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
When Your Church Staff Is a ‘Family’… Until It’s Not
We explore why the common practice of calling church staff a "family" can create unhealthy dynamics that undermine accountability and mission. This seemingly biblical and warm approach often leads to avoiding necessary conversations, protecting underperformers, and creating exclusive in-crowds that damage church culture.
• Family systems prioritize belonging regardless of performance while teams require alignment and accountability
• The family mindset makes firing or confronting staff feel like personal rejection rather than professional necessity
• Churches with family cultures often struggle with either firing too quickly or never addressing performance issues
• Close-knit staff "families" create insider/outsider dynamics that make new hires and volunteers feel excluded
• A better model is a mission-driven team (like Navy SEALs) where relationships remain warm but accountability is non-negotiable
• Healthy teams maintain both strong relationships and commitment to growth, feedback, and excellence
If you're struggling with creating a healthier staff culture, reach out to us at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com for coaching and support.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
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Churches love to call their staff a family. I mean, it sounds warm, it sounds relational, even sounds a little bit biblical, right? But what happens when the family culture leads to avoidance or entitlement or even dysfunction? Today we're going to unpack the trap of this family ministry mindset and how it can create kind of some toxic loyalty. It can blur accountability and ultimately hurt both relationships and missions in your church. So if you've ever struggled with kind of staff dynamics having hard conversations or unclear expectations under the guise of you know, hey, we're all just one big family here Hopefully today's Healthy Church Staff podcast will give you some clarity and maybe a little bit better model, because your church isn't a family, it's a team on mission. Okay, my name is Todd Rhodes. I am the host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I don't know how you found us. Maybe you're a regular listener, maybe you found us on YouTube or on your favorite podcast channel, but we are here every day, monday through Friday. We talk about things that are of interest to church staff, and we're going to do that again today, just like we do every weekday. All right, you don't fire your cousin, but maybe you should. Churches love calling their staff a family. But what happens when that sweet sounding culture starts to suffocate your team? I mean, if you've ever hesitated to address a toxic staff member because they feel like they're a part of your family, today's podcast is for you, because I'm going to show you why the ministry family mindset could actually be your church's biggest leadership trap. Okay, so I've got five different points here I want to share with you today on this whole topic. I hope that this will really help you, because I think that this is.
Speaker 1:You know, churches tend to say, hey, our staff is one big happy family. They mean well, but I don't know that it's the best way to look at the dynamic of your church staff. Okay, so it feels so good until it doesn't. Church leaders love saying we're family, it sounds biblical, it feels safe. But here's the problem. You know how family dynamics work. Right, it works great when it works great.
Speaker 1:But there are some really big issues with families. Families are about belonging, no matter what, and church staff teams are about alignment, accountability and mission. And when we confuse those two, we stop making necessary decisions like confronting sin or poor performance or even firing somebody who's clearly not a fit anymore. Because you never cut off your sister, right, you don't fire your brother or your cousin, but you might need to let go of your worship pastor right? Ministry loyalty gets weird really fast when we kind of use this. We're a big family mentality.
Speaker 1:Loyalty in churches can get messy really really quickly. You don't just owe somebody a job. You feel like you owe them your life. They were there for your kid's dedication, for crying out loud. You cried together on the retreat. You went through really really tough family situations. They were there for you, you were there for them. But guess what? Now it ain't working. Maybe they're underperforming, maybe they're creating division, or maybe they're just not growing, maybe they're just not a fit for your team anymore. And because it's family, you let it slide until it erodes trust and it frustrates the team and it poisons your leadership. Man, I've seen this happen time and time again that churches they tend to either fire way too fast or they never fire because you're a part of us, you're a part of our family and we don't want to make any waves.
Speaker 1:But accountability is absolutely essential and when you look at this, at your staff as a family, in that dynamic accountability becomes optional and actually accountability becomes almost at times impossible. Because here's the deal In true family systems you protect each other. You protect each other even from the consequences. But in staff teams you can't do that. Accountability is a non-negotiable. When the ministry family culture goes too far, it makes honest feedback awkward, it makes coaching personal and it makes evaluations taboo. You just don't do them because you don't want to create waves with your family. We don't want to hurt their feelings. The translation for that we're okay, just letting things die slowly. That's really what we're saying, right?
Speaker 1:The in-crowd culture that nobody talks about is this when your church staff is a tight-knit family, it's easy for outsiders to feel well outside. New hires struggle to break in. Volunteers feel like they're not really trusted, they're not a part of the team. People feel like there's a special inner circle and it's not them, and the result it's resentment, it's gossip, it's staff turnover, it's a culture of insecurity, and that's not a family, that's a clique.
Speaker 1:So, okay, what should we build instead? Because I think pastors that say and kind of put forth that hey, when you're on our staff, you're a part of a family, I think that's all really good intentions. But if you take it too far, you're going to suffer some of these consequences. So what should you do instead? Because having family, a staff as family, just sounds so right, right. What's the old Debbie Boone song that was you Light Up my life? It can't be wrong when it feels so right. That's kind of what we're talking about here. When we talk about staff as family, it feels right, but it can go oh so wrong.
Speaker 1:So what should you build instead? Well, staff teams should absolutely be caring and warm and relational. I'm not saying that they shouldn't, but the model the, the real model probably is not a family. The real model is more of a mission driven team think, think Navy SEALs, not Thanksgiving dinner. Okay, everybody has a role, everybody's accountable, everybody's growing, everybody's on the team. A matter of fact, teams are built for alignment and momentum and shared purpose and they can love each other, but Big. But here they must also confront and challenge and coach each other. That's healthy, that's biblical and that's how you build trust.
Speaker 1:Okay, so is your team church staff team a family or is it a team? Maybe it's time that you start having that conversation, because sometimes the nicest sounding cultures are the ones that need the boldest reset, because sometimes the nicest sounding cultures are the ones that need the boldest reset and if you're saying, todd man, what you said today really hit home. I've not ever really thought about it like that, but I found myself treating my staff like family and it's cost me because I have people on the team now that I've not had honest and tough conversations with, because they're family and I don't want to offend them and I don't want to hurt their feelings. Reach out to me. I would love to. This is one of the things that we do here at Chemistry is we work with churches, people just like you that are going through things just like this that need just a little bit of outside coaching, a little bit of help. We would love to partner with you. Reach just a little bit of outside coaching, a little bit of help. We would love to partner with you.
Speaker 1:Reach out to me podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. If this is your culture and you're like Tata, you've said this is exactly where we are, but I need to try and figure out how to get out of this. I would love to be able to work with you Again. Reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Drop a comment as well. Love to hear your comments or you can email them to me again. That same email address at podcast at chemistry staffing dot com.
Speaker 1:Hope this has been helpful to you. A tough subject and kind of something that maybe you've not thought about, but this will really come. This will bite you if you're not really really careful about how you set up, what your staff team is and how you're going to operate and make sure that you have that piece of that accountability structure in place. If you don't, you're just treating people like a family. It's going to hurt you in the long run. Okay, hope this was helpful to you. We're here every day on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you'll join me again. I'm Todd Rose, your host. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
