The Sacred No: When Saying No to Good Things Becomes a Ministry Skill

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the concept of opportunity costs in church leadership. The focus is on the pressure to say 'yes' to every opportunity, even when it aligns with values, leading to mission drift and overburdened teams. He emphasizes the importance of safeguarding the church's main mission by knowing when to say 'no' to additional opportunities, despite the fear of missing out (FOMO). Rhoades advocates for conducting audits on current commitments to ensure alignment with the church's core mission. • Churches often face the challenge of handling more good ideas than they can implement. • Saying 'yes' to too many opportunities can lead to overburdening and mission drift. • Faithfulness doesn't equate to doing everything; saying 'no' can be sacred. • Church leaders should regularly audit their commitments to focus on their core mission. • Protecting the 'no' helps maintain the effectiveness and sanity of the church staff.

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Transcript

When Good Opportunities Overwhelm

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You're sitting in the leadership team meeting when somebody brings up another amazing opportunity. It's not bad. Actually, if you think about it, it's pretty good. It would help people. It aligns with your values and your mission statement. But deep down your gut is just screaming, we can't handle one more thing. Yet somehow you hear yourself saying, let's explore, let's unpack that. Let's explore that a little bit later. And three months later, your team is drowning, and good thing is competing with your main thing. And that's what we're talking about today.

Opportunity Cost In Ministry

SPEAKER_00 0:42

It's opportunity costs. And you're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders, along with Matt Steen over at chemistrystaffing.com. So glad you're here talking about us today, talking with us here today, on this topic.

Good Ideas Versus Your Calling

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Every church gets buried with good ideas. There are more good ideas than you can ever implement. Matter of fact, most ideas are pretty good. They aren't bad ideas, they're just not your ideas or the best ideas that you should be doing. Somebody in your community has a ministry that they want you to adopt. Maybe a conference speaker shares something that changed their church, and somebody thinks that you should implement that at your church. Maybe your denomination has a new initiative that they're pushing. None of these things are evil, but they're not necessarily your calling, and they're not necessarily what you should be doing at your church. And that's where it gets a little bit tricky. Because we think saying yes makes us faithful. And we confuse opportunity with assignment. And if we're not careful, we're going to do something that we really shouldn't do. We're afraid that we're going to miss God's blessing if we pass. It's FOMO, it's ministry FOMO, right? The fear of missing out. We worry about disappointing people, so we pile good things on top of good things on top of good things until one day we wake up and we're doing everything poorly instead of a few things really well. Your main mission gets buried under your secondary missions. And hey, I hear you. Your heart is to serve God and to serve people, and that's beautiful. That's exactly where it should be. But faithful, I want you to hear me. Faithful does not mean that you have to do everything. It doesn't mean that you have to be available to everything.

Why No Can Be Sacred

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Because sometimes just saying no is sacred. No is a complete sentence. We taught our kids that growing up. No is a complete sentence. One word, no. And no is a complete sentence in ministry as well. Not no forever, just maybe no for now. You're not rejecting God when you decline a good opportunity. You're protecting what God has already given you to steward over. Jesus himself withdrew from good ministry opportunities. Think about it, he left crowds who needed healing so that he could go and pray alone. If Jesus practiced boundaries and sacred boundaries, then I think maybe we should too. So, all right, Todd, that sounds great. I appreciate that. But how does that work on my

How Your Yes Affects Staff

SPEAKER_00 3:24

team? Your staff can feel the weight of every yes that you've said. Matter of fact, your staff will feel the weight every time you say yes. And they're trying to execute 17 different initiatives instead of three. They know that something's got to give. But as we've talked about many times on this podcast, they know it's got to give, something's got to give it, but they're afraid to say it. And you've accidentally taught them that everything is equally important, which means, honestly, that nothing feels truly important. So when you protect your no, you protect your staff's sanity as well. Because here's the bottom line: your no to good things is actually a yes to the best thing. And the best thing is the mission that God specifically gave to your church.

Audit Commitments And Sunset Programs

SPEAKER_00 4:14

So this week maybe you should just consider doing an audit of your current commitments. Get out a piece of paper, get up your to-do list, get up a blank Google document, and make a list of everything, every program, everything that your church is currently officially doing, and then ask yourself if we were starting from scratch today, would we choose to start this? And if the answer is no, you might just have found something that you need to gracefully sunset. And maybe that's a conversation you need to have with your team. I do know this. Your calling is specific for a reason. Protect it like the sacred trust it

Feedback Ways To Connect And Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 5:00

is. That's it for today. I'd love to hear your feedback on this podcast or the podcast in general, or if there's any way that we can help you, you can reach out to us or to me personally at podcast at chemistry staffing.com. You can also check out my website if you'd find like to find out a little bit more about some of my books and other things that I've done. You can do that at todd.church. It's a weird URL, but you can go to todd.church and there's a contact form on there that you can contact me as well. All right, that's it for today. Hope you'll join me again tomorrow. If you're a brand new listener to the podcast, wherever you're listening today, hit subscribe, and that way you'll get notified each and every day when we have a new episode, and it'll tell you what we're talking about for that day. All right, that's it for today. Tomorrow we're going to talk about the permission to plateau. That might be a little controversial. Hope you'll join me right here again on the highway. Have a great question.