The Spiritual Comparison Game_ How Ministry Competition Kills Teams

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the prevalent issue of spiritual competition among church staff, where team members unintentionally rank their spiritual experiences, leading to a toxic environment. Rhoades suggests focusing on authentic sharing of struggles rather than highlights, celebrating diverse expressions of faith, and stopping the 'testimony arms race.' The aim is to foster an atmosphere where staff collaborate in God's mission rather than compete for his approval.• Spiritual competition can subtly lead to a toxic church staff environment.• Staff often rank their spiritual experiences, creating unhealthy competition.• Encourages authentic sharing of both struggles and successes to avoid toxic competition.• Celebrating diverse expressions of faithfulness is crucial instead of scaling them.• Stopping the 'testimony arms race' helps focus on God's work in ordinary moments.• Urges teams to collaborate for God's mission, not compete for approval.

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Transcript

Why Good People Scorecard Faith

Four Ways To Break The Pattern

Bottom Line And How To Respond

Send Feedback And Connect

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You're in the staff meeting and somebody shares about their just incredible this week. And then another person one-ups with an even bigger testimony and pretty soon. Everybody's measuring their spiritual scorecard. Who prays the longest, who gets the most salvations, who has the deepest quiet times. This is sometimes you have this on a church staff, and it's the competition that nobody admits. And it happens a lot of times. People start ranking their spiritual experiences and comparing their calling stories and measuring their ministry fruit, but not in a healthy way. It's more kind of in a self-centered way. This is what this is, you know, it's this is what God's doing in me, but it doesn't come across. It's like God's doing something better in me than what he's doing in you, is how it comes across. And it's subtle sometimes, sometimes it's not so subtle, but it can be toxic. And that's what we're going to talk about here today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi, thanks for joining me. My name's Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders, along with Bastien, over at chemistrystaffing.com. Here's how this really shows up in real life. Here's how the game gets played. The youth pastor talks about radical obedience in every meeting, and the worship leader mentions their prayer life constantly. And somebody always has the most dramatic conversion story, and staff start performing spiritually instead of living it, and they compete for who's more surrendered, who sacrifices more, who trusts God harder. And maybe it's not this is not a problem in your church, but if this is a problem in your church, and if it's happening subtly, or maybe not so subtly anymore, this is a great podcast for you to listen to today. Now listen, nobody sets out to do this. At least most people don't. Um these are good people. Your staff are good people when they do this. They're good people who love Jesus. But here's what I think is happening, okay? They're just they're putting everything onto a spiritual scorecard. And again, some churches and staff do this almost without considering it. Other staff uh at other churches, their DNA is just such that this is not an issue. But regardless, we've all seen churches like this. So how do you break this kind of spiritual scorecarding that happens in many churches? First, you just gotta you gotta call it out. You gotta name it when you see it. Hey, we're starting to compare again. So name it when you see it. And second of all, lead from your own struggles. Share where you're actually wrestling with God, not your highlight reel. We've talked about that recently about only putting out there, only talking about all the mountaintop experiences. Share authentically where you're really wrestling with God. Not that high reel, a highlight reel, but your real life. So that's number two. And then three, celebrate different kinds of faithfulness. Everybody is hopefully trying to be on a path of being faithful to God, but that looks different from one person to the next. Um, I heard this phrase, I'll throw this in here, not probably years ago, and it always stuck with me. Is that your burden is not my passion. Okay? Your burden is not my passion. So you're gonna have people on your staff that are burdened with certain things. They're passionate about those things. They measure maybe it's prayer, and maybe maybe they're just totally zoomed in in prayer. But the way that they share that maybe makes it sound a little condescending to others. Everybody's everybody's burden does not necessarily have to be your passion, but you need to be passionate about something. So how do you celebrate these different kinds of passions and burdens and faithfulness? The admin who shows up quietly every day, that's that's as sacred as the pastor's breakthrough moment, right? That's really important that you don't try and scale these different acts of faithfulness into a priority list or one is better than the other. Alright, number four. Just stop the testimony arms race. Ask, how is God meeting you in the ordinary this week? Not just the mountaintop stuff. How is God just meeting you? What's one thing that happened to you this week that was just a real God moment that doesn't have to be spectacular starlight stuff happening? You know, when staff compete spiritually, teams will fall apart, people will hide their real struggles, they perform instead of pastoring, and the church feels it even when they can't name it. So here's your bottom line for today when we're talking about all of this stuff. The moment your staff starts competing for God's approval, they stop collaborating for God's mission. Let me repeat that one more time. The moment that your staff starts competing for God's approval, they stop collaborating for God's mission. Your team doesn't need more spiritual superstars, they need more authentic teammates. That's it for today. I hope this has been helpful to you. I would love to hear your feedback. Go ahead and reach out to me. You can go over to todd.church. That's the website URL. Todd.church tells you all different kinds of ways that I can serve you and we can serve you at chemistry staffing. But there's also a contact. Uh, if you just click up at the top, it will pull up a form where you can send me an email. I would love to hear your feedback. I'd love to hear any way that I might be able to help you or our team of chemistry can help you. I'd love to hear suggestions for what you think we should talk about here on the podcast. I try to answer each and every email that comes in. Reach out to me, Todd.church. All right, that's it for today. We're here every weekday, so I hope you'll join me again tomorrow.