The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Forget Icebreakers—This is How Church Staffs Actually Build Trust
Trust, not talent, is the foundation of a thriving church staff. When relationships are strong and vulnerability is modeled from the top down, ministry teams can overcome challenges and fulfill their mission effectively.
• Make vulnerability normal by having leaders go first and demonstrate that asking for help isn't weakness
• Create safe spaces where team members can express disagreement without fear of being labeled disloyal
• Focus on building trust through real work challenges rather than shallow team-building activities
• Honor individual strengths while being honest about weaknesses to model grace and humility
• Practice relationship repair quickly, remembering that unresolved conflict (not conflict itself) is the enemy
• Small steps toward trust can dramatically change your team's trajectory
Reach out to me at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com if you need help building a healthier church staff. At Chemistry Staffing, we're passionate about helping churches and candidates find each other for healthy, long-term fits of at least five years, enabling churches to thrive in their communities.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.
- - - - -
Is Your Church Hiring?
If your church is searching for a new staff member, reach out to Todd for a conversation on how he might be able to help.
Are You Looking for a New Ministry Role?
If you are open to a new church role in the next few months, add your free resume and profile at ChemistryStaffing.com.
Okay, I'm going to make a shocking statement here and I want you to tell me if you agree with this or not. Here's the shocking statement your church staff isn't thriving, and it has nothing to do with talent, it has everything to do with trust. Okay, maybe your church staff is thriving. Maybe I should have said if your church staff isn't thriving, it has nothing to do with talent, everything to do with trust. Okay, churches don't split over bad theology usually. Usually. Sometimes they do, but usually they don't. They split over broken relationships, and today we're going to skip all the cheesy icebreakers and give you five practical steps to build real, lasting trust on your ministry team. So stick around, because step five I think it's one you might be missing, okay, so welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and I'm so glad that you are here.
Speaker 1:Today. We're talking about trust and talent, and my opening statement was that if your church staff isn't thriving, it probably doesn't have as much to do with talent and probably has everything to do with trust. All right, five points I want to make today that will help you get where you need to be if you're suffering on your church staff or your church staff isn't healthy right now. The first is make vulnerability normal, not risky. We're talking about trust today. Teams build trust. When leaders go first. You have to lead from the top down. Trust when leaders go first, you have to lead from the top down. When a senior pastor or an executive pastor says I need help, it opens the door for everybody else to do the same. Vulnerability isn't a weakness, it's a trust accelerator. Let me repeat that Vulnerability when you say I need help, when you lead from the top down. Vulnerability is not a weakness, it's a trust accelerator. So here's an action step that you can take today Start team meetings with leader-led vulnerability. Share a real challenge or a personal reflection before diving into all the business, and don't put yourself above everybody else. This vulnerability will help build trust among your entire team.
Speaker 1:Okay so, number one, make vulnerability normal, not risky. Okay, make it normal for you, but by you doing it, it also makes it normal for other people to be more vulnerable as well. Number two give people the same along the same line, but a little bit different. Take on this Give people a safe place to say really hard things. A closed door could be the most open place in your church if people know that it's safe. Okay, trust grows when people can give feedback. Trust grows when people can challenge ideas, and trust grows when people can express disagreement without the fear of fallout. Okay. So here's a tip for you Set expectations that disagreement is not disloyalty. There are too many churches where disagreement is automatically seen as disloyalty. In fact, disagreement should be in a healthy culture. It should be a sign of a healthy thinking. Team member. Okay. So that's number two. Give people a safe place to say hard things, okay. Number three move from team building to trust building.
Speaker 1:Okay, team building is it's quite the rage, and it has been for the last I don't know 10, 15, 20, 25 years. We've got to build a great team, and you do need to build a great team, but by building a great team. How do you build a great team? You build a great team by building great trust, and according to this article that I'm getting some of this content from today, I'll leave a link to that in the comments. Hopefully, I'll remember to do that. According to the article, though, the most team building activities are shallow and disconnected from real work, and you know this. You've done all the icebreakers. You've done all the team building activities and it's okay. You do that. Yeah, for an introvert, it's always makes me I hate icebreakers, I hate team building exercises. Let's just get onto it, okay.
Speaker 1:What builds trust is working through something hard together. What builds trust is solving a problem, navigating tension, surviving Easter Sunday right, that is what builds trust, instead of trust walks and blindfold games. Maybe give your team a challenge that you can solve together. That's where the real magic happens. That's where, as you do life together and you do things and you accomplish things together, man, that's where the trust is built. And if you have a trusting team, you're going to have a healthy team, okay.
Speaker 1:Number four this is important Honor strengths and admit weaknesses Okay. Everybody wants to be known for what they bring to the table. But trust also grows when we're honest about what we don't do. Well, okay, when we stop pretending to be perfect, especially if you're the main leader, the senior leader or the senior pastor, the executive pastor. When you stop pretending to be perfect, you're going to give others on your team permission to do the same. And for church teams, man, this is especially powerful. It models grace, it models humility and really it is the body of Christ in action, okay. And then, finally, there are going to be times where you're going to have to practice repair, okay. There are going to be times when people get on each other's nerves, where trust is breached, where conflict happens. And you have to remember conflict. This is so important. Conflict is not the enemy. Unresolved conflict is. Conflict isn't the enemy. Unresolved conflict is the enemy.
Speaker 1:Trust is built when somebody says hey, I didn't handle that well, I'm sorry. Make it normal to repair relationships quickly. Leaders who model repair again from the top down. Leaders that model repair show their team that mistakes aren't the end. They're an opportunity for growth. Okay. So is your team just coexisting or are they trusting each other? If you start with even just one of these five steps this week, even a small move toward trust can change your team's entire trajectory.
Speaker 1:Okay, I would love to be able to help you. Maybe you're in the middle of this and you're trying your best to get a team to trust each other and you're just like Todd I don't know what to do. I need some help. Reach out to me. I would love to help you. If I can't help you, I've got somebody on my team at Chemistry Staffing that could come alongside and partner with you and help you work out a strategy for how to get from where you are to what we're talking about here. A team that trusts each other, a team that's healthy. Reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. I would love to hear from you and, if there's a way that I can partner with you or your church, I would absolutely love that.
Speaker 1:We are here at Chemistry Staffing. Of course, our main business is, or our main work. Our main passion is helping churches and candidates find each other that can work together for at least five years to find that healthy, long-term fit, that churches and staffs become healthy and thriving in their communities. That's our passion. But we're passionate about every person that calls church ministry work their calling or their life goal. So we want to help you however we can to be healthy and to maintain that health. So any way that we can help you, any way that I can help you, reach out podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, thanks so much for joining us. We're here every weekday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you'll join me again soon.
