A light is an influence, a light in a dark place.

Jesus didn’t say you’re the salt of the earth if you decide to be, or you’re the light of the world if you decide to step into leadership. He said, “You are the light of the world. You are a city on the hill.” That’s all of us. That’s [00:12:00] not the people who chose, stepped into, or were asked to lead. It’s all of us.

And I think this is where things get really interesting in a church because we’ve got to look at how people actually experience church. The answer is usually pretty different than we think. So just for a minute while you’re listening, think about people in your church who remember names, people who notice visitors, people who will pull up a chair and sit with you, or they just look at you when you’re talking like you’re the only person in the room.

People who create belonging, people who invite themselves, who invite other people into conversations, who encourage others without being asked, the people who recognize who’s standing back or who walked in and is having a bad day.

The woman who always notices new people, [00:13:00] maybe that fun guy who everybody trusts because he’s so count-on-able. The volunteer, without a title, who just makes people feel comfortable when they walk in the room. The choir member who invited you to stay. The nursery volunteer who learned your child’s name the first time they met them. So I have experienced church from pretty much every angle. As I mentioned, I’ve been on church staffs. I’ve been part of a small staff. I’ve been part of a big staff. I’ve been paid part-time.

I’ve been not paid at all, for different positions. I’ve been married to the pastor. I’ve also been the one sitting alone quietly, the nobody, who somebody may have called a consumer Christian or a pew sitter. And I wanna be honest, I had an incredible amount of influence during that [00:14:00] time. I loved that time. I loved that time. I welcomed visitors, not because I had a title or a name tag or a follow-up plan. I literally just wanted to get to know people. I made people feel welcome. And I know people stayed because I was there. And one of the reasons I know that, is because I’ve stayed places because I knew someone else was there.

I joined the church choir, not because there was an announcement and not because the choir leader asked me to. I joined the choir because Dorothy said, “Hey, you sing. We’d love to have you in the choir.” And she asked me again the next week. And I stayed because of Paulette, who sat with me and always cared about my day.

This is people. This is the point, people. This is influence. This is not [00:15:00] just authority and position and decision-making. This is trust and relationships and consistency and belonging, and I believe those things embodied, were embodied in Jesus. I believe that’s how He did ministry. Think about the trust, the relationships, the consistency, the belonging that Jesus created just from the few stories we know about His life and Jesus, of anybody coming to the planet, could have come with authority on a white horse, being the King of Kings, as many people expected Him to come to Earth. But He didn’t come that way. The reality is that most people experience church through people, not the programs. They may come to the programs, they may enjoy the sermons, but they experience church, church the way that [00:16:00] God wanted us to be the church. We experience church through people, and that is everyone.

That’s not just the people on the platforms. Like, think about your favorite restaurant. I love going into restaurants. I’m a big people watcher. I’m a big observer. But if you go into a restaurant I bet you don’t remember every business decision they made, and you certainly weren’t seeing it behind the scenes.

Maybe you met the owner because maybe that owner is super, you know, relational and the one who comes and checks on the tables with you. But most restaurants, we don’t know the owners. We’ve never seen the chef or met the chef. We meet the people who meet us, and we remember how we were treated. Yes, I love good food, I love good service, which is also how people treat you.

Church works a lot like that. People rarely stay [00:17:00] because of one person with a microphone. They stay because they found their person, somebody that built trust and relationship and consistency. And if this is true, modern church, church in general, probably has a little bit of a bigger problem than we realize. Because this isn’t just a nice observation about the people in the church or about all the people.

This actually affects the health of the church. When influence gets really concentrated into a handful of people, not only does that handful of people carry a whole lot more than they were ever designed to do, but the rest of us, the volunteers, the ones without title, begin to underestimate ourselves.

When leadership gets super [00:18:00] concentrated or influence gets super concentrated with that handful of people, the rest of the people don’t feel as responsible. They stop taking ownership. Churches tend to, these days, become really dependent on a few personalities And this is when leadership transitions become much bigger crises.

And I wanna say, I don’t believe this is just a few churches, I believe this is the normal state of many churches today, I would say of most churches today. Normal doesn’t mean healthy, and normal doesn’t mean it has to be, and normal doesn’t mean good. Normal means what is typically, not because it was chosen, not because it was intended, but because that’s what we’ve seen modeled, and we’ve just slipped.

We’ve slipped into a same old, same old way of leading in churches today. If you’ve ever heard people say things like, “We need a better pastor,” or, “If we could just find the right [00:19:00] leader,” or, “If we had different volunteers, things would be different,” maybe, maybe not. But the healthiest churches I’ve seen don’t have a small, amazing leadership team.

They have dozens and dozens of people influencing the culture. There is no one superstar carrying everything, and everyone is invited into growth and learning, and everyone is invited to develop. A healthy church body doesn’t depend on one functioning part or two or eight, and a healthy church doesn’t either. The future of our church has become really, really fragile.

When too much influence, too much responsibility, and too much importance gets concentrated on too few people. Now, if you’re sitting here thinking, “Wait, we’ve asked people to step up and they’re not doing it,” we’re gonna [00:20:00] keep talking about this all month long, and I want you to put that thought on the side and just think maybe we don’t need to blame those people for not getting involved.

Maybe there’s something deeper happening here, even culturally. But when we overlook the people next to us, the people sitting in the pews, the people sitting in the back, the people who only come on Christmas and Easter, when we overlook all the people. Even if we’re pouring into our leadership teams, when we overlook the people, we overlook the future that God has for us.

So what would happen if we brought things back into a different kind of balance? So here’s the picture I’ve been chasing for six years. Imagine a church, where more people are growing in leadership and in skills and taking ownership [00:21:00] than not. Imagine a church where people, a bunch of people, not just leadership teams, but people in your church, everyday people, everyday us, we’re developing not just our gifts, but we’re growing in ministry skills, in skills to lead, in skills to relate, in skills to understand other people, in skills in children’s ministry, youth ministry, worship ministry, whatever ministry, prayer ministry, welcoming ministries.

Imagine a church where all the people recognize their influence. Now, I’m not at all saying that every single person will choose to develop and grow and take ownership But imagine a place where most people do, where more people do than not. And truly, I do believe we can have a place where [00:22:00] everyone recognizes their influence. Most people don’t embrace that ministry belongs to all of us.

If I ask a person, if we use the word ‘ministry’ like in our conferences or in our invites for our events, you’ve probably seen that I often say volunteers and ministry leaders. When I ask people who are in ministry or talk about that people are in ministry, we usually think of people in ministry as being the pastor.

The paid people, the staff, those people are in ministry. We’re just helping. But can you imagine a church where more people understand that ministry belongs to all of us, title or no title, team or no team? And I hope you hear this. This is not a message of less leadership or less pastoral influence. [00:23:00] I love leaders, I love pastors, I love ministry staff people. They are so important. We’re not lessening that or them.

What we’re talking about is shared influence, shared responsibility, healthier churches, more people flourishing, growing, feeling amazing about not just belonging in a church, but about being part of the church, an integral, significant part of the church.

So just consider it and maybe ask these questions of your friends or if you do have a team at church or, you know, maybe just some people you relate to there, or maybe it’s your family members. But thinking about your church, who creates belonging in your church? Who are the creators of belonging in your church?

I 100% know it extends beyond your [00:24:00] pastor and your board or your elders. Think about this question. Who do people trust? Who do I trust? Who is sitting around, walking around in our church who is influencing others like crazy and they don’t even realize it? Who gets overlooked? Again, we were talking about, like, visibility and influence.

Who are the invisible influencers? Who might I be overlooking? And maybe you’ve underestimated yourself and the influence that you bring So the problem isn’t that pastors matter too much or we should knock them off or knock them down in their influence of us and others. That’s not what I’m saying.

Pastors matter incredibly. What I think one of the problems is that everyone else matters a whole lot more, than we’ve [00:25:00] been acting like they do.

The future of your church is already sitting in the room. And I don’t mean the future of the church is your children, although I do believe that’s part of it or can be part of it. Maybe your church doesn’t have young people or young families right now. You still have a future ’cause Jesus is the one holding all our churches together.

The future of your church is already sitting in the room. Maybe there can be development, maybe there can be growth, maybe there can be changes of hearts and changes of minds. And the potential of what God has put in each and every one of us to influence, to be a light is incredible. Can we just start recognizing [00:26:00] that?

Next week, we’re gonna make this even more personal because there are a few phrases, and one in particular that’s causing a whole lot more damage than people realize, and it is said over and over and over again. But let’s wrap up today’s episode. I’ve talked a little bit about how we confuse visibility with influence. The person with the mic, the person leading the study. Not that those people aren’t influence but leading or a microphone or having a title does not equate with influence.

We also talked about the fact that most people experience church through people. I hope you had personal stories running through your head when I said that. The reason you stay, the reason you go to church, the reason some people show up, that smile they get, that welcome they [00:27:00] get from specific people who aren’t always the ones with the titles. But please remember that influence and authority are not the same thing.

We’ve all got influence. We don’t all have authority. We all have an incredible amount of influence, and healthy churches are shaped by you and me and by more people than we realize.
So this week, when you go to church on Sunday or if you have a Wednesday night thing or another Bible study, just pay attention in a new way. Start noticing the people who are creating belonging. Start noticing the people who are encouraging others. Notice the people who maybe are quietly making your church healthy day by day, minute by minute.

And ask yourself, too, who are the influential people in our church that [00:28:00] we might be overlooking or not seeing as influential? I think this is a huge foundation, is to start recognizing and even calling out that every single person has influence, that every single person has a role to play, that every single person, even if they aren’t in an official role. Like no one is neutral.

Everyone is an influence. It is so beautiful when we start seeing people that way, and I believe that’s how Jesus sees us. I believe it’s how He walked around the planet. I believe it’s what He would do if He walked in our churches today. He would see us, He would connect, He would call us by name. Relational, trust, consistency. The most influential person in your church is not necessarily sitting in an [00:29:00] office. Next week we’re gonna talk a little bit about the phrase I hear all the time, when people say, “I’m just a volunteer,” or they’re a volunteer.

This thing that we’ve done that we’ve split the leaders and the little people, the hierarchy that’s messing up a whole lot of churches, we’re gonna talk about that next week. Before I go today, again, this month we are celebrating six years of Small Church Ministry. We have a few fun surprises and specials along the way to celebrate with you this month.

If you are a pastor, though, please mark July 25th on your calendar. Save the date. People often say, “Why don’t you get the dates out earlier?” Here’s the date: July 25th. We’re hosting a half-day special online event about leading well in a small church. It’s for pastors. So more details on that will be coming soon.

But no matter where you are, no matter if you have a title or no title, no matter if you are paid or unpaid, no matter if you have a position or [00:30:00] you’re on a team, or you are just walking in a church on Sundays and taking your seat, you are an incredible influence. Let’s just remember that. So thanks for spending some time with me today.

Until next week, be a light.