How to Communicate a Staff Moral Failure With Your Church Family

How do church communities rebuild trust and ensure integrity after confronting the stormy seas of staff moral failure? Today's episode takes a courageous look at this delicate dilemma, as we reflect on the recent events within the Austin Stone Community Church. We engage in a candid discussion about the critical need for transparency, the importance of swift and thoughtful action, and the complex balance between privacy and openness. I share insight on how leaders can navigate these treacherous situations with empathy and a steadfast commitment to the church's values—offering a guide on communicating with congregants, laying the groundwork for accountability, and safeguarding against future indiscretions.

Transitioning from the gravity of moral misconduct to the more uplifting subject of church job satisfaction, this episode provides a platform for you to voice your own experiences and perspectives. Whether you're filled with passion for your ministry role or merely curious about the dynamics of church employment, I invite you to join the conversation. Don't miss the opportunity to have your say by reaching out to us at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com, and stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll infuse a dose of optimism into our dialogue about the joys and challenges of working within the church community.

Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. Thanks so much for joining us. It's Monday. Hope you had a great weekend At your church. Hope you also had some great time, just relax. We had an interest. We went to see Jay Leno, which was really fun. He was performing at a venue not too far from here. I just took the plunge, got some tickets for Donna myself and we went and had just a really good time. So hopefully you had a good time over the weekend and you're ready to get raring to go here.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Boy, I picked just a great topic for a Monday right how to communicate a staff moral failure to your church family and unfortunately, not everything is puppy dogs and rainbows in the church, and sometimes hopefully you never have to deal with this. But if you've been in ministry for long, you've probably known somebody that's fallen from ministry or had some type of a moral failure. Hopefully it hasn't been in your church or somebody you were really close with. But I know I've brushed up against this a few times with not only acquaintances but some really good friends. I took the inspiration from this from Austin Stone Community Church down in Austin. Many of you may have heard of that church and they had an instance I think it's probably maybe a month, maybe six weeks ago where they had to let go a very popular staff member, a very well-loved staff member who'd been there for quite a while. And really the impetus for this is just the letter that they sent, because I thought it was, for the most part, really well done that they sent out to their church to just announce it. I've seen churches do really well at shepherding their congregations through an announcement like this, and boy, I've seen some churches totally botched it as well.

Speaker 1: 2:07

So I thought this would be a great topic for a podcast to lay down some parameters in case you're ever in this. And now it's recorded, so it's good for posterity's sake. You can come back and listen to it if you ever find that you have the need for this. But hopefully you'll find this interesting now and really what I want to do is just go through some things that I thought they did really well and then maybe a couple of things that maybe I think maybe could have been, maybe even a little bit better. Okay, so let's talk first of all about what you really need to include, and maybe some of this is content that you need to include in any kind of communication to your church family about a moral failure. Some of it is content, some of it is more just your tone. Okay, so I've got let's see five things here that I want to talk about that I think are really important if you ever have to find, if you ever find yourself in a position where you need to write a letter like this or communicate verbally to your church.

Speaker 1: 3:07

And the first is you have to be incredibly transparent. You need to be open, you need to be honest about the situation. The last thing you want is for anyone to feel like you're covering things up. Man, churches try to sweep things under the carpet a lot of times and I tell you, it hardly ever works to their benefit. Matter of fact, that's when things really blow up.

Speaker 1: 3:32

So be open and honest about the situation, share facts without sugarcoating anything, without hiding any information, but you need to strike a balance between transparency and respecting privacy, because you have victims, you have people that family members, that there does need to be a certain amount of transparency at the very front end, but also respecting privacy, and sometimes that's a fine line. But I always tell people hey, lean more on the side of transparency as much as you can. So transparency is number one. Number two is responsiveness. Address the issue promptly and that's gonna do a couple of things. That's gonna stop rumors, it's gonna stop speculations from spreading. And when you communicate that decision in a timely manner and I think Austin Stone did this within seven days of the firing, as soon as they could when you make that a timely manner, you show a commitment to integrity, you show that you've found out a situation and you took foot to action. So transparency and responsiveness.

Speaker 1: 4:41

Number three is empathy. Show empathy toward all parties involved, including the individual facing the moral failure, and particularly their family and the church community, but also any victims that there were as well. Do not forget the victims. Acknowledge the pain, acknowledge the confusion caused by the situation. Apologies you can't apologize enough Offer support, such as counseling services, to all those affected. And moral failures in a church affect the whole body. They don't just affect a few people, they don't just affect your staff or your board. They affect key volunteers, they affect just people that here and if it's really a public failing with local news stories and bloggers and all those kind of things. It really does affect everyone. So, as a leadership, show empathy and responsiveness and transparency.

Speaker 1: 5:33

But number four remember your values and share that you are committed to the values of your church. Reaffirm your church's values and the standards for leadership and that you hold those standards high. Emphasize your church's commitment to upholding these principles and convey the seriousness with which it treats leadership roles. And actually, because of your commitment to these values is probably why you had to make the determination to make the determination to make the termination. I'll say it that way.

Speaker 1: 6:10

And then, number five, provide next steps and accountability. And this is really important and a lot of times churches skip this. Outline the steps that your church plans to take to address this. What? Let me start here. Outline the steps that your church has already taken to address this issue and then outline the steps. Don't stop there. Outline the steps that you're going to take in the future and outline the steps that you're going to take to prevent future occurrences like this so that this doesn't happen again. This may include external reviews, updates to policies, guidelines. It could mean an investigation, maybe an independent investigation. We did a podcast, I think about three weeks ago, on a couple of different episodes on when your church should do an investigation and go back and listen to those. I think they were really good episodes. How you communicate, how you're going to increase accountability measures at the church as well All those things are really important.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Now, a couple different ways. I think that maybe their announcement even could have been approved. A little bit more would be a little bit more clarity on support mechanisms. Explicitly state when you can, the support that's available to members who are struggling. Those have been directly affected. Provide specific resources, counseling options, support groups to ensure that individuals have access to the help that they may need. They may not take you up on that offer, but just letting them know that it's available is really important.

Speaker 1: 7:43

Secondly, there could be there should be, some kind of an educational component to this as well. So maybe include a section in the letter that educates the community on the moral failure, why it was taken seriously, why it needed to be taken seriously and how individuals can see help if they themselves are seeking similar challenges. This could be, this moral failing could be a wake-up call to different families and different people in your church, and so this educational approach can help contribute to preventing future incidents like this in your church and then provide two more things that I think are really key and really take this to the next level Provide follow-up communication. Develop a plan for ongoing communication about the steps that are being taken. Give updates, if updates of the future need to be made, on how the church is evolving and response to the incident. And regular updates just will help keep the community informed and involved in the healing process and they also will build credibility for your continued leadership in the church.

Speaker 1: 8:48

And then, lastly, provide some kind of a feedback mechanism. Provide a way for members to express their thoughts and their concerns. Make sure it's not just a one-way communication but that you invite really, in this situation, tough conversations of people have some beefs, have some concerns. That's part of leadership. It's a huge part of leadership actually is making yourself available to listen to those concerns, to listen to those suggestions, to allow for members to express their thoughts, to allow members sometimes maybe to blow off a little bit of steam and to understand what happened, how it happened, and just being able to provide, get the feedback from them and also provide feedback as to how your church has responded and if your church has responded, as Austin Stone, I believe did in this situation, then those conversations are going to go extremely well. If you find that you have to cover for yourself or that you did something wrong, those conversations are going to be incredibly difficult and they're going to wear on your leadership. So, anyway, those are some things that I think are really important. I'm going to give a link to the letter that Austin Stone sent to their congregation, because I think it's important to maybe even use as a template, if you need to, because I think it was really well done.

Speaker 1: 10:10

A heavy topic for a month, I'm sorry. Sometimes we do need to talk about these things, though, and this was one of those topics that we needed to talk about, so I would love to hear your comments. You can email me anytime at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom, and I hope you'll be back here again tomorrow. We're going to talk. This is a good topic for tomorrow. Hope you'll join us. Do you love your church job? And if you do, then be a hater. We'll talk to you tomorrow.