The Three-Year Trend: Why Church Staff Health Is Slowly Getting Worse

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, host Todd Rhoades discusses the subtle decline in staff health across evangelical churches. While most staff remain in the 'healthy' category, there's been a notable drop over the past three years. The episode explores this decline's signs, causes, and offers strategies for recalibration to prevent further erosion of staff wellbeing.• Staff health in evangelical churches is declining slowly.• 75% of staff are healthy, down from 82% three years ago.• Signs include lack of passion, decreased volunteerism, and just managing workloads.• Causes include continued addition of responsibilities without removing any, and too much focus on resilience over sustainability.• Importance of recalibration by measuring staff energy, creating space for feedback, and focusing on genuine joy and support.• Early corrective actions are vital to prevent major issues in staff health.

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Transcript

Quiet Signs Of A Slow Leak

Why Churches Keep Overloading Staff

Recalibrate By Measuring Energy

Build Joy Into Staff Meetings

Stress Tests For Role Sustainability

Bottom Line And Why It Matters

How To Get Help From Todd

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You look around your staff meeting and everybody seems fine. They're engaged, they're present, they're actually getting things done. But here's what the data is telling us. Staff health across evangelical churches is quietly and slowly sliding downward, not crashing, not burning out in massive numbers like what we saw a few years ago post-COVID. Just slowly getting worse. 75% of staff are still in the healthy category, but that number was 82% three years ago, in data that we found from our annual church staff health assessment. That's what we're going to talk about today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at ChemistryStaffing.com, and your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast five days a week. All right, let's first name what the slow decline actually looks like. Okay. There are some slow leak signs. It's not dramatic resignations or public meltdowns, although sometimes those happen. It looks more like this. It's the worship pastor who used to stay late but now leaves right at five o'clock, right on the dot. It's the children's director who stopped volunteering for extra events. It's staff who are doing their jobs well but just seem like maybe they've lost that spark somewhere along the way. They're present, but they're not passionate. They're functional, but they're not necessarily flourishing. So here's what could be causing this quiet drift. Post 2020, we kept adding in the church without subtracting. We added new initiatives, we added new programs, we added new expectations. We told this staff member, hey, we want you to continue to do what you're doing, but we also would like you to pick this up as well. We never ever took anything off people's plates. We just kept adding. And we normalized this doing more with less as a permanent state. We celebrated resilience so much that we forgot all about sustainability. Staff learned to manage their energy instead of expressing their gifts. Now listen, nobody intended for this to happen. We're not bad leaders, but we've been so focused on keeping the ship afloat that we missed somehow the slow leak in the hall. So it's time to recalibrate in many churches. And I'm a big advocate for recalibration. Start by measuring energy, not just productivity. Ask what's giving you life. Ask your staff that. And it was a celebration. They do it once a month. It was a celebration where all of the staff, there are probably about 50 staff in the room, all of the staff came together and it was a celebration of what God was doing. And everybody came and had the opportunity to do a speed round of uh just tell us a cool story about some life that was changed or something really cool that happened in your ministry. And I tell you what, I wasn't even on staff and I was energized. I was excited by it. Look at your staff meetings. Are there times of joy? Are there times where you're sharing the good things that are happening, not just going through the motions of trying to figure out how to get more with less? Think about your most gifted staff member right now. Are they operating in their sweet spot or are they just managing their workload? When's the last time that you told them about something, or the last time that they told you about something that really excited them? And if they left tomorrow, would you replace them with two people? Because no one would take that job description and that salary and take on what they're doing. That's your answer about whether that load on that person is sustainable. Here's your bottom line for today Staff health doesn't collapse overnight, it does erode quietly and slowly and over time. And by the time you notice the symptoms, sometimes you're already behind the curve. Your staff's health is your church's future. Small course corrections now could prevent major repairs later. That's it for today. I hope it's been helpful to you. My name is Todd Rhodes. You're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hey, if there's any way that I can help you or my team at chemistry staffing can help you, please reach out to me. You can go to my website, todd.church. There's a contact form there on the website, tells you how different things that we can help you with in our work at chemistry staffing and how I can maybe assist you personally. Todd.church is the URL for that. But if your church is hiring, if you have a really tough staffing situation, if you need some help with some compensation analysis or some succession planning, man, that's what we're passionate about, and that's what we spend our days doing is partnering with churches just like yours. So go ahead and reach out to me if there's any way that we can serve you at all. And we'll be right back here again tomorrow on the Healthy Church Death Podcast. Hope you have a great job.