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Succession From the Seat That Doesn't Get a Vote · The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: The congregation got a process, the board got a vote, the staff got a rumor, and a new boss.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: 12 to 18 months of search, a new first chair, senior pastor arrived.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the people who kept the church running the whole time, your associate pastor, your worship pastor, your kids director, maybe they found out the same way that the lobby did.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about succession and communication today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a how-to unrunning hand a pastoral search.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that on other podcast editions.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is the view today from the seat that doesn't get a vote.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's usually your staff.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at Chemistrystaffing.com.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll check us out at chemistrystaffing.com.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm also your host here at the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody on your team applied for the new senior pastor role.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: They applied to serve with the one who's leaving.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then the search started, and overnight they became kind of the leftover staff.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: In business, that's an acquisition, maybe a new org chart, loyalty test, leftover employees.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: But church succession actually does the same thing.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just goes, okay, your associate pastor's still preaching, still covering hospital calls, still smiling in the announcement video.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has told them what happens to their role when the new senior pastor or the new first chair actually lands in their role.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then the quiet tests start.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see who fits.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to say it at a meeting.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Staff can hear it in who gets invited, who gets left off the candidate's calendar, who gets asked to be flexible.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: The worship pastor who built the room is suddenly a question mark.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: The kids' director is absolutely fine.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The associate is a test.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Loyalty to a person is being scored as loyalty to the church.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And those are not the same thing.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I know you that your heart is good.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the outgoing pastor, you're trying to protect the church.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you're on the board, you're trying to get that next hire right.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the incoming new senior pastor, you're trying to build your team.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: All of that.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a different seat, right?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's understandable.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the people that are already on the team are not furniture.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're not a package that you unwrap after the vote.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: In our church staff health assessment last year, associate pastors score about 169 on their score out of 250 senior, and lead pastors score 193.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's about a 25% gap.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the associate pastor, the second in second chair, the person that's a support pastor on your staff, their flight risk actually goes up, especially during succession or transition of a senior pastor.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: 69%.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: They already live in the seat that doesn't get a vote.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't get a vote normally on who the next senior pastor would be.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: They might have been asked for some input, but they didn't get a vote.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then you put them in the announcement video and ask them to look absolutely thrilled.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they have to celebrate a process that honestly, a lot of times they just weren't involved in.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: They have to guess whether new vision means, in reality, whether or not they're going to have a job.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, only 54% of church staff believe leadership handles conflicts well.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And a succession is the biggest conflict you'll ever manage without calling it a conflict.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And some churches don't even have the courtesy of a firing.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to fire anybody.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can just stop including them.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Change the reporting line.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hire your next person next to them.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let the role shrink until they leave on their own.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not right.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's just nothing more than silent replacing.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's cleaner for the board.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's brutal for the staff person.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And your associate, pastor, and the people on your staff don't need rumors.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: They need a sentence.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what to expect.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's gonna happen to your role.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And even if that sentence is hard, an honest no is kinder than an 18-month maybe.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me repeat that.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: An honest no is kinder than an 18-month-old maybe.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So what does it look like to put your staff in the process without turning them into a search committee?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Churches struggle about this all the time.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody at chemistry staffing that helps churches and search committees do staff searches and senior pastor searches all the time.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: We see this.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the deal.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Staff don't need a vote.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: They don't.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of staff wouldn't even want a vote if you offered it to them.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But they do need three things.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: They need a real briefing, they need a real ask, and they need a real sentence about their rule.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with a real briefing.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's really simple.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where we are, here's what the timeline is on the new hire.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what is, and here's what isn't decided.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a real briefing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that real briefing needs to be pretty consistent and pretty regular throughout the process.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing worse than not communicating.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Staff members need to be communicated with.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the real briefing.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: The real ask.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do you need in a first chair in a senior pastor to do your job well?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's data.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's including the staff.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get the vote, right?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But they do get to be asked, what are you looking for?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: What would you love to see in your next senior pastor?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're a part of this church too.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's data.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you use it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the real briefing, the real ask, and finally, the real sentence about their role.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna are they gonna stay?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is the role gonna change?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it on the table?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And when they'll know that information.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: If staff are finding things out in the lobby, believe it or not, you are you're too late.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: If the handoff already happened and nobody sat down with the leftover team, the staff that you currently have, you're still not too late.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're just way overdue.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the bottom line for today.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Your congregation got a process.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: The board got a vote.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: If your staff only gets a rumor, you didn't do succession, you did a surprise.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I know this one stings.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know this one's hard.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons it's so hard is because many churches thankfully don't have to look for a senior pastor often.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't really know kind of the guardrails that they need to put up.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: They have a lot of things they're thinking about.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: They gotta think about the congregation, they gotta think about the staff, they need to think about the next person, they need to all different kinds of things.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And things fall through the cracks if you're not careful.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things we do at Chemistry Staffing is help churches with senior pastor searches and especially with succession searches.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we help take some of those things that could fall through the cracks off the table so they don't fall through the cracks.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that is what we talked about today: making sure that you have a really good communication plan for your current staff because you don't want to lose your current staff.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not, if you're not careful, you may.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I know it stings, but I also know that you care about the people who are still there, and that's why you're listening today.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if there's any way that I can help you or your church, maybe you're going through a succession plan, maybe you're a senior pastor, you're thinking, hey, I need to start thinking about a succession plan, reach out to me.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to have a conversation with you.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to have those conversations as early as possible.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we get pulled into the conversation a couple weeks before the retirement happens.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to talk to you.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Even three to five years is awesome to start to get that plan around.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's good for you.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the outgoing senior pastor, it's good and it can be totally confidential.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's how a lot of our conversations start.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's just us and you as an outgoing senior pastor to start putting some ducks in a row.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if that's you or if that's your church, you need some help, just reach out to me.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to have a conversation with you.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast at Chemistry Staffing.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast at chemistry staffing.com.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's it for today.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you have a great weekend.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be right back here on Monday on the Healthy Church Staff Pack podcast.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great weekend.