The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
God May Surprise You More Through the Unplanned Than the Strategized
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Hey friends, welcome back to the Healthy Church Stat Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders of OverchemistryStaffing.com, and Happy New Year. We're in a series, and we're going to continue this a little bit next week as well, just starting off the new year. Today's mindset shift is for every planner, every spreadsheet maker, every colored coded whiteboard junkie. And maybe I'm preaching to the choir here, but I know there's more than just me out there. We're going to talk about beauty and necessity of leaving margin for surprise. Okay. That's what we're talking about today. Church staff, most of us, love a good plan. And I get it. We need them. We need great plans. We need sermon series a year out. We forecast all of our budgets as we should. We schedule the calendar to avoid burnout, hopefully. Ironically, by making it, maxing it out in January again. We plan volunteer rotation, small group launches, building maintenance. There's nothing wrong with planning, and there's nothing wrong with strategy. But here's the tension. Okay? If you plan too tightly, and this is a good word because you're probably, hopefully, not in the office today, and you won't be until next week, but think about this over the weekend. If you plan too tightly, you might leave no room for God and for the God moments that weren't on your calendar. Some of the most important moments of this next year will not show up on your calendar. They won't be the ones that you scheduled. They'll be the ones that you allow. Let me take a quick walk through scripture with you today. Okay, God calls Abraham, for example. He doesn't give him a destination. He tells Moses to walk into Egypt with nothing but a staff and some trauma. He shows up to Mary as we just kind of celebrated through an angelic interruption. Jesus called fishermen in the middle of their normal work day and asked them to leave their nets. Paul gets redirected in the middle of a church planting strategy. In every case, the plan they had wasn't the plan God used. So guess what? In today's vernacular, what's on your Google calendar might not be what God is going to use, and that's not an accident. That's a pattern. God does use plans, but he also disrupts them, and we need to be open to that. He disrupts them not to frustrate us, but to reframe us, to shift our focus from control to availability, and this new year, maybe your greatest contribution to your church might not be what you execute, it might be what you allow space for God to interrupt. Church staff, especially leaders, tend to overplan because they've been burned by chaos. So we systematize, we anticipate, we prep for every single possible scenario. I do, and I'm preaching to myself today as well. So while good structure can be a gift, we can accidentally structure out of the spirit. The call this year? Leave some of that holy margin in your weekly schedule for conversations that don't have an agenda. Leave margin in your team rhythms to celebrate what God's doing and doing spontaneously. Plan some margin in your strategic plans for what hasn't happened yet. Plan some margin in your heart for God to speak in unexpected ways, because remember the Savior of the world came through a plan that nobody saw coming. So don't be locked into yours. So much that you miss the divine detour that God might be bringing your way. Here's the truth for today. Your flexibility might be more anointed than your efficiency. Let me repeat that. Your flexibility might be more anointed in the new year than your efficiency. God's greatest surprises usually come when your plans get interrupted and you decide to stay open anyway. I hope that's helpful for you as you contemplate this next year. And we will be here every single weekday. At least that's the plan, Monday through Friday, right here on the Healthy Church Step Podcast. I've got some really exciting things that I want to share with you in 2026. So I hope that you'll join me each and every day. If you haven't subscribed, go ahead and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.
