In 2018, when I was joining our church as the new Executive Pastor, one of the first issues that was brought to my attention involved a marriage conference. We had a team of people from our church that had worked really hard to prepare a wonderful weekend for our people. They had booked a speaker, ordered the food, printed the materials, and even had giveaways and door prizes. There was only one problem… no one from our staff had signed up except for me and my wife.
As you can imagine, this was really discouraging for the people on this team. And what this showed me is that we had an issue with our staff culture that needed to be addressed. I understand that people are busy and can’t attend everything that the church does, but that wasn’t the case for most of the people on our team. After I asked, I learned that most of our staff just wasn’t planning on attending because they didn’t want to. And as the new Executive Pastor of our church, I was shocked to hear this. In my mind, this was unacceptable. If we are going to ask our people to participate in something, we need to be prepared to participate as well. Otherwise, why are we even doing it? If the staff doesn’t even want to participate, then we probably need to re-think the entire thing.
As time went on, I learned that this issue was bigger than this marriage conference. It bled over into other things as well. During my first year, I learned that we had staff members who were not involved in our discipleship groups, and we even had staff members who were not giving to the church! Again, this was unacceptable. How can we ask our people to do these things if we aren’t willing to?
Simply put, we need to lead by example. If we are going to ask our people to do something, we need to be willing to do it as well. Otherwise, we are not leading well. I even added a section in our employee handbook that addresses this. It says…
“As a staff member of The Brook, we ask that you help us lead by example in all ways. For example, if we ask our people to attend a church-wide event, we want you to attend that event as well. If we ask our people to join a Discipleship Group, we want you to join a Discipleship Group as well. If we ask our people to give, we want you to give as well. Simply put, we should never ask our people to do something that we are not willing to do. As leaders of our church, please help us lead by example.”
Now, after several years of reshaping our staff culture, our situation is significantly better. All of our staff do their best to attend our church-wide events, all of our staff are involved in our discipleship groups, and all of our staff are faithfully giving to the church. But, it took time and hard work to get there.
If this is an issue at your church, I would encourage you to address it. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it. Lead by example!
