The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Why Most Church Staff Feel Lost by Tuesday Morning
Sunday's ministry high often crashes into Monday's disorientation, leaving church staff feeling lost rather than simply tired. This emotional rollercoaster creates a "fog of unprocessed purpose" that impacts clarity, creativity, and connection to calling.
• Sunday services generate adrenaline and dopamine that inevitably crash by Monday morning
• The transition from visible spiritual leader to administrative staffer creates "role whiplash"
• Monday's disorientation isn't laziness—it's withdrawal from Sunday's emotional and spiritual high
• Schedule 30 minutes of spiritual reflection first thing Monday morning to re-anchor your purpose
• Build relational connections into early week schedules to restore emotional energy
• Avoid making major decisions on Mondays when discernment might be compromised
• Create sustainable weekly rhythms that honor both Sunday's peak and Monday's necessary valley
• Ministry effectiveness requires building structure around recovery, not just performance
If there's any way I can come alongside your church in healthy staff initiatives we talk about on the podcast, reach out to me anytime at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com. Whether it's hiring, compensation analysis, staff restructuring, or bringing in outside perspective, we'd love to partner with you.
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Sunday might be your most visible and victorious moment as a church leader. Sundays and Tuesdays feel like a totally different story and sometimes it can feel like you're wandering through a fog. This just isn't fatigue, it's disorientation, and today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we're going to break down why this happens, how it impacts your clarity and your creativity and your calling, and, hopefully, we're going to talk about what you can do about it. If you've ever felt the crash after the rush, you're not alone and we're going to help you reframe the rhythm of your week and recover your focus right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi, my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over chemistrystaffingcom and I'm your host right here every weekday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Question for you have you ever felt like you crushed Sunday and then, absolutely on Monday, felt like a spiritual zombie? It's not burnout. Sometimes it can be, but usually it's not. It's more disorientation than burnout, and most church staff don't feel tired on Monday. They feel lost on Tuesday. All right, so Mondays and Tuesdays are really they're hard days for church staff people, especially when you're coming off a great weekend and if you don't know how to reset the rhythm, though, it can really wreck the creativity and your clarity and your calling, and it can make your Thursday, Wednesday and Thursday and Friday also not be really great. So let's talk about what's really going on and how we can recover.
Speaker 1:First, I think we just have to realize that Sunday morning or Saturday and Sunday, whatever your weekend services are, that's a peak, right. You build up until that big service, at least in most of our churches, and that weekend service is your peak. But peaks have a cost. Sunday is the Super Bowl of your week, but it doesn't happen just once a year, it happens every seven days, Sundays. I don't know how it happens. It's a miracle sometimes, I think but Sundays just seem to keep happening. And you've been preparing for it, You've been praying for it, You've been pouring yourself out all day on Sunday, and when it's over, it feels like what just happened. Your adrenaline drops, your dopamine fades and suddenly, even after your Sunday nap, your soul starts asking questions that it didn't have time for yesterday.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is not laziness, it's the crash that follows a mountaintop. When my wife and I first got married, she had a favorite aunt and uncle. It was Aunt Ellen and Uncle Norris, and they lived about four hours away and they would come and visit us maybe once or twice a year, okay, but my wife loved Aunt Ellen and Uncle Norris and she lived for the time that they would come and visit. But when they went home she experienced just this and we used to call it it's the Aunt Ellen and Uncle Norris kind of slump. It wasn't laziness, it wasn't, it was just kind of the sadness that something you'd look forward to, something that you'd build up for for so long, had happened and you had a great time, but now it's gone. Okay, so that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:It's the crash that happens a lot of times for church staff people after a big weekend on, say, Monday morning or Tuesday. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about, maybe, the hidden disorientation behind the crash. Okay, this is the part we don't talk about. Okay, You're not just physically tired, ash. Okay, this is the part we don't talk about. Okay, You're not just physically tired, You're existentially just disoriented.
Speaker 1:On Sunday, man, you're on your game, You're crystal clear on your role, you know you're needed, You're visible, You're locked into, you are locked in, You're in mission mode, baby, and nothing's going to stop you. But on Monday, there's no stage, no structure, just emails, internal wandering, those notes, those anonymous notes that you get dropped on the off-free. All that happens on Monday all the criticism and just all the letdown. And by Tuesday you're starting to forget what happened over the weekend and you're starting to wonder if anything was even accomplished. You're not lazy on Monday and Tuesday. You're just kind of lost in this kind of fog of unprocessed purpose. So what's actually going on here? All right, let's really name it.
Speaker 1:Okay, we don't talk about this in church circles, but what we get to do on Sundays produces a lot of adrenaline and Monday morning the adrenaline's gone. You're kind of having that withdrawal, some actual physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. From the adrenaline withdrawal there's emotional depletion. Maybe you're just tired, Maybe it was a great Sunday, Maybe it was a hard Sunday, but you spent your all and you're emotionally depleted. Maybe you've got a little bit of role whiplash or some identity confusion. That happens on Monday or Tuesday or even starting on Sunday night, when you think about oh, I got to go back into the office tomorrow. You went from spiritual quarterback to black, silent staffer in under 24 hours and you wonder why you feel weird. Let me put it this way it's like leading worship, going from leading worship to wondering if the toilet paper got restocked in the bathroom. Right One. You feel like man. That's my purpose. The next is what am I doing here? So here's what I would recommend Build into, or at least think about, a strategy for Mondays and Tuesdays, Maybe a reorientation plan.
Speaker 1:Okay, Maybe you can't avoid the crash, but you can build a runway that'll help you get back to clarity. Here a couple ideas Schedule 30 minutes first thing, Monday morning, for spiritual reflection. Not planning, not responding to the good, the bad, the ugly that happened over the weekend. Just take 30 seconds and root yourself in the Word. Get some time alone with God and really do some time with spiritual reflection. Do some early, some relational stuff early in the week as well. Maybe lunch with a staffer, maybe a 10 minute check-in with your team, Anything that you find in the way that God wired you that's going to help you get refreshed and re-energized. Do that. Plan that for Monday morning along with that spiritual time for spiritual reflection, which is one-on-one, and then the relational is others with your team or other volunteers or other people in your church. What that's going to help you to do is it's going to help you to re-anchor yourself to your mission and remind yourself of the why.
Speaker 1:Here's another rule that I really like to tell people try not to and you might think this is silly, but I'm telling you it's true Try not to make big decisions or big deep edits on Mondays, because Mondays need to be your reset day. Then you need to give yourself time to kind of stabilize, and this isn't just about productivity, it's about soul care. Okay, your week needs to have rhythm, not just repetition. So Sundays are vital, but they shouldn't dominate your emotional ecosystem. A healthy week has some ebb and flow and a sustainable leader builds some structure around recovery on those Mondays and Tuesdays, because ministry is a marathon, not a splint. So if Tuesdays feel like a void, it's really time to stop blaming yourself and redesign your rhythm.
Speaker 1:Okay, here's the bottom line for today the letdown after Sunday. It's real, we all know it is, but it doesn't have to define your whole week. It can if you don't build some rhythms that help to restore. Not just routines, but you need to restore those things that you have to repeat. Okay, so that's what your Monday and Tuesday looks like. You need to build on those rhythms that help you to restore, to get you back to where you need to be.
Speaker 1:I hope that's been helpful to you. I know when I was on a church staff man Mondays, I used to do an email newsletter called Monday Morning Insight and always got great response back from people that said that man, this really helped me reset after yesterday. And Mondays are just tough. We tell churches when we're doing a search for them at Chemistry Staffing. We tell them you're probably not going to want to look at the resumes that come in on Mondays, especially Monday mornings. Those are all the people that had a really bad week or have not done a reset and they're just looking to leave and find something different. You don't want to look at those resumes. So I hope this is helpful to you. I really want you to be healthy and to build in this rhythm into your life and maybe you're at a point in your ministry where you man, Todd, I really need to have that reset.
Speaker 1:If there's any way that I can come alongside of your church in any of these healthy staff initiatives that we talk about right here on the podcast, reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Maybe it's a hire, Maybe it's a fire. Sometimes that has to happen. Maybe it's just a compensation analysis Are we paying? Maybe it's a staff restructure.
Speaker 1:Todd, we've been going for so long but we're out of control. We just need to have an outside set of eyes and ears. Come in and take a look at what we're doing and help us to know best. I can do any of that Love to partner with you and we have people on our team, if I'm not available, that can come alongside in a particular area, maybe at succession or compensation any of those things we can help you. Just reach out to me. We'll hop on a quick Zoom call see if there's a way we can partner together. Podcasts at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, that's it for today. I hope you'll join me again tomorrow right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We're here every day, Monday through Friday, and I hope you have a great day you.
