unSeminary Podcast

Is your team moving back to an “in-person” office experience? Do you know how your team members feel about working at home once life looks a little more normal? What does the future of church leadership work arrangements look like? We must understand the impact that COVID-19 has had on our church leadership environment and consider those various dynamics that have been born out of the pandemic. How work “gets done” has evolved over the last 20–30 years as information and collaboration technology have gained traction and changed our communities. Many of those changes that we were seeing pre-pandemic have simply accelerated over this last year. I can remember those long-gone days in 2018 and 2019 where having a dedicated Zoom account was a special thing. But now even my mom knows how to use Zoom and understands that there’s a 40-minute limit for non-paid accounts! What a difference all of this has made on the way work gets done within the local church! What changes have we seen in people’s preferences regarding getting church work done either in person or remotely? In the broader marketplace, there seem to be two factions that are digging in around the office environment of the future. Ironically, if you look at companies that are involved in information technology, it seems like they hold divergent and passionate views on both ends of the spectrum. On the in-person side of the conversation, Google, Apple, and Amazon have recently confirmed that they will return to in-person offices as their default approach. Part of this could be because of the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars that they’ve spent on offices around the world. But they’ve also done all kinds of studies that show there is something about being in the room where it happens. They believe that face-to-face drives collaboration. All three of these companies have made incredible fortunes by helping people work remotely, but it should be noted that they are moving their own workforces into offices post-pandemic. There are also strong voices advocating for the other side of the conversation. Twitter, Slack, and Dropbox have all made bold steps towards being “remote-first” organizations. Some of these organizations have told their senior management they’re not required to come back to their offices, while others have made moves to get rid of office space or enhance their remote working abilities. Take a look at the headlines in any major publication and you’ll see that people are grappling with the complex issues around what work will “look like” post the pandemic. For instance, here are just a few articles that have cropped up in recent days: Bloomberg: The Big Question: Is Remote Work Here to Stay?CNBC: Workers could face new burnout symptoms when returning to the office—here’s how employers can helpThe Atlantic: Winners and Losers of the Work-From-Home RevolutionUSATODAY: What Apple and Google executives missed in telling workers to go back to the officeThe Economist: Remote workers work longer, not more efficientlyNew York Times: A Little More Remote Work Could Change Rush Hour a LotNPR: ‘Why Do We Have To Go Back To The Office?’: Employees Are Divided About Returning The same conversation is taking place in churches across the country, as our culture shifts to whatever the next normal is going to look like. We’re all trying to identify what we need to do to create either in-person or remote work arrangements as we look to the future. In light of this, unSeminary surveyed church leaders from across the country to understand their attitudes, preferences, and experiences regarding working remotely since the start of the pandemic and how it has influenced their thinking going forward. Overview of the National Survey of Church Leaders Between May 24th and June 4th, 2021, we surveyed nearly 350 leaders from churches ranging from less than 100 members to over 10,000 members. Our goal was to get a clearer picture of what church leaders are thinking when it comes to structuring their work going forward. We compared their answers to GitLab’s 2021 Remote Work Report, which is the leading report on working remotely released by one of the largest all-remote organizations in the world. We did this because we wanted to compare the attitudes and behaviors of local church teams and their marketplace counterparts. We know that the work of the local church is not the same as working in the marketplace. However, there is much to learn from our contemporaries about emerging attitudes and behaviors in the broader marketplace and it is wise that we compare them to how we work within the local church. We also believe that we must be able to lead in an environment that understands what’s happening in the marketplace. Oftentimes as church leaders, we’re out of step with trends in the broader culture because we structure our work differently. This study attempts to understand the similarities and differences between local church leaders and marketplace leaders. Personal Reflections on Remote Work within the Local Church On and off, I’ve been working remotely for the better part of 20 years. I can remember in the late 90s, spending a tremendous amount of time working from home: emailing, building websites, doing communication plans, and trying to collaborate back and forth across email. The volume of remote work that I do has grown over the last two decades. Some of my work “on the road” with churches across the country has necessitated me being able to do much of my work from a coffee shop or a hotel room. At the same time as working remotely, I also stay connected with various churches and team members scattered across the US, and all over the world. In many ways, I was living in a remote-first world long before the pandemic hit. And through experience, I’ve managed to keep strong tabs on what’s going on in specific locations. It is possible to make a huge impact while working remotely. There are vast differences between how my work life is structured and how my parents’ generation structured theirs. I’m firmly Gen X. I was born in 1974, the lowest birth rate year of the 20th century, and while I was growing up my dad was upwardly mobile in his career. As a kid, I clearly remember times where we’d have only one car and so we’d drive to my dad’s workplace to pick him up and take him home from time to time. I remember that some days we’d wait and wait for him to finish his day at the office. The work he did, although it was primarily knowledge-based, needed to be done in proximity to other people and to the organization that he was leading. The upside for his generation was that work was something you physically went to. I have no recollection of my dad doing anything that looked like work from the office whilst he was at home. His work stayed at the office. (In fact, some of my fondest memories of that time would be the rare occasion of going into “work” with him on the weekend if he needed to check on something.)  However, the downside was that work was something that he went to. My dad coached my hockey team in my early years, and he attended a lot of other school events. However, many of my contemporaries did not have their parents watching in the audience because they needed to be at their offices, working. The distinct line between the office and the home had its upsides and downsides. As we chart the path forward, I think it’s important for us to think carefully about how we structure the home lives of our team members. We want to maximize their effectiveness as well as ensure their long-term health as they serve within our churches. Summary of Survey Findings This blog post contains some of the highlights of the learnings from unSeminary’s study; however, I would encourage you to pick up the full study that is much larger than what we can cover here. It dives into all the facets we studied and provides a lot of action points for us to think about as we move forward. But for an even shorter summary, here are three key findings from our national church leader study that focused on attitudes towards work as we move beyond the pandemic: Church leaders are open to more remote work. // As the study shows, church leaders are open to more remote work in the future. It doesn’t appear that there is widespread hostility towards this. However, the volume of remote church work is far less than in the marketplace. It seems that we were positively predisposed to working remotely but need some guidance to take steps towards it.The nature of our work is still seen as in-person. // So much of what we do as church leaders is seen as in-person, whether that’s recruiting and training leaders, hosting services, or various other actions that take place within the local church. Many church leaders see these as things that can only happen in an in-person environment. This is somewhat ironic, considering we’re coming out of the backend of a pandemic where for long periods many of us were forced to figure out how to do in-person things, remotely! There is an opportunity here for us to take some of these learnings and apply them to our future. We can craft a new hybrid work and leadership experience for our teams. There is strong evidence that working remotely is better for our people and our ministry outcomes. We need to explore what that looks like in the coming months and years.Church staff are not prepared to work remotely. // Church leaders are far less equipped to work remotely than their marketplace counterparts. One of the things that you’ll see through this study is that there’s a huge gap between how marketplace leaders and church leaders see their readiness and attitudes towards working remotely. This study confirmed one of my suspicions that as executive leaders within the local church, we need to work hard to help our people be prepared for a more remote future. We need to stop focusing on improving our systems that served the church of yesterday and focus on readying our leaders for the future. This study outlines some examples of the kinds of work we could do on this front to help our people be better prepared. 5 Key Learnings from a National Church Study on the Attitudes Towards In-person and Remote Work Arrangements There are five significant findings that this study presents. Local churches should consider these findings as they pivot off the backend of COVID-19 and reform their life-work balance situations for their team members. Each one of these findings compares the experiences of local church leaders to marketplace leaders and contains some potentially effective “next steps” for church leaders. In-person, Remote, And Hybrid: Attitudes and Approaches to How We Work Today and in The Future One of the striking similarities between marketplace and church leaders is that 4 in 10 say that their organization’s policy towards work is hybrid. Both church leaders and marketplace leaders indicate that their current organization’s approach is to provide an experience where both in-person and remote work experiences are available. It’s worth noting that both surveys took place at the tail end of the pandemic. At this time, many jurisdictions across the country were still restricted in what office work could look like, or COVID hesitancy was still expressing itself. There were still people, even as vaccination rates rose, who were nervous to enter face-to-face environments. The findings show a few differences between church leaders and marketplace leaders when it comes to attitudes and approaches to structuring their work lives. Marketplace employees are six times more likely to have a remote-only approach to their workplace. 32% of marketplace leaders indicated that they have a remote-only workplace approach whereas only 5% of church leaders are currently experiencing this. This is not a particularly surprising find. As noted earlier, so much of what we do in the local church is seen as in-person by nature. We should be thinking about this critically because this difference may mean that church leaders won’t be able to communicate effectively to their people and the broader culture as they may not know what “work” in the marketplace looks like anymore. It is amazing to think that almost one in three marketplace leaders surveyed indicated that their work environment has become remote-only. This surely represents a shift in attitude, particularly from 10 years ago. This trend towards remote-only continues to increase within the marketplace and needs to be something that church leaders think about when helping people work through what it means to be a Christ-follower in the workplace. Amongst church leaders, there is a level of ambivalence shown around whether they’re supposed to be in-person or remote. Church leaders are two and a half times more likely to say that remote work is either “allowed or tolerated but is not the norm or default”. Only 14% of marketplace leaders would describe their work environment like this, while 40% of church leaders say that this is the case. This could also represent a level of ambivalence in local churches around how they structure their work-life balance. The knowledge-based work that church leaders do means they could have flexible approaches to work arrangements that would be suited to remote configurations. While flexibility is a good thing, fuzziness is not okay. Clarity needs to be king when we’re structuring people’s work arrangements. As we come out of COVID-19, one thing we need to be clear on is what we expect from our teams. Pushing beyond the fact that remote work is allowed or tolerated, we need to be clear with people on exactly what that arrangement will look like going forward. Church Leaders are not Prepared, Equipped, or Released to Work Remotely. This area represented the largest disparity between the marketplace and church leadership. Part of the survey tried to understand people’s ability to be both prepared and trained to work remotely. It also asked them to reflect on their organization’s willingness to release them to do that healthily. People were asked to select which of the following statements applied to their attitude towards working remotely. I am satisfied with the tools and processes that enable remote team communication.My leadership team understands what it takes to operate a team remotely.I am able to accomplish all of my tasks remotely.My leadership team gives me agency and authority while working remotely.Remote work is the future of work.I recommend working remotely to a friend. All these areas attempt to get a holistic picture of people’s attitudes towards working remotely. It gives us a sense of how prepared and aligned team members are around the area of working remotely. On average, marketplace leaders rated these statements collectively as 81% true. Astonishingly, 8 out of 10 marketplace leaders indicated that each one of the statements is true for their workplace when only 1 in 3 of these same leaders experience a fully remote work environment. Noticeably, 8 out of 10 marketplace leaders have the framework in place to step towards working remotely in the coming years. However, on average, only 36% of church leaders rated these statements as true. Church leaders were less than half as likely to express that they’re favorably prepared or released to work remotely. Therefore, there is a significant difference between marketplace leaders and church leaders when it comes to feeling prepared to work remotely. Executive leaders within the local church need to focus on equipping their teams to work remotely if they are looking to fuel this aspect of their work culture. This will require three aspects: Training // Provide consistent training for people focused on how to work remotely. This should not be generalized, but specific to the type of work that each team member needs to do. This will encourage your team to step forward in their position with confidence.Tools // Investing in collaboration tools and a consistent approach to connecting when not in the office is important for churches to do if they’re eager to craft an effective remote work environment.Empowerment // Ultimately, having a more remote workforce drives the organization to be more trusting of its team members rather than depending on a centralized command and control structure. Remote workforce managers need to trust their people to do their work to move the ministry forward. This study could point to the fact that too many church leaders are holding onto old, centralized control structures rather than a decentralized vision and outcome-result approach. We’ve seen widespread adoption of these newer approaches in the marketplace. The Majority of Church Leaders Don’t Anticipate They Will Work Remotely Post-Pandemic. Only 19% of church leaders surveyed believe that they will primarily work remotely after the pandemic has receded. This is compared to 74% of those in the marketplace sample. I wish I had the pre-pandemic numbers on this to compare with our results; however, I will work with our findings to illustrate my point. 19% means that nearly 1 in 5 church leaders believe that they will work remotely after the pandemic. This is a sizeable portion of the local church workforce. There are about 600,000 ministry leaders in America. So, our findings indicate that 120,000 of these leaders hold this opinion. That’s a lot of folks sitting in coffee shops and the spare bedroom in their house! There have been some “remote work evangelists” who, in this season, have been calling for this huge shift post-pandemic. They’ve been jumping up and down, talking about how no one should go back to the church office, and that all of us will end up working remotely as we did during the height of the pandemic. Most church leaders are not accepting this view at present. However, nearly 1 in every 2 church leaders believes that they will work remotely sometimes. From my perspective, this shows that there’s an openness to work remotely. Church leaders are noting the trajectory of doing more work outside of the office as they look to the future. However, they haven’t made the jump to say it’s all going to be done remotely. Although this is the case, there are still many leaders feeling unprepared and not trained or released to make the jump to work remotely as their default approach. This represents an opportunity for the leadership of local churches to open dialogues with their teams about their preferred future work arrangements. This part of the study indicates that at least half of the people serving on your team are thinking that they will occasionally work out of office. Keep this in mind when you engage with your team members and plan a way forward. How does your team want to structure their work going forward? How can you support that? What could it look like to help your team achieve their work-life balance through a combination of remote and in-person work arrangements? How do we create an environment where people can easily shift between one and the other? Workday “Rituals” Look Very Similar for Marketplace Leaders and Church Leaders. One of the questions that we explored in our survey is, where does your typical workday begin? What do church leaders or marketplace leaders do when their typical workday starts? There was a striking similarity between these two groups. 53% of marketplace leaders say that they begin their workday by checking their emails, and 51% of church leaders said the same thing. Email is how many leaders start the day. This is an important thing to notice because email continues to be the monster of all collaboration tools. It is the preferred way for people to begin their day, and it’s still a primary connection tool. While there are a lot of other communication and collaboration tools that have attempted to unseat email, it would appear, for good or bad, that email continues to have a stronghold on leaders across the country. This is an important thing to note because we need to train our people on how best to manage their email. Just think about the fact that every morning, 50% of your leaders sit down and check their email before they do anything else. We want it to be a well-used tool and something that drives ministry collaboration going forward rather than slowing it down. Here is an interesting thought: If you’re looking to reach leaders in your church, then sending an email that hits their inbox first thing in the morning is a great way to get their attention. A way to aid this would be to survey the people in your church and find out what the beginning of their workday looks like. What time do they start working? You could do this under the guise of trying to understand their work-life balance, and that this information would help you communicate with teams. There were some other interesting findings when we looked at how people structured their workdays. For example, 1 in 3 church leaders indicated that their workday startup routine varies, whereas only 1 in 7 of marketplace leaders said that their workday varies. Therefore, there is less randomness with marketplace leaders in how they begin their days. This could represent the fact that the work we do in the local church has more variety, or it could represent that there’s less discipline in how church leaders structure their work lives. Although only two-thirds of surveyed people were lead pastors or executive pastors, a small finding is that only 1.75% start their day looking at numbers or the numerical performance of the organization. For marketplace leaders, the result was only 5%, but it is markedly larger than what’s happening in the local church. I know that these are small numbers, but it is worth noting that far fewer church leaders start their day looking at the numbers that are driving their organization. They could look at things like giving, attendance, newcomer numbers, etc. This could be an area of further inquiry as we go forward. A lot of churches track numbers, but how are we using those numbers to drive the performance of our teams and our organizations? Church Leaders Are 50% More Distracted Than Marketplace Leaders The survey also asked what the greatest pain is in a person’s workday. Both groups said that distractions are the greatest pain associated with their daily function as a leader. However, church leaders indicated this pain to be 50% higher than marketplace leaders. Only 25% of marketplace leaders indicated that distractions were a pain point, as opposed to 37% of church leaders. Just stop for a minute and think about this. Distraction indicates that people are doing work that they see as not core to the mission. The only way that you would identify something as a distraction is because you self-identify that it is sideways energy. You only consider something a distraction when you know that it’s taking you away from focusing on what you’re responsible for doing. Just over one in three church leaders say that their daily distractions are their greatest source of pain in leading their local church. Your church team members are finding distractions to be a consistent pain point. Our role as leaders is to help give our team focus and ensure that our people are plugged in with the essential work that’s pushing the mission forward. Each one of our team members is given spiritual gifts that we know empowers them to uniquely contribute to their team. When they’re not operating in their area of gifting, they’re not living out their God-given purpose in life. We believe that each of our team members should be focused primarily on doing only what they can do. We hire people to solve problems and move the mission forward in a specific way. How can we help them stay on task? What do we need to do to help reduce their distraction? This finding could make landmark differences in the life of your church if you focus on trying to solve it with your team members. 3 Next Steps Church Executive Leaders Can Take Out of This Study Our goal was not only to listen and understand where church leaders are at. We also wanted to provide you with some potential next steps for your team. We suggest you pull your leadership team together and look at the study and reflect on how you can push your team forward as you craft a post-pandemic office and work environment. Here are three potential things you could look at: Clarity // Define what the next normal will be. It seems like church leaders across the country are open to more remote work environments, but let’s move beyond just tolerating either in-person or remote and define it for our people. Getting clear as we come out of COVID will enable our team to make wise decisions around their work-life balance. Fuzziness in this season around “how” work is done should be rejected. Let’s be pushing hard to ensure our people gain deeper levels of clarity on how work is done in the church.Training // Don’t assume that your people know how to do the work that you’re asking them to do. Oftentimes, we define what we are hoping people will achieve in their areas, but we do not spend enough time training them to reach these goals and work in a hybrid environment. Don’t just launch a new tech tool. Rather, push towards training that can help them understand how to get the most out of the tech tool and other systems. Teach your people what good collaboration looks like and reward them for engaging with each other (whether it’s in-person or online). Like any good relationship, communication is something that needs to be worked on because it doesn’t just happen. Help your people communicate more effectively in this season and as you move forward.Focus // Clarify the win. Help your team define what the win is in their area of the organization. From a big picture point of view, we want to understand what the “mission win” is. What is the overall goal that your church is looking to achieve in this season? How do we know that we are taking steps forward, and not losing ground? Then, at a micro-level, how do we define ideal work habits? How do we know if people are succeeding in their areas? What new numbers and metrics can they look at to understand if what they’re doing is working? How can we help them push back against distraction if we don’t clearly articulate what the win looks like for them? Download The Full Report to Dive Even Deeper into In-person, Remote, & Hybrid Working Arrangements for The Local Church The full report includes lots more information. This post provided an overview but if you download the study, you’ll find our in-depth review on various areas, areas that we didn’t touch on here. These areas include: Learnings around how people are collaborating within their teams. You’ll get a deeper sense of what collaboration is looking like within the local church today.A look at what tools church leaders are using to connect and collaborate.What aspects of your church’s “work culture” is winning? Where do we need to be improving? In this part of the study, we look at aspects that are reportedly working for church leaders in their pursuit to create healthy working environments. We also look at areas that seem to be detracting and distracting ideal work environments.You’ll understand church leaders’ concerns and what they will miss if they are to work remotely. In this part of the study, we dive into the potential pains of working towards a more remote work environment. This information could help you craft your communication plans if you’re looking to increase how much you and your teamwork remotely in the coming weeks and months. You’ll get an opportunity to look at how we conducted the study, as well as the breakdown of the types of churches that we selected. The best part is that this study is completely free! All you need to do is enter your email address. Using the link below, we’d love for you to share this with other church leaders. Feel free to pass it on to others who may see this as a helpful tool for them as they lead! Plus the full report also includes expert commentary from leaders who offer their perspectives and takeaways on the research. Even more helpful insights to guide your team as we navigate this season! Kenny Jahng – Chief Innovation Officer at Big Click Syndicate & ChurchCommunicationsKadi Cole – Best Selling Author, Speaker, ConsultantTim Stevens – Executive Pastor at Willow Creek ChurchChristine Kreisher – CEO at Irresistible Teams plus Author, Speaker & CoachDavid Fletcher – The Dean of XPs, XPastor.com Click here to download this report. Download PDF Article Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: CDF Capital Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. CDF Capital’s XP Summit Cohorts provide an exclusive, year-long experience that brings together hand-selected global ministry leaders and your peers in an intimate, small-group setting. Visit http://cdf.capital/UnCohort to learn more and enroll today!

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Abby Ecker, Next Steps Pastor from The Journey in Delaware. She’s with us today to talk about getting people connected and helping them take steps from just attending weekend gatherings to moving into the core of the church. Help people take steps, not leaps. // People have always needed to take small steps rather than leaps, and that’s even more true as we come out of the pandemic. Think about the very small steps that you can encourage your people to take to help draw them back to the community and connection we all need.High tech, high touch, high heart. // Consider how to create high tech, high touch, and high heart experiences. One of the high touch experiences that The Journey did at the beginning of covid was to repurpose their shuttles (previously used for parking) to go around and visit people at their homes. This was a no-contact visit where two team members stood outside the home, passed out some Journey swag, and let people know that they love them and are thinking of them.Basic reaching out. // Many churches may feel that they don’t have the labor or resources to do big mobilization efforts where they are calling every member of the church to check in, or planning huge outreach efforts. The Journey has been there and one simple thing to do is to develop a connections team to do basic outreach and follow-up to those committing their life to Jesus or visiting the church. Make calls to people who decide to get baptized, give, or volunteer. These calls aren’t necessarily about getting people to take more next steps, but rather a way to say thank you, express that you’re thinking about them, and ask how you can pray for them.From seat to serve. // The Journey will be trialing a program called Plugged In, a hybrid customizable experience using both online and in-person elements. Short videos share the vision for the church and how to move out into serving the community. Then for another high-touch experience, people are paired with a coach where they can talk about where they want to serve. Attendees will leave this experience connected to a team and receive follow-up videos that walk through the church’s culture.Ask the right questions. // Coaches for Plugged In are given resources to help them know which questions to ask the people they meet with. Their biggest goal is creating connections with these people through asking the right questions and getting to know them. Coaches function as a neutral connection point and will be the ones to check in after someone’s first serve experience to see how things went. Lead with a clear why and what. // It’s of the utmost importance to lead with a clear “why” and a clear ‘what’. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Why are you trying to do this event? Are you doing it just to make yourself feel good? When so many things are out of control, our tendency is to control the things we can control, which are often the “hows”. Go forward with a clear “why” and a clear “what” to help lead someone else to the next step.Vision is the currency of leadership. // The “why” only matters if we can identify why it really matters to others. What does it mean to help this other group in the things they need? If you can figure out why they should care and can connect with them, you can move forward in progress. You can learn more about The Journey at yourjourney.tv. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Is your church ready? Are you re-opening? Ready to welcome MORE people to worship and grow with your church? Are you out of space or are your interiors dated and needing improvement? The architecture and design team at Risepointe want to help you align your facility with the mission and vision that God has given your church. That’s why Risepointe developed The Needs Analysis. The Needs Analysis is a comprehensive look at your site to seat experience through the lens of your first time guests. Learn more by visiting www.theneedsanalysis.com. Let them know you heard about The Needs Analysis on unSeminary for $500 off!

Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re chatting with Jeannette Cochran, executive pastor Seneca Creek Community Church in Maryland. Jeannette is talking with us today about what it is like being a female executive pastor in a church and how you can empower more women to engage their gifts and lead in your church. Lead in trust and honor. // Too many churches are dragging their feet on including women in leadership or executive roles within the church. The church can’t reach its full potential until men and women are leading together in relationships of trust and honor. Both men and women are created in the image of God. When women aren’t allowed to step into their callings and passions to serve the church, the body of Christ loses out.Remain humble. // An essential quality in a healthy church is that the leaders remain in a humble posture of a learner. At one point in history, Christians tried to argue from scripture for slavery, but that changed because Christians were willing to continue to humble themselves, be learners, and be teachable. Leaders today should ask themselves if they are open to hearing the voices of others. That is the leadership model that Jesus has given us, that leaders will be listeners and learners.Make a commitment. // Make a commitment to shared leadership and actually look around the table to ask if you do have diversity and the voices you need. Unearth those biases and stereotypes you might not realize are there. Commit to having hard conversations and creating safe spaces where you can be honest with each other. Be open to listening without becoming defensive.Trust is the beginning. // Be open to women and communicate that you want to hear their feedback. Many women are socialized to be people-pleasers and minimize themselves, especially in Christian circles. Let them know that you are open to hearing their challenges and pushback and that they aren’t going to be penalized for speaking up. Women, on the other hand, need to do their homework and be willing to put themselves out there. It takes vulnerability on both sides.Don’t be held back. // Often women leaders may not recognize that they have limiting beliefs that are holding them back. What is that internal voice we’re listening to? Whenever there is a sense of stepping out to become vulnerable or taking a risk, that voice will come at us and try to stop us. Don’t allow that voice to hold you back. Recognize that internal critic for what it is and turn it down to listen to the voice of God in us. Individual coaching can help tremendously with this issue.Don’t view each other as a threat. // We need to have thoughtful boundaries, but not view each other as a threat. Many times, women leaders may be seen as a threat because the way things have always been done may need to change. Scripturally we should be looking at how we can view each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. Ask how you can have some thoughtful boundaries that help each other to feel safe and cared for, but not view each other as enemies or threats.Look for the potential. // Studies have shown that many times men are promoted based on potential, but women are promoted only based on performance. So look for that potential in the women at your organization to move them up to the next level. You can find out more about Jeannette at www.jeannettecochran.com and learn about Seneca Creek at senecacreek.org. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the time after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!

As the leader goes, so goes the organization. It’s often been said that the mindset of a leader ultimately drives the behavior of an organization. It’s a scary thought when you consider that our internal thought life can express itself in the people that we consistently lead. I think this is a truism when it comes to leading organizations of any kind, including your local church. Over time, churches seem to take on the personality of the leadership. As we start pivoting out of COVID-19 and the incredible impact it has had on all our churches, we need to look inside and understand the mindsets that we have picked up over the last year. We must identify which of these mindsets may negatively impact our organization going forward. Now would be a great time for you to self-reflect and understand what you’ve been thinking and how that might be working itself out in the organization you’re in. As a parent, I have seen how my habits, hang-ups, and hurts can come out in the life of my kids. While we see it vividly in our kids, the same is true in the organizations we lead. So here are five mindsets that you may have adopted over the last few months and need to shift or rethink as you go into full-on relaunch mode. From Surviving to Thriving There’s no doubt that over the last year you’ve had to make a lot of difficult decisions to ensure the survival of your organization. It first may have been to pivot to church online, if your church wasn’t already online, and no doubt you’ve encountered many tough financial decisions. We’ve all made several decisions that have been focused on how we stay afloat as organizations. We need to shed that thinking. If we continue to focus on survival only, we’ll miss opportunities that God sends your way. See this link for a huge opportunity that’s approaching us as we speak. If we’re just about survival, we’ll miss the opportunity to take new risks and push toward new horizons. What aspects of your personality are leaning towards merely surviving rather than thriving? From Keeping to Reaching One of the sad realities of watching church leaders talk among themselves in this season is that it seems like so much of the conversation is about getting back to our attendance pre-COVID. This is a potentially dangerous mindset. It is understandable and maybe even natural but make no mistake, it’s also dangerous. This is because this mindset may cause us to think that the goal of our church is to simply keep the people who were previously attending. If we focus so much on keeping, we’ll miss the opportunity to reach new people. Your community has changed in the last 15 months and those dynamics need to be addressed and be considered as you think about reaching new people in your community. We need to fully engage in reaching the world today and not wishing for the world of yesterday. You’ve seen a lot of new people connect with your church online and the question you should be asking now is how to accelerate that! How do we identify what we’ve learned from our online experiences and push these lessons forward to reach even more people? Even as your church continues to gain momentum in its regathering phase, the benchmark should not be how our attendance compares to our attendance in the winter of 2020. Our benchmarks should be determined by how our attendance compares to the community we’re attempting to reach. From Reaction to Vision Your leadership reaction senses have been finely honed, much like a cat’s. You’ve had to make quick pivots over these months and come up with new solutions. It’s almost like we’ve been bracing ourselves for the other shoe to drop, but the difficulty is that shoes have continuously dropped over the past year. This is a helpful new skill for the future; however, now’s the time for us to peer up over the horizon and start to ask the question: Where does God want your church to be a year from now? What about five years from now? What about twenty years from now? What have you learned over the last year that can help you and your organization chart a brand-new course for the future? Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and look up over the horizon and see what God’s called you to do next. From Cynical to Hopeful Cynicism is an acid that will erode your spiritual life if it goes unchecked. I love the book Didn’t See It Coming written by my friend, Carey Nieuwhof. It offers a conversation about cynicism and how it’s a negative part of our leadership journey. We need to look for cynicism as it wells up in us and replace it with hope. Replace the negative thoughts about how everything is going badly with a positive understanding of what God wants you to do next. In some leadership circles, cynicism is a heralded trait. It’s almost like we want to out-cynic others! Resist those communities and resist that way of thinking. From Us to Them At its core, the pandemic has driven us to think internally. It has forced us to travel to fewer places and it’s pushed us to think more inside the four walls of our homes. We’ve been scared to shake the hands of our neighbors or give a hug to a new friend. If we don’t address this we will radically truncate our church’s ability to reach the community around us and to love the people God sends our way. In what areas of your life do you find yourself looking inward rather than outward? In what areas of your church have you shifted towards thinking more about the people who are attending rather than the people who aren’t attending? The local church is the only organization in the world whose primary concern is reaching the people who aren’t connected with it yet. Let’s get back to that. Stop thinking about us and lean toward others. Still looking for some help with your post-COVID mindset? Try these things. Mindsets don’t shift overnight; it takes significant internal work and continual processing to push them towards where you need them to be or, ultimately, what God has for you. Taking time out to evaluate your mindsets is a starting point, but from there, I encourage you to take steps toward developing the kind of mindsets that God would have for you in this season. Here are three steps you could take to help build a healthy mindset for a post-COVID world. Gather your team and talk through areas of your mindsets that need to shift. Ask them to reflect on areas that they’ve seen creep into your church over the last year. Identify what bits need to be rooted out and the areas that should be pushed forward as you enter your next phase.Process your internal thought life with a great Christian counsellor. Counseling will positively affect a leader’s life. People who are trusted with the care of others should entrust themselves to someone who can help them work through their thoughts. Counseling is a great place to start.Make journaling a habit.  Journaling will help you to think about your thinking. Simple reflection on the day, writing down your thoughts, or even journaling your prayer life will help you externalize what’s internal. Oftentimes making the implicit explicit spurs an incredible journey as you start to get a clearer picture of what’s happening on the inside. I’m cheering for you. Thank you so much for leading. I’m excited to hear what God does in your church and through your leadership in the coming year. Download PDF Article Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: FiveTwo It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. 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The coming months hold an unprecedented opportunity to see your church impact more people than ever before. As the country begins to shake off the shackles of COVID-19 and the ensuing economic calamity, we’re seeing new windows of opportunity. We must leverage this season for the message of Jesus. We can echo what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:9, “a great door for effective work has opened to me.” Let’s not miss this tremendous opportunity that is just around the corner! Fall 2021 is when your church must invite more people to be a part of your community. The difference between leading churches and languishing churches is that leading churches motivate their people to invite their friends to church. Whether it’s in-person or online, churches that make an impact consistently find new ways to encourage their people to invite their friends to be a part of the church. Typically, in the fall, we see growth opportunities as people reorient their lives and come up with new rhythms. It’s sort of like a “second new year”, particularly because many churches are trying to reach families and kids. The return to school drives how young families operate. This fall will be the first time that kids return to school and normal family life emerges from the haze of the pandemic that started in March 2020! Let’s not miss this opportunity, friends, and find ways to leverage this turning point to invite more friends than we ever have before. As I’ve watched churches in this season, I’ve noted a disturbing trend. Some churches are leveraging soft guilt with their people about how important it is for them to “return to the building.” Churches that obsess about getting people to the building will ultimately lose the bigger picture. It’s a small vision to just get people back into the buildings they were in before March 2020. Let’s cast a bigger vision and move beyond shame and motivating people to get into our boxes. I’ve heard too many churches leverage negative emotions to motivate people to return. Here are some lines that are being used: “We know there’s nothing like being in the room together.”“It’s time to return.”“Our forefathers fought for your right to attend church. You can fight the couch and join us.”“When the doors of the church are open, believers need to darken them!” I’ve even heard churches misquote passages like Psalm 122:1 [ref], which sets a dangerous precedent when we talk about our church buildings like the temple in the Old Testament. There’s a theological point to be made that one of the things Jesus undid on the cross was the limitation of where the spirit of God chooses to move.  On the cross, Jesus declared that he can move in any place and any season. This needs to drive our mission in reaching new people, not a hyper-obsession with getting people who used to sit inside our boxes to come and sit in them again. Let’s not miss this opportunity to encourage our people to invite their friends. As people reorient their lives, there are new opportunities for your church to invite people to be a part of your community, whether that’s online or in-person. There are all kinds of signs that travel will be at incredible levels over the summertime. As we approach Labor Day, it will begin to wane, and people will be looking to establish new patterns in their lives. Let’s create a positive community image with our people that will encourage them to come back and be a part of the good things that are happening in our churches. Here are a few ways that you can leverage this fall to reach more people. 5 Ways to Leverage Fall 2021 to Grow Your Church Growing churches consistently motivate their people to be a part of the mission. At a bare minimum, they move people to invite their friends to be a part of the good things that God’s doing in their lives. However, fall 2021 presents all kinds of opportunities for drawing people to church. Package it as a season. // Many churches will have individual series that may last for three to eight weeks. However, for communication purposes, I think churches should package fall 2021 as one branded season. String several series together to make a season with an informative title e.g., “Season of Hope”, “Changing Seasons for the Better”, or “Homecoming Season”. We know that nothing builds momentum in a church like something new and so repackaging the fall, from a communications point of view, will build anticipation. It will also be the kind of thing that sparks people’s curiosity and encourage them to invite their friends to be a part of it.Through studies, we know that varying levels of COVID hesitancy will continue in our culture. [ref] Thus, rather than trying to drive everyone back to a single Sunday or a single series, branding the entire season gives a lot of on-ramps for people to connect with your church when they are ready. Leverage all the “firsts” again. // There’s no doubt that during this fall your church will be doing several things for the first time in a long time. During the pandemic season, you may have attempted some of these; however, this fall will see us returning to a new normal and celebrating significant mile markers is important. They also create great opportunities for inviting friends to be a part of the church. For example:Baptism. While many churches have taken chances and flexed their creative muscles with performing fascinating and different baptism experiences over the last year-and-a-half, let’s use this season as an opportunity to gather people together and celebrate the life changes that have taken place. This is a great opportunity for people to invite their friends.Infant Dedications. Perhaps your church doesn’t normally feature these within your main weekend services; however, this might be a great time to break that tradition as baby dedications are a fantastic time to invite family and friends to come and be a part of your church.Back to School Sunday. Let’s celebrate that most kids in the country will be back to in-person learning this fall and plan a special Sunday that celebrates teachers and students returning to class.Christmas. No doubt we’ll be talking more about this in the coming months, but Christmas is at the end of the fall season and provides a massive opportunity for us to invite our friends and community, whether it’s in-person or online, to connect with the message of Jesus. Don’t Miss the Halloween Opportunity // October 31st can be a controversial day in the calendar. While I have no intention to get into the theological nuances around what Halloween means and whether Christians should even be a part of it, it does represent a unique opportunity for your people to connect with their community. (Looking for some information on this? Click here to check out my friend Bruxy Cavey’s notes on why Halloween is a great opportunity for you to connect with your community.)For most of our families, Halloween will be the first time they’ll connect with neighbors. Resist the urge to do something at your church building and instead, mobilize your people to leverage this day as an opportunity to bless and care for their neighborhood. Encourage them to get the full-size chocolate bars and invite family and friends to a fun family-oriented church event sometime in mid-November. Help your people with some practical instructions on how to engage with their neighbors. They could provide coffee for parents, or maybe something a little extra than what they would normally do.This Halloween is a fascinating one because it lands on a Sunday! Your church could provide take-home kits that can be picked up on the Sunday before Halloween or on Halloween to help people leverage these days. I’m not talking about handing out tracks. What I’m talking about is helping our people engage positively in their neighborhoods. Think about it. In many communities across the country, you’re going to have dozens of people come to the doors of the people in your church. How can we leverage this as an opportunity for the gospel? Catalyze Social Connections. // One of the clearer outcomes of the COVID season has been the lack of social connections. It’s almost like we need to teach people how to be friends again. This creates a great opportunity for our churches to be platforms upon which people can build relationships. Don’t miss this opportunity to develop events and opportunities for your people to develop closer relationships with each other and invite friends to join. Here are some ideas:What if your church hosted a tailgate party in the parking lot one Sunday after church? Get everybody to wear their favorite team’s jersey, and maybe invite people in to watch a game on that big screen that hasn’t been put to much use over the last year-and-a-half.You could host a fall family crafting day where you invite families to bring their friends and put together a simple craft that they could do with their kids.If you want to go all out, I know some churches leverage the fall with a firework spectacular, which is a great way to kick off the night before school starts this year. Set up an outdoor stage and have your band play all kinds of songs off the radio. Hand out invites to an upcoming series and just as the sun begins to sink, set off some dazzling fireworks. Give Back to the Community. // Church has never been about the buildings. Resist the urge to communicate (subtly or blatantly) that you want to get people back into your rooms. There is nothing magical about your building. God wants to do work in your community. In fact, the balance of scriptural evidence is that God seems to prefer to work outside of holy buildings rather than within them. Think about any of the major characters in scripture and where God connected with them. Most of them were in the marketplace, fishing, or tending their sheep. They were out in the real world. Let’s mobilize our people to get out of their seats and into the street.What if this fall you attempted to mobilize 70-plus percent of your church to make a difference in your community? Connect with a local civic leader and find out what your community’s needs are and how the church can help fulfil them. What would happen if your church mobilized hundreds of volunteers, tens of thousands of dollars, and thousands of people-hours to make a tangible difference in your community? What a great opportunity for you to show your community that the church is re-gathering, but not re-gathering to get people to enter our buildings; rather, re-gathering to get out into the streets and bless the community!Maybe there’s a way to give back to first responders or to long-term care homes that have been negatively impacted in this season. Or maybe there’s a way to give back to schools as they relaunch in-person learning in a significant way. Pull together your leaders and get creative. Find ways to make a difference this fall in your community. Packaging all these things up into a single season for your church would create an incredible number of new opportunities for your people to invite their friends. Branding them all within a single unified theme would give them a cohesiveness that will build momentum to move from one to the next. Don’t miss this opportunity that’s just around the corner! None of us has ever come back from a pandemic but let’s not just whimper into what’s next but look for a way to accelerate and move forward the mission that God’s called our church to. Want more help? Ask Carey Nieuwhof Your Church Growth Questions. On June 10th, we’re hosting a special live online event with Carey Nieuwhof where you’ll have the opportunity to ask him questions about church growth. For years, he’s been studying churches that grow and make an impact. During this event, you’ll have an opportunity to get your questions answered. Want to know how to mobilize more people towards your mission? Wondering what you could do to encourage people to be a part of what God’s called your church to do? Join us at this free live online event. To learn more or register, click here. If you’re reading this after the live event, you could also follow the same link to see the recording of our time together. Download PDF Article Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: Medi-Share Medi-Share is an innovative health care solution for Christians looking to save money without sacrificing on quality. As the nation’s largest health care sharing community, Medi-Share members take comfort in knowing their eligible medical expenses will be shared by their community. Click here to download the FREE REPORT: The 10 Things About Mental Health Every Pastor (& Leader) MUST Know!

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Dr. Steve Brown, President of Arrow Leadership and author of the book Jesus Centered: Focusing On Jesus In A Distracted World. Steve works to help leaders find clarity, community and confidence in their work as Jesus-centered leaders. He’s talking with us today about how to lead more like Jesus by loving your people well and encouraging them right where they are. Pray for and love others. // Jesus loved the disciples – not only with words, but also with time, actions, and by praying for them. Do we treat the people we are supervising with the same care and encouragement? Sometimes we can see people as vehicles for getting stuff done, or as obstacles to completing tasks, instead of praying for and loving them. Steve has created a chart for each month in which he has two people from his team who he prays for every day. This schedule can get you into the rhythm of thinking about the people you lead and praying for them regularly. Connect with people at work by pausing and asking more questions. Check in with your team members to see how they are doing in their lives outside of the office.Give encouragement. // As a senior leader, let your people know that you are thinking of and praying for them and are proud of them. Sometimes we overestimate how encouraging we really are, and underestimate how much people need encouragement. Some people like to be called out in public, other people like to receive a card, or be invited out to lunch – just begin and learn what means the most to your team members as you go.Jesus in leadership. // Steve’s book, Jesus Centered, talks about three important conversations to have with your team as you look to Christ as your model in leadership: How can we be led more by Jesus – individually, as a team, or as a church? How can we lead more like Jesus as a team and individually? And how can we lead more to Jesus? These are critical conversations and will yield a lot of good fruit on your staff and in your church.Safe, Stretch, and Stress. // As you prepare to help your team members grow, look at each person with three S words in mind: Safe, Stretch, and Stress. Where are your people in those categories? Is someone in a safe space and not challenged enough in their work? Lead them into the stretch zone with increased responsibilities. In the stretch zone they will need to learn to depend on God as they grow beyond what is merely safe. But if stretched too far, they can land in the stress zone and you’ll need to bring them back to a place where they are stretched but not stressed. Knowing where your people are helps you to discern the next developmental step for each team member.Tic Tac Toe. // Another tool that helps team members find their sweet spot is to have each person draw a Tic Tac Toe board. Then have them identify nine words or phrases that represent them when they are at their best professionally. Write these words into the squares of the Tic Tac Toe board. Next have them decide whether each box is red, yellow, or green. Red is for those things that aren’t happening, yellow are things that happen sometimes, and green are things that they do regularly. Use this tool to discover what is holding your team back from their best. Are people in the right spot in your organization? What can you do to help them?Jesus-centered development. // Arrow Leadership offers Jesus-centered programs, personal mentoring, organizational consulting and resources that develop you and your team to lead differently. The programs have different streams depending on if a leader is emerging or established, and each stream is highly personalized, highly intentional, and highly transformational. Participants will explore leadership, character, spiritual health, self-awareness, and more. And these programs also provide safe places where leaders can be vulnerable and real. You can also learn more about Arrow Leadership and their many resources at arrowleadership.org and find Steve’s book Jesus Centered on Amazon. Plus download the free resource Great Questions for Leading Well here. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing It’s important for church leaders to pursue the right fit for the right position, which helps determine a long-term, healthy fit. It all starts with properly assessing the applicant’s resumé. Download Chemistry Staffing’s Resumé Screening Playbook and walk through a screening process that will help you discover which candidates to focus on.

Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Jannet Morgan, the Executive Assistant (EA) to Lead Pastor, Tim Lucas, at Liquid Church in New Jersey. She’s with us today to talk about the role of the EA supporting leadership in the church and how to make the most out of that partnership. Be aware of the challenges. // Sometimes it’s difficult to establish a good working relationship between the executive and the executive assistant. In some cases hiring for the EA position is put on hold until budget allows for it, but by then the executive may be overwhelmed and overworked. It can be hard to find someone great to gear up quickly to support the pastor. There’s no manual for this sort of relationship and as a result executives may not know where they need the most help while EAs are trying to learn on the fly, but also struggle to discern what an executive or pastor really wants. Executives may not know how to manage their EA since they are trying to offload what they are doing.Where to begin? // At the beginning of the exec/EA relationship it’s common not to know where to start. People wonder what should the routine and workflow look like, and how should we work together? In the corporate world, the EA is often an entry level position whereas in the church it’s a high level position. Often a pastor’s EA is privy to sensitive information as they help the pastor with various issues such as staff, church finances, contracts, and so on. Jannet recommends having conversations early about priorities, goals, communication, and expectations.Get to know each other. // In the beginning of an EA’s employment, have a few meetings just to get to know each other and invite your EA to ask questions. If you can, try to allow for overlap between your new EA and old EA so your new hire can learn more quickly. Also, arrange for the EA to meet with other members of the team that you work closely with or who your EA will work closely with to understand roles and relationships. It’s helpful for your EA to know what your top goals are so that they have a better understanding of how they can support you well. Communication of expectations between you both should be clear. An EA needs to study the executive, understanding what he likes to do and anticipating what his needs are. Jannet often shadows the lead pastor, attending meetings with him so she can keep abreast of what’s happening on different projects and what problems are surfacing. As their partnership has grown, Jannet can now stand in the gap for the lead pastor when he’s not available and communicate with people who are coming to him for questions or approvals.Empower and grow the assistant. // As a leader, you can approach hiring an EA in two ways: Do you want someone who is purely an assistant—doing your expense reports, calendaring, and correspondence? Or do you want to go beyond that and leverage the skillset which you hired them for, pouring into them because they are so important to your work life? Think of ways you can empower them and grow their leadership skills to be a growing leader in your own organization.Five essential conversations. // Don’t miss the June 23rd workshop designed for executive church leaders and their assistants. This workshop will dive into five conversations that are essential for the executive and the EA to have. These include talking through priorities and goals, rules and filters, personal preferences, discussing the communication rhythm, and expectations for the EA role. You can reach out to Jannet via email and learn more about Liquid Church at liquidchurch.com.  REGISTER TODAY: Executive & Assistant Live Workshop // HOW TO CREATE GREAT PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR EA 2 HOUR LIVE WORKSHOP // JUNE 23rd // 3pm (ET) or 12noon (PT) Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Is your church ready? Are you re-opening? Ready to welcome MORE people to worship and grow with your church? Are you out of space or are your interiors dated and needing improvement? The architecture and design team at Risepointe want to help you align your facility with the mission and vision that God has given your church. That’s why Risepointe developed The Needs Analysis. The Needs Analysis is a comprehensive look at your site to seat experience through the lens of your first time guests. Learn more by visiting www.theneedsanalysis.com. Let them know you heard about The Needs Analysis on unSeminary for $500 off!

Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jenn Clauser, the Director of Communications at Coker United Methodist Church in San Antonio, Texas. She’s with us today to dig deeper into online church and how to integrate it as a core part of our mission to reaching people who are far from God. Optimize your website. // Before COVID, Coker felt led to make their online presence more robust. They partnered with Missional Marketing who rebuilt the church’s website for search engine optimization. By paying attention to what people are looking for in keyword searches online from month to month, a website can be made to do outreach for you. Coker layers these words into their website in an authentic way by using them in sermon series. Divorce, for example, is a high search term in the month of January, so Coker tends to lead into the year with a series about families. They might use phrases on their website such as: How do you avoid divorce? How do you care for someone who has been divorced? How do we strengthen marriage? By developing a strong online presence, you will be easily found by your community in their time of need.Create connections. // As online viewership increased during COVID, Coker began to ask how they could see the analytics as faces. These are real people looking for guidance and connections. Feed them where they are and offer them help and services online even if you can’t see them. Coker did this by connecting their online audience to meaningful community. A few steps they took included setting up a way where online guests could register their attendance and let you know their names and email addresses. They created a place for online prayer requests and a team responds to these requests in real time. Coker also offered people a free book in exchange for their email address, as well as one-off courses, like a simple marriage class. Have a connections expert who is in charge of reaching out to them see where their needs are.Launch classes online. // Within their online campus, Coker listed all of their courses online. Allowing all of your classes to be attended in that format opens the door to a new audience who may never have attended your church before. Coker has their classes set up similar to Google Classroom. People can get the class content, a Facebook group where they can connect during the week, the Zoom link, and other resources for attendees. Online classes provide a way to reach people that won’t walk through the doors of your church right away, but they feel comfortable being present in an online Zoom classroom. It gives them the chance to know others’ faces, and provides a bridge where they could feel comfortable attending church in person down the road. Don’t miss this mission field opportunity.Brainstorm new ideas. // Recognizing the opportunities that are provided by mixing online and in-person, Coker is brainstorming a lot of possible ideas right now. In the fall they are launching an intentional discipleship program where people take an online assessment, get their results, and then meet with a spiritual director who will guide their next steps. Depending on what the spiritual director recommends, people may then get involved in online classes to help them study the Bible better or dig deeper into prayer. Another new thing Coker is trying is assembling five community groups. Four of these will be in-person and one will be online. Each group will meet quarterly as a community gathering for things such as a BBQ, a study group, a monthly dinner, etc. Coker will see what organically grows from there.Listen well. // During this transitional phase it’s important for churches to be listening to what their community needs as well as how they want to connect with your church. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas and offer a mix of online and in-person services or events. Most of all, make space to listen to God. During the pandemic, God has shown Jenn that she needs to be intentional about her connection with Him. Pay particular attention to your sabbath, your time with God alone, and time with other people and how God might be speaking through them. Commit everything to prayer, and know who your Spirit-led experts are. Talk decisions out with other leaders at the church, but also don’t be afraid to use Google to research and learn! You can learn more about Coker United Methodist Church at www.coker.org and visit their online campus at Coker.org/cokeronline. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Carey Nieuwhof Leadership has felt pretty uncertain and divisive this past year. How do you make decisions when the future isn’t predictable and your team has different opinions?Download the FREE Pivot Ready Cheat Sheet to get help making progress and gaining clarity through rapid change and disruption. It will give you a framework that effective and resilient leaders use to make decisions and take action.

It’s clear that we’re entering a post-pandemic stress period in the life of the local church. All around us we see signs that our teams are stressed and not sure what to do next. Anecdotally, we’re hearing about huge turnover at churches, and we cannot ignore the rising anxiety in leaders across the country. Recently, Adam Grant wrote an article in the New York Times called, “There’s a Name For The Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing”. This article has been passed around in many of my circles because it accurately captures where so many of our teams are at right now. The sense of blah that has come over many of our team members is impacting not only their mental health but the ability of our churches to push forward and make a difference in our communities. As executive pastors, we’re concerned and are wondering what we can do to help. Rather than being content with letting this problem roll over us, I want to provide some guidance to help you wrestle with actions you could take to help your team move forward. I believe that it’s possible to move from languishing to flourishing. In this season, we must help all our team members take steps away from languishing and toward flourishing. Ultimately, we need people to grow their relationship with Jesus because He anchors our forward-facing steps. Our friends at Medi-Share have released a particularly helpful study in light of the issues in Grant’s article. This study is called the “10 Things About Mental Health Every Pastor and Leader Should Know” and its findings can help us figure out a way forward for our teams. 3 Actions Your Church Can Take to Help Languishing Team Members Actively de-stigmatize counseling // One of the shocking statistics that stood out in the Medi-Share study was that 71% of pastors fear their congregation knowing that they’re getting counseling. Counseling has been an important part of my journey as a leader over the last 10 years. I have found it exceedingly helpful. In my marriage, it’s been a source of joy as we’ve taken time to slow down and draw from a trusted advisor who can help us wrestle through what God has to say about our relationship and help me think about thinking. Gone is the season where pastors and church leaders need to think about themselves as superhuman. This statistic made me sad to think that there are still many pastors out there who fear that people in the church may think less of them for seeking personal counsel. Because in fact, the opposite is true. Investing in your own mental health by seeking counsel is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness. As a leadership team, we not only need to provide access to counseling as a way of helping our team grow but actively work at de-stigmatizing it. Casually talk about it in your leadership teams. Ensure that the way you speak about it from the stage is pro-counseling. Find ways to encourage your staff to connect with counseling. Medi-Share provides remote counseling to its member churches, which is incredible! Learn more about it here. I’ve found remote counseling to be immensely effective and easy to slot into my life during this season. It could be a perfect tool to offer your teammates as they navigate the post-pandemic period. What can you do to help remove any hesitation around getting counseling for your team? Help Your Team Make Professional Friends // According to the Medi-Share study, 75% of pastors said they felt isolated and alone, both personally and professionally. We all know that people who feel isolated present a real danger to their mental health and the mental health of those around them. The stereotype of the lone pastor sitting in their office, whittling away on their latest sermon while dealing with current church pressures has some truth to it. Ministry can be a lonely profession even for people serving on a team. We must turn this around for our people! Within your staff community, ensure that you are creating opportunities for people to connect. One of the most important things that people need to succeed in any job is a “work friend”. It is our responsibility to structure opportunities for friendships to develop and grow. Taking time out to do something social has always been important for our teams and is doubly important in this season. You could also provide opportunities for your people to develop friendships external to your church. Part of the reason why we run online coaching cohorts at unSeminary for executive pastors and team members is that we want people to develop friendships across the country. One of the amazing outcomes of the pandemic is that people are increasingly more comfortable with meeting and developing relationships online. These professional huddles are an important tool for people to develop friendships and not feel isolated. Sharing problems that you’re having at your church with others can be a breath of fresh air and you’ll realize that you’re not alone. How can you help your team make more professional friends in the next six months? Encourage People to Live a Healthy Lifestyle // It is a best practice to provide health benefits for your church. Now might be a great season for you to look at the health benefits that you provide. Ensure that whatever benefit program you’re using provides a full complement of mental health resources. It would be good to review these benefits with your team to ensure they understand the importance of accessing every mental health opportunity that your insurance solution offers. I’ve also seen various creative ways to encourage healthier living in church staff and members. Here are a few that may inspire you: Healthy Living Team Competitions // Where teams compete for who lives the healthiest life! Who can drop the largest percentage of weight during a given time? Fun! (Like “The Biggest Loser” but just for your staff teams.)Actively Encouraging Exercise // I’ve seen churches provide exercise plans and encourage teams to get out and exercise on “company time”. This is not only for participants to feel better about their bodies but for them to also grow their relationships.Rethinking the Church Snacks // One of the real dangers of working in a local church is it seems like everywhere we go donuts and carbs are targeting our health and trying to bring us down to the stereotypical image of the overweight pastor. We need to work against this. When was the last time that you looked carefully at the snacks provided within your church environment? We must ensure that the snacks we provide reflect the lifestyle we hope our teams will follow. What actions could you take to encourage your entire team to live a healthier lifestyle? Are you looking for more help for your team in the mental health area? Download this resource. I strongly encourage you to pick up Medi-Share’s report, “The 10 Things About Mental Health Every Pastor & Leader Must Know”. This report will give you a clear understanding of what’s happening within your church team. It could be a great discussion starter. Download this report and email it to everybody on your staff team. At your next team meeting, pull out a few statistics as a starting point to help your team think through and wrestle with their own mental health and how a positive environment can be created for your team. Click here to download Medi-Share’s report “The 10 Things About Mental Health Every Pastor & Leader Must Know”. Download PDF Article Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.

Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Pete Briscoe, who served as the senior pastor for nearly three decades at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, Texas, and now consults with and coaches pastors. He is with us today to talk about growing communication skills to improve preaching as well as how we can find deeper fulfillment in our work and lives. Coaching church leaders. // While at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship, Pete recognized that he would cycle through ups and downs where he would do really well when they were in the middle of building something new, but then would become very restless and bored with normal day-to-day ministry. This internal struggle was something that Pete largely battled alone, feeling like many people couldn’t understand or weren’t safe to share with. As the highs became higher and the lows lower, Pete made a decision to step down from his position to get help. He asked himself, “Can I do this role and be a healthy person at the same time?” and ultimately decided it was time for a change. After he stepped down from the senior pastor position, Pete and his wife decided to sell their house, purchase an RV and head to the mountains. They now drive around the country, going to different cities and working to coach and consult with church and business leaders.Success vs fulfillment. // Pete takes a look at self-care and communications when coaching church leaders. One of the things Pete discovered on his own journey is that there is a difference between the engineering of success and the art of fulfillment. The success side of leading can be more of a science – we do certain things and the Lord blesses it and it tends to work, but we may still be left with a lack of personal fulfillment inside. Fulfillment is more of an art which is individual and personalized. There are spiritual, relational, and generosity factors involved.Dream about the future. // When it comes to self-care, Pete spends a day with church leaders in order to walk through what their life looks like now, and what’s broken and stuck. He asks questions about what’s working and what needs to change, go, or stay. From there Pete helps his clients spend a lot of time dreaming about the future and what they want their life to look like. Many pastors tend to think that they will spend their whole lives in church ministry and don’t think about what comes next. So Pete helps people sort through these conflicts and feelings and plan for the future. Then Pete helps them put together a life plan to get there.Uncovering who we are. // Who pastors really are can get lost in the persona we create. It is appropriate not to share everything with the whole body of believers, but that also creates a slightly different person than who we really are. In time, who we really are gets lost in that bigger public persona. In Pete’s conversations with pastors, he draws out this knowledge, asking: What’s real about you? What’s not? What’s going on behind the scenes that no one else knows about?Improve communication. // Pete also helps pastors apply communication theory and pragmatic communication to preaching. As people become better communicators, it helps them to become better preachers too. Pete is also launching a course to help pastors grow their preaching skills. A two-hour session helps leaders learn how to craft a gripping message. Part of the course includes working on a sermon and then recording its execution so that Pete can help pastors tighten up their presentation and delivery. You can learn more about Pete Briscoe and the services he offers at www.petebriscoe.com. Plus, download his ten tips for preaching to a camera here. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the time after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!