The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Ministry Triage Team_ How to Lead Through Staff Overwhelm
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When ministry demands spike, most churches do the wrong thing. They power through it. But what if you've created a ministry triage team instead? Today on the podcast, we're going to introduce the idea of a temporary static triage team that helps your church identify what's essential and what's optional and what's overdue for pruning. And if you're facing staff overwhelming, this is the conversation that you need today. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over of ChemistryStaffing.com, and your host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast every single weekday, Monday through Friday. Well, have you ever felt that your church staff is stuck in survival mode? I mean, everybody just feels like they're exhausted. And nothing, nothing just feels sustainable because everything's just happening at 100 miles an hour. The calendar won't stop growing. It's just a mess. And you think maybe we'll get through this. I don't know if it's ever going to slow down. And you're just you're just at the end of your rope because you're just starting to get exhausted. And not just you, everybody on your team. Well, here's a fresh idea. I want to kind of bounce off of you today. It's just you and me here, right? Anyway. Um let's create a ministry triage team. Not to add more meetings, but to decide what actually deserves our time. Uh this one mindset shift could be able to save your team's energy and focus and maybe even their future. The problem, most of the times, is not capacity. I mean, chances are your team and you, because you're in your position, you probably have high capacity. The problem isn't with capacity, it's with clarity. And most staff burnout isn't caused by too much work. It's caused by too many unclear priorities. And without kind of this triage mindset that I'm introducing to you today, your team starts to treat everything as equally urgent. VBS, a new giving platform, the broken lobby TV, two weddings this weekend, and a funeral tomorrow afternoon that you just found about found out about this morning. All those things get the same equal attention. And that's the problem, honestly, is when everything matters, nothing gets the focus that it deserves. So what would this triage team actually do? Well, it's first of all, it's not a committee, okay? It's think of it more uh as maybe a rapid response team. It can be maybe two or three key leaders, maybe even temporary. And their job is pretty simple. It's define what's mission critical right now. Maybe you already have a leadership team at your church. That could be your triage team. They can define what's actually mission critical right now, and they can identify what can wait, what can maybe be be shrunk a little bit, or maybe what can be even skipped altogether right now for the season. Not forever, but for right now. And this team can help you unblock overwhelm team members. The goal is not to control people, it's to really to unleash them, to allow them to get rid of some of the things that don't have to have to have to happen today or tomorrow or next week, uh, but to use that high capacity to kind of unleash um what they're doing and how uh how active they can be and how productive they can be, and to really move the ministry forward so that not everybody is exhausted all the time. By giving clear permission to give some focus or to some pause or to say no, that's really, really gonna make a difference in just how your team feels. And it might slow it down, you know, maybe not to 55 miles an hour, but it might slow it down from 100 to 70, maybe to it's a little bit more 70 miles an hour, where it's a little bit more managed. So, how do you build this triage culture, even if you don't have a team? Well, you can start with every staff meeting with one question. Okay. What feels overwhelming? What's cleaning your clock this week? Um, and and maybe you could even use a shared Google Doc. We use these all the time in chemistry staffing across our team to kind of track different levels of what we're doing and what information goes where, and Google Docs are great for that. Uh, you can create a do later, do less list uh right next to your to-do list. Now, this is this is an interesting idea, right? Everybody's got a to-do list. Maybe, maybe it's in your head, but maybe maybe you're a list guy like I am, and you have it either on your computer on a piece of paper where you're you're writing down, and sometimes I'll write something down that I that I just did and I cross it out to make me feel accomplished. Don't judge me, you do that too. Uh, but maybe instead of just having a to-do list, maybe you also take things off of that to-do list right now and put them on either a do later or do less list that can kind of clear up what you actually have to do. And here's the key, particularly if you have a staff and you're the leader, you need to model this yourself. You need to be the leader who knows when to pause and not just press forward. And you'll be shocked. I think you really will be. You'll be shocked at how grateful your team is when somebody finally says, This can wait. Here's a final thought. You know, in medicine, the term triage, that's usually how we associate the term, is in medical MASH was all about the show. MASH was all about triage, right? Um, in medicine, triage saves lives. In ministry, it might just save your stack. All right, here's the thought I want to leave with you today. What's one thing that your team could triage this week? One thing that you could take off of your to-do list and maybe put it on your don't list or your wait list. That could really help. I'd love to hear from you. Any comments about the podcast today or any questions about healthy church staff, or maybe you need some help at your church with hiring staff. I would love to be able to help you and partner with you. Reach out to me anytime, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, that's it for today. Hope this was helpful to you, and uh hope you'll join me again right back tomorrow on the healthy church.com. Have a great day.
