The Hit by a Bus Test: Is Your Ministry Position Covered?

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the importance of having a succession plan for ministry staff beyond just the senior pastor. He emphasizes the need for documenting key responsibilities and contacts to ensure smooth transitions when staff members leave, either unexpectedly or otherwise.• Ministry roles are ecosystems that require succession planning.• Most churches only prepare for the senior pastor’s departure, leaving other roles in disarray.• Institutional knowledge is lost without proper documentation.• A simple, two to three-page document can outline daily, weekly, and annual tasks, key contacts, and critical information.• Updating this document biannually helps maintain its relevance.• Succession planning is crucial for stewardship and continuity of the ministry.

Have questions or comments?  Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com

Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.

- - - - -

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.

Transcript

Why Ministries Stall After Staff Leave

You Matter, But So Does Documentation

Build The Two-To-Three Page Plan

The 30-Day Continuity Challenge

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You drive to work on Tuesday morning and your phone meetings and it's your exp or executive pastor and he says, Hey, where's the passport for the kids ministry database? Uh, and how would you run town for the Wednesday night service? And also, who has a key to the supply closet? And then you realize something terrifying. A couple things terrifying. Number one, either your executive pastor is getting ready to fire your butt and trying to cover his faces, or you realize something else totally different. If you disappeared tomorrow, your ministry might be in chaos. That's what we're talking about today and what we've been talking about all week here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. And my name's Todd Rhodes, and thanks for joining me. Most churches only plan for one person to leave. The senior pastor gets a succession plan. Everybody else, hey, good luck. We act like youth pastors and worship leaders are just replaceable. But ministry positions aren't just jobs, they're actually ecosystems. And when you leave without a plan, or when somebody leaves from your staff without a plan, uh, they take institutional knowledge with them. And here's what actually happens: somebody scrambles to figure out all your passwords, your volunteers don't know who to call, your important relationships get dropped, and the systems that are in your head just disappear. And when the new person starts, guess what? They start from zero. And the ministry that you took so long to help build loses momentum for months. It's not because you're irreplaceable, but because you never documented what you do. We've been talking about this all week. And now listen, I'm I know you're not being selfish by thinking that you're important. You are important. We at chemistry, we say every person that we talk to is special, unique, and valuable because we believe that God made everybody, you, me, everybody, special, unique, and valuable. And if somebody is special and unique and valuable to God, then oh my, they better be special, unique, and valuable to us. You are important. You're being realistic about what you've built. That doesn't mean that if you keep all the information to yourself when you do leave, and you might not even be considering leaving, it might be 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road. But when you do leave, something else is gonna leave with you, and it's all the stuff that's in your head. So the simple plan that I would like to give you this week, and it really is pretty simple, okay? We're talking we're talking a little bit of time here, okay? I'm not gonna not gonna lie to you here. But I think this is really gonna be beneficial to you and to your church in the event that either you get hit by a bus or you just decide that it's time to transition out of your world. What I'm proposing, a two-page document, okay? Two pages, really simple. Page one, write down your daily and your weekly rhythms. And maybe they're just all in your head right now. You've never taken time to really get it out of your head and onto a piece of paper. I would encourage you to do that. Page one is the daily and the weekly rhythms that you do. What do you do every day? What do you do every week? And then page two. Page two is more the annual calendar and also key relationships. Okay. So what do you do every year? When do you do it? And who else do you, who are your key relationships? Who are your key volunteers? And then you can also include passwords, vendor contacts, volunteer leaders. And then at the very bottom of page two, and you might even want to put this on page three. All right, I lied. Make it three pages. Add three things that would break if somebody didn't know them. And and then what you do is you just put it in a shared drive and you update it twice a year. Just put it in your calendar. Hey, January 1st, July 1st. You're those dates probably aren't the best dates, but two times a year, you will be pinged or reminded that you need to update this. Again, man, this is not about you being indispensable. It's about you being responsible. So, ministry transitions are already hard. You don't need to make them harder by leaving people in the dark. And your volunteers need to know what happens next. The new person that comes after you deserves to be able to have at least a half a chance to succeed. And honestly, you really deserve to lead well as well. And whether you're fired or you're called somewhere else, or you're hit by that actual bus, it's always in your best interest to lead well. So the bottom line for today, and we've been talking about this the last couple weeks, succession planning is not just for the senior pastor, and it's not about ego. It's about stewardship of what God has allowed you to build and where you are. This week, I want you to think about that two to three page document. Now, you don't have to overthink it. You don't have to take a day off and go to the coffee shop. You can go to the coffee shop if you want to, but you don't have to take a day off to do this. You don't have to take a half a day to do this, probably an hour's worth of work. Just write down what someone would need to know to keep your ministry running for 30 days if you weren't there. That's it. 30 days continuity plan. You can probably do this in an hour. Your ministry matters too much to leave it a chance. So take care of yourself and take care of your team. I hope that's been helpful to you today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We'll be right back here again tomorrow. And in the meantime, if there's any want to give me a topic maybe to talk about on a podcast, you can do that. Love to hear any feedback that you have, positive, creatively negative. I get some of those too. You can reach me anytime by going to my website at todd.church. All right. Thanks so much. We will see you right back here again tomorrow on the Healthy Church Bad Podcast.