The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Your Vision Isn't Clear (And Everyone Knows It)
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It's one of the most avoidable and fixable problems on any church staff, and that's fuzzy vision. If you're noticing somehow low energy or stalled momentum or internal frustration, chances are the root issue isn't necessarily effort. It's clarity. And today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we're going to explore how fuzzy vision quietly erodes staff culture and morale and effectiveness and what to do to bring some clarity back to your team. Hi there. This is the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. And my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm your host here on the podcast and also one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com. All right, do you ever feel like your team is busy, but they're not just they're just not going anywhere? It's like they're treading water. It's like they're on a treadmill. You get the analogy, right? Everybody's busy, but nothing's happening. And the problem might not be your people. Initially, a lot of leaders just think that's my staff. They're just not motivated. What's going on? It might not be your people, it might be your vision. And today, what I would like to do is unpack one of the quietest killers, I think, of momentum on any church staff, and that's vision confusion. And trust me, your team can smell it a mile away. So here's my overall arching kind of big idea for today. When the vision is fuzzy, so is the culture, right? Great teams thrive on clarity. And without clarity, people make assumptions, they can drift into silos, they can chase their personal agendas, maybe something that's even not in your church's DNA. Sometimes they do it unknowingly, sometimes they do it just because there's no clarity, so they figure they can probably get away with it. Some get frustrated and start blaming others. And the big result, though, of this lack of clarity is misalignment and burnout and staff conflict that just feels personal, personal at times, but it usually isn't. But it feels like that. All right. So how do you know if you're leading with a vague vision? Okay. And I know I know all different kinds of leaders, and some are just incredible visionaries. They're driven by vision and they articulate vision. They like live and breathe vision, right? And then there are others that are not visionaries. Maybe they're more shepherds, or they just have different gifts, but it's not that they don't like vision, it's just that it doesn't come naturally to them. So how do you know if your vision is vague? You talk about reaching people or making disciples, but nobody actually knows what that looks like. Those are two big things. Evangelism and discipleship. You talk about it, every church talks about it. You talk about reaching people, you talk about making disciples. But does your team, does your staff, does your church, do your volunteers actually know what that looks like? If they don't, you're probably leading with kind of a vague vision because they don't know how to accomplish the goal. There's no clarity. It's just unclear. So when that happens, everybody's defining success differently. Ministry teams create their own direction instead of a shared one. And decisions feel like a tug of war instead of United Front. And a lot of times it just results in conflict. Because if your vision is unclear as a leader and your board's vision is unclear, or maybe they don't know what your vision is, so they do try and develop their own vision to push you to go somewhere, man, that's just not gonna be a good scenario. I've seen it play out over and over again. And you get into that where the decisions and even the vision of where are we going, it just feels like a tug of war instead of a united front. Here's the deal: if everyone on your team can't articulate the same vision in one sentence, you don't have a clear vision. Let me repeat that again. If everybody on your team can't articulate the same vision of this is where we're going, this is what we're about as a church, if they can't do that in one clear sentence, you don't have a clear vision. Okay? So let's talk about how you bring clarity back to the center. All right. First of all, you have to come up with that vision. Where does God want you to go? And you as the leader, you have to work that out. If you have to work it out with your team, if you have to work it out with your board, you need to start having those discussions, but you need to figure out what the vision is. And then once you know what the vision is, you gotta repeat it. And you gotta repeat it often. More than you think is necessary. I remember going to a conference at Granger Community Church. Mark Beeson was the pastor there. He's since moved on to glory, but this was probably 25 years ago. I remember he was doing a talk on vision, and they showed a video clip, and they were going to they were gonna take their current worship space and they were gonna double it. So they were just gonna build another worship space right on the other side of that, and then they were gonna tear down this wall. And they showed probably, I bet 20 or 25 times video clips over a two-year period where Mark Beeson in his talk said, we're gonna tear down that wall. We need to tear down that wall 25 times. You would think, and his point was you think that you're just saying the same thing over and over again, but you have to repeat the vision. You have to repeat the vision often, more often than you think is necessary. And you need to get specific. Define what success looks like for your church in the season. His line was very specific. We're gonna, I forget it was break down or tear down that wall. Tear down that wall for four words, and then you can articulate the vision behind that. But everybody got that. Everybody knew when he put his hands up and went like this, he didn't have to say the words. They knew exactly what he was talking about. Involve your team in clarifying language because they'll own what they help create. So, again, if you're stuck, if you don't have clarity, get your team involved because if you get their buy-in and you start talking about the vision and they had buy-in on it, they're gonna own it. And that's really what you want. And then it's just really simple. I mean, it's much easier to talk about than it is to do. I totally get that. But then once you have the vision and you start communicating it, you need to tie every initiative, every event, and every goal back to that vision. And actually, if a ministry or an event or an initiative doesn't go back to that vision, that's a good indication that you've got some mission creep or some vision creep, and you really need to think about do we really need to do that? We need to change our vision or change our programming because it's not matching our vision. Clarity isn't just good leadership, it is the oxygen that your staff needs to breathe. Alright. Final thought, bottom line for today. When the vision is clear, momentum returns. Your team will move faster with less drama and more joy. I'd love to hear from you today. Drop me a comment. What's one sentence, what's the one sentence that captures your church's current vision? Let me challenge you. If you're like Todd, I don't know. Take some time right now. Shut your door, put wherever you are, get out a piece of paper and start working on that vision. I'd love to hear that. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. Drop me that one sentence that captures your church's current vision. And if there's any way that I can help you or your church, feel free to reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. I'd love to hear your story. And if there's a way I can help your church in any healthy staff initiative, whether it's hiring, whether it's staff compensation, any of those things, just reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. I'd love to hear from you. All right, that's it for today. If you're listening or watching on Friday, the day that this was released, I hope you have a great weekend. If not, have a great day. And we'll be back tomorrow for you guys. But we'll be back here Monday, right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you'll join me later.
