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
Ministry Overcommitment Is Wrecking Your Team
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Alright, we all know this. A lot of times the church ministry often rewards the busiest person in the room. When your team is constantly saying yes to every need, every idea, every request, it doesn't lead to greater impact. It actually leads to exhaustion and misalignment and burnout over time. And today on the podcast, we're going to uncover the dangers of chronic overcommitment on church staff and how to shift your culture toward health and sustainability. Hi there. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over ChemistryStaffing.com. Also your host right here every Monday through Friday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Well, let me guess, and I'm not a fortune reader, I'm not a prophet, but I bet this is true. Everybody on your team is juggling at least three roles. It's you go to the circus and you've got the plate spinner that has to keep all the plates spinning, and you have to pay attention to everything, or else something's going to drop and break all over the floor. Every single week when you're on a church staff, a lot of times just feels like it's a sprint, right? And margin feels a fantasy. You think if I just get this, just get through this week, next week I can take it easy. I do this all the time in my work at chemistry staffing. I'm like, if I just get this project done, I can sit back and relax and watch things just take off. Margin feels like a fantasy because it always is, because we're so involved. And maybe this sounds familiar to you. And if it does, you or your church staff team might be stuck in a really dangerous pattern of overcommitment. Yes, it's possible for church staff. Even though we're doing the most valuable thing in the whole world, we're serving Jesus, we're leading people toward Jesus. Hopefully, people are coming to Christ and being discipleshipped. It's the, I think, the most important job in the whole world. But yet we can be overcommitted. And today we're just gonna be honest, we're gonna call it out. And hopefully, what I'd like to help you do today, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling overcommitted, if you're feeling burned out, I'd like to just call it what it is and hopefully chart a healthier way forward. Okay. If you feel like you're just busy all the time, here's the first truth I want to pound into your head today. Okay, overcommitment is not a virtue. Overcommitment is not a virtue, it's a warning sign. And churches, maybe your church, maybe you're a lead pastor, and maybe this is what you're portraying to your staff, maybe you're a staff member and this is so much your church. Churches often treat hustle like it's holiness. But there's a difference between say serving faithfully and being stretched beyond capacity, because when you're stretched beyond capacity, you can't be faithful. You can't be, you your faithfulness is gonna wane over time. Chronic commitment doesn't just hurt staff productivity, it undermines trust and consistency and even spiritual depth because people, when they get tired, man, they're just not as with it spiritually. Staff who feel like they can never catch up begin to lose their sense of calling and even more importantly, their sense of joy. And they don't quit right away, but they do start to emotionally check out. And there is an unseen cost to always saying yes, to having your staff just constantly being busy and overcommitted, your quality is gonna drop. Sure, your quantity is gonna take over, but your quality is gonna drop. And important things over time will get sacrificed for urgent things. If everything is urgent, things the important things, the things that are just vital to ministry, they're gonna get sacrificed because you're just busy all the time. And any innovation that you may have done in the past, it's just gonna die because nobody has any breathing room. Nobody has any time to think about doing something new or innovating something. And this is important relationships will start to fracture under the weight of all of this unspoken resentment that absolutely comes when your team is so busy and overcommitted. When everything is a priority, absolutely nothing is a priority. And your most strategic leaders, they start quietly looking for the exit. Alright, so how do you build a culture that respects limits? You need to start with this rule: just because something is good doesn't mean it belongs on the calendar. It doesn't belong on the church calendar, it doesn't believe belong on your calendar, it doesn't believe belong on the calendar of your staff people. You need to normalize saying no so that you can protect your yeses because you need to create margin by pruning those recurring commitments that no longer serve your mission. We all have those on our calendar, and we've got to really take a serious look to get rid of some of those things. A side note here, I would really encourage you, especially if you feel like you're overcommitted. When was the last time you took a Sabbath? Um encourage, start with yourself. Encourage yourself this week to take a Sabbath. Just take a day and rest your rhythm. And then if you're in charge of your team, encourage a Sabbath with your team. Maybe even give everybody a day off once a quarter. Just to go take a Sabbath. Honest conversations about capacity and those team-wide Sabbaths, and when everybody's taking a Sabbath, that's going to actually rest and reset those rhythms that you need. And finally, here's the last question that I give you my final thought for today. What do you need to stop doing in order to thrive? What can you take off your calendar today, this afternoon, tomorrow, this weekend? That you don't really have to do, that if you just took it off your calendar, it will give you an opportunity to really concentrate on what is important. All right, here's the final thought for today, the bottom line. A burned out staff can still be busy, but it can't be fruitful. Don't confuse that motion with your mission. Health requires honest limits. Here's the question for today. What's one commitment your church might need to re-evaluate at the churchwide level? And then ask it of yourself. What's one commitment that I need to re-evaluate? Because I'm just too busy. I hope this has been helpful for you today. I'd love to hear from you, love to hear your comments. You can reach out to me anytime at my email address, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. Hear from a bunch of you every week, and I love hearing from you. Get some good comments on the podcast that it's helpful. I get some comments that say, Todd, you were totally wrong on that. That's fine. I love those. Even I don't love them, but I'd love to get the emails. I'd love to hear from you. Just reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, thanks so much for joining me today. We'll be right back here tomorrow on the LP Church Bad Podcast.
