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
Silent Alarm: Stop Trying to Rebuild Alone
Todd Rhodes concludes the Silent Alarm series with a crucial message about the danger of trying to rebuild church staff pipelines alone. The most resilient churches recognize that rebuilding ministry is too important and complex to be carried solely on one leader's shoulders.
• Too many church leaders are recruiting, interviewing, evaluating, onboarding, and fixing culture alone, which is crushing them
• Isolation feels like control but almost always leads to collapse
• Four essentials for rebuilding: wise counsel, collaborative process, outside perspective, and spiritual dependence
• Rebuilding ministry isn't just about strategy but about obedience and spiritual leadership
• The Silent Alarm book dives deeper than the podcast series, available in physical, digital, and audio formats
Get your copy of Silent Alarm at chemistrystafffing.com/silentalarm and join us next week as we begin exploring new topics for church staff members.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
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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.
Welcome aboard to the final episode of our Silent Alarm series here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes. I'm the co-founder over at chemistrystaffingcom and we are finishing our Silent Alarm series based on my brand new book called Silent Alarm, and we're closing with the one shift that may unlock every other change. You need and you don't have to rebuild alone. That's the topic of today's podcast. Let me say it plainly there are too many pastors, too many executive pastors, too many board chairs, too many search committee people and staff leaders that are trying to carry the weight of rebuilding the church staff pipeline solo. They're recruiting alone, they're interviewing alone, they're evaluating candidates alone, they're onboarding alone, they're trying to fix the culture alone and it's crushing them. You were never meant to carry this kind of rebuilding project without support. And the truth is, rebuilding ministry isn't just hard, it's complex and it's emotional and it's spiritual and it's strategic. And trying to figure it all out without help it's not noble and it's just absolutely unnecessary. So let's talk a little bit about doing it alone. In this mentality and what it looks like in real life, you're not sure who to trust, so you just make the call yourself right. Maybe you've had a bad experience with a search firm or a coach, so you've sworn off outside help. Yep, maybe you're afraid to involve your team because it might expose more dysfunction than you're ready for the team to face. Or maybe you've just gotten used to that feeling that it all rests on your shoulders. And if that's you, I get it. I get it. But here's the warning If you're a leader who isolates yourself, you're going to tend to burn out or blow up. But here's the warning If you're a leader who isolates yourself, you're going to tend to burn out or blow up. But the good news is there's another way. Here's your truth bomb for today Isolation feels like control, but it almost always leads to collapse. Isolation feels like control, but it almost always leads to collapse. All right, so, todd, mr Fancy Pants there, what's the alternative? You just called me Fancy Pants. I'm not sure how I feel about that. What's the alternative?
Speaker 1:If you want to build, you need four things. Okay, you need wise counsel. Okay, you need people who can speak truth into your blind spots with love and with clarity. This could be a coach, it could be a peer network, it could be somebody outside of your church entirely, but you have to have wise counsel. You need to implement a collaborative process. Number two build your board. Bring your board and your staff and your trusted leaders into that conversation. Now, you don't do that so that you can dump all the weight on them, but don't carry it all on your own either. Collective ownership and collaborative process builds long-term alignment, okay. So you number one need wise counsel. Number two you need collaborative process. Number three you need some outside eyes. Okay, you can't read the label from inside the bottle. A trusted outsider can often spot what you become numb to or even scared to name, or just things that you don't see. So an outside set of eyes and ears is incredibly essential and very wise on your part. That's number three. And then number four is spiritual dependence.
Speaker 1:Now, this might sound obvious, but hear me, rebuilding your staff pipeline isn't just about strategy, it's about obedience, and if you're white, knuckling it in your own strength, it's time to let it go. So what does this look like, todd, mr Fancy Pants? What does this look like in practice? Okay, don't just pray alone. Invite your team to pray over the future together and don't just review resumes in isolation. Get input from a variety of perspectives and don't just assume that the next hire will fix everything. Do the work to fix what's under the surface now and don't just follow the loudest voice. Seek out the wisest voice or the wisest voices. The most resilient churches in this season are the ones that recognize that this work is absolutely too important and too complex to be done alone.
Speaker 1:Through this Silent Alarm series we've talked about some of the most urgent issues facing the church staff pipeline and what we can do to rebuild it before it's too late, and I hope some of this has resonated with you, maybe even challenged you, maybe even convicted you a little bit. And if it has, I would encourage you to grab a copy of the book. It really summarizes the last eight years of my life, a lot of the things that I've learned being involved in helping so many churches and church staff. People connect and find each other, and the book goes so much deeper than we could ever go in these 10 episodes together. It's written for leaders like you who aren't willing to settle for barely getting by anymore, and you can find it. Grab your own copy right here at chemistrystaffingcom.
Speaker 1:Slash silent alarm. There is a physical copy you can order. There is a digital copy. There's also if you just love the sound of my voice to help you get to sleep at night. There's also an audio book version available again at chemistrystaffingcom slash silent alarm. It's time to rebuild, but you don't have to do it alone. Thanks so much for joining me on this 10-episode journey.
Speaker 1:We're going to be back next week with brand new topics, brand new things to talk about that hopefully, if you're a church staff member, you are going to enjoy next week's podcast. And thanks for caring deeply about the health and the future and the leadership of the church. The alarm is sounding. Let's not hit snooze. Let's respond together and if there's any way I can help your church or any kind of feedback you want to give me on this podcast, this series or even the book if you've got a copy of it, I would love to hear from you. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, that's it for today. I hope you have a great weekend and be great. Thank you, I'm going to help you. Church staff podcast you.
