What Gen Z's Church Exodus Means for Your Hiring Strategy

This episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast discusses the challenge of attracting young leaders, particularly Gen Z, to church staff positions. Todd Rhoades highlights that the cultural perceptions of a church, especially political associations, can deter potential candidates. He emphasizes the need for churches to be explicit about their culture, focusing on aspects like safety, diversity, and openness in handling disagreements. Churches should make their culture visible through their website, job descriptions, and interviews to attract younger staff effectively. • Gen Z feels alienated from churches due to political perceptions. • Churches need to explicitly communicate their culture and values. • Younger candidates prioritize honesty, safety, and mental health over perfection. • Rewrite job descriptions to reflect church culture, not just tasks. • Involve current younger staff in the recruitment process. • Ask candidates about their cultural fears during interviews. • Be willing to lose candidates who aren't the right cultural fit. • Leadership questions are not solely asked by Gen Z but also by older leaders. • Emphasize visibility of culture over doctrine in your church communications.

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Transcript

The Job Post That Gets Ignored

SPEAKER_00 0:09

You just posted a job for worship pastor. Somebody who's 25 years old loves Jesus as the gift. But when they see your church website, they click away. It's not because your theology. And it's not because of the salary, even. It's because they're reading between the lines of your culture that they see on the website. And what they see scares them off. I came across some research recently from a religion news service that said that nearly half of Gen Z feels alienated from church because of political associations. And whether you agree with that or not, it matters. And here's why it matters the pipeline of young leaders you're counting on, they're hesitant these days. And if you don't understand why, you're going to struggle attracting them and hiring them to your church team. So let's talk about that today here on the Healthy Church Staff

The Perception Gap Around Politics

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders at chemistrystaffing.com. It could be a perception problem that maybe you didn't even create, you didn't even know existed. I'm going to suggest to you today that you probably still have to think about solving this one. Here's the thing: you might not be political at all. Your church might not be political at all. Your church might not even ever mention politics from the stage. But younger candidates, job candidates, are coming in from a narrative that's already up in their head. It's stuck there. And they've watched the news and seen the memes and they've heard all the stories, and they're assuming that your church is like that church. And that could be fair, that could not be fair, but that's the perception gap that you're starting with a lot of Gen C potential staff members. And here's where it gets even a little bit more tricky for hiring. You're wondering why you're not getting younger applicants or why the

What Younger Candidates Ask Now

SPEAKER_00 2:05

ones you do seem to get are seem really guarded in the interview. Honestly, they're asking questions you've never heard before. How does your church handle disagreement? What's your culture around diversity? Do you do your staff feel safe to ask questions? And you think maybe they're just being a little picky, but actually, they're being careful. They've seen lots of friends get hurt. They've seen their mentors get hurt. In some cases, they've seen their parents and their siblings get hurt in church staff roles. They've watched leaders burn out and they don't want to walk into a toxic situation. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to change your theology or compromise your convictions. That's not what I'm saying. But what I think it does mean is you have to change your hiring strategy a little bit. It means you have to be a little bit more explicit about your culture, the culture of your church than you've ever been before. So put it on your website, talk about it in the interview, and don't assume that they know that they're going to be safe at your

How To Prove A Healthy Culture

SPEAKER_00 3:05

church. You need to show them. So how do you do that? Highlight stories of staff disagreeing respectively or respectfully and still being valued. During the interview, talk about how you handle conflict. Talk about how you care for mental health. Show them examples, give them examples that you're not fragile when people ask hard questions because the truth is younger leaders they don't care about perfection. They know perfection doesn't exist, but they are looking for honesty and above all, they're looking for health.

Four Moves To Attract Leaders

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So how do you actually attract younger staff right now? First thing I think you can do, number one, is rewrite your job descriptions with your culture in mind. Don't just list out different tasks. Really paint a picture, even in your job description. Yep, in your job description, paint a picture of what it looks like to live there. Not live there, we'll live in your community, but how it paint a picture of what it's like to actually work at your church. We you could say something like, hey, we value curiosity, we make space for rest, we don't expect you to have it all figured out. So that's number one, rewrite your job descriptions with that in mind. Number two, let your younger staff, if you have any, speak into the process. Ask them if you were job hunting right now, what would make you want to work here? And then listen, their answers might really surprise you. All right, number three, in the interview, ask the candidate what they're afraid of. No, hey, what's your weakness? That's a question from ten years ago. But what kind of church culture would you run from? That's more in their language. Listen to what they say and then address that directly. You can say something like, hey, I've heard that concern before. Here's how we've tried to build something a little bit different here. Okay? That's number three. Here's number four. Be willing to lose the ones who aren't the right fit. Not every young leader is right for your church, but don't write off an entire congregate generation because a few don't align. And here's another clue. This is not just a Gen Z problem. This isn't only about age. Plenty of older leaders are asking the same questions these days. And it's things like, is this a healthy place? Will I be heard here? Can I grow here? The churches that answer those questions well are the ones that are gonna win. They're the ones that are gonna hire really good staff members. And if you ignore them, you'll keep wondering why nobody applies. So here's your bottom line. If you want to hire

Make Culture Visible Not Just Doctrine

SPEAKER_00 5:40

younger leaders, you have to make your culture visible, not just your doctrine. And you do that on your church website, you do that in your job descriptions, and you do that in your interviews. As we close out here today, this is really uh an interesting topic. And in my work at Chemistry, I get to see the broad range of every type of candidate from every tribe, every background, every age. And listen, the next generation of ministry leaders is out there. A lot of times people say there's nobody really coming into the ministry. I would say that's wrong. That's wrong. There is a good group, good crop

Why Great Candidates Are Still Out There

SPEAKER_00 6:20

of ministry leaders from the next generation out there. And let me tell you something. They're different, but they're gifted. They're gifted, they love Jesus, they want to serve, but big butt here. They're being careful about where they land. And honestly, I don't think that's a bad thing. It just means we have to be more intentional. That's it for today. If you've run into this, I'd love to hear your story. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. If there's any way that I or anybody on our team here at Chemistry Staffing could come alongside your church, we'd love the opportunity to do. Reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, that's it for today. Thanks for listening. We'll be right back here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Have a great day.