Many churches have a vision for getting more people to volunteer and serve in the ministry. Fewer churches actually make it happen. One of the reasons is because they lean on staff to do ministry.

A few weeks ago I was at Lifepoint Church in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Their ministry needs to be on your radar. They’ve grown by over 50% in the last 12 months. But that’s not what’s most unique about this ministry.

What’s unique about Lifepoint is their commitment to giving ministry away to volunteers. They have several strategies for making that happen, but let me highlight the most obvious one — they don’t hire staff to do ministry.

Of all the churches I’ve worked with over the last couple of years, Lifepoint has the lowest staff to attendance ratio. They only have 1 full-time equivalent staff member (that includes all staff, not just ministry staff) for every 150 people in attendance. Only about 35% of their budget is spent on staff expenses.

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One of the questions that popped up on Twitter recently was related to hiring a campus pastor. The senior pastor who contacted me was curious to know what to look for in a campus pastor.

It probably won’t surprise you to know that I don’t think there’s a magic formula for finding that right person to fill this type of role at every church. The “right” person at one church may be completely the wrong person at another church.

For example, if your multi-site strategy includes trying to replicate everything exactly the same at every campus, you probably don’t want a strong visionary leader. Instead, you need more of a manager. If, on the other hand, you need someone to act more like a church planter to help shape the ministry in a different community than your current campus, then you probably need someone who is more entrepreneurial. You don’t want primarily a person who is always waiting for specific instructions from the top leadership team on what to do next.

That said, I think there are a handful of common characteristics you need to prioritize when finding your next campus pastor. The right campus pastor will:

1. Embrace the DNA of your church. Every church is unique. Your campus pastor needs to both embrace and champion your mission, vision and values. That’s why it’s best if whoever you’re sending out to lead your next campus has had some time to learn who you are as a church.
2. Communicate well. It doesn’t matter if your teaching is on video. The ability to communicate is still essential to this role. Two big things the campus pastor has to talk about are vision and money. If they can’t do that well, they are the wrong person for the role. (more…)

William Vanderbloemen

William Vanderbloemen leads the Vanderbloemen Search Group which helps churches and large parachurch ministries find the right senior leaders. Since William is regularly connected with churches working through staffing issues, I asked him to comment on the staffing trends he’s seeing in ministries today. Here’s what he had to share:

1. More Communications – I’m seeing more and more emphasis on communications and social media, even in the form of a Chief Communications Officer. In my estimation, every seminal Kingdom breakthrough has happened on the heels of a communication breakthrough. As we stand on the dawn of the web and social media, we’re on the verge of perhaps the greatest breakthrough ever. Smart churches are figuring that out and hiring around it. When I visit our friends at Lifechurch.tv, I’m astounded at the resource put into tech and communication, but more astounded at the reach of their ministry.

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I get to spend a lot of time with churches either consulting related to staffing and structure or helping churches with searches for senior-level leaders. It’s been a long time since I shared some of the philosophies that shape how I coach leaders about church staffing, so I thought I’d give you a quick refresher. Here are…

10 Keys to a Smart Staffing Strategy

1. Think strategy before staffing structure. What’s your discipleship strategy? How do you help people who are new to your church become fully-devoted followers of Christ? How do you reach people outside the faith and outside the church? Build your staffing structure around that strategy.
2. Hire ministry leaders rather than ministry doers. In the church, you’ll never have enough money to hire the people you need to do ministry. The temptation is always to hire the person who is getting it done, but you really need to hire the people who can more capable of building the team.
3. Whenever possible, hire from within your church. They’re more likely to embrace the vision, values and strategy of your church. You’ll probably also have a better sense of how they’ll fit with your existing team.
4. But don’t assume the inside person is the best person. I’ve witnessed plenty of inside hires that didn’t work out. Outsiders may be helpful when you need a shift in philosophy or strategy. Outsiders may be helpful when you need experienced leadership. Outsiders may be helpful when you need a specialized skill. You have to weigh every situation and role individually to discern the right next hire.
5. Include multiple voices in the selection process. Include supervisors, peers and folks that will serve under the new person. If it’s a specialized skill, invite leaders from other churches to participate in the interviews. You might ultimately be the person who makes the hire, but it’s always better to have other people interact with the candidate to determine if there are any red flags.
6. Revisit your structure on a regular basis. This applies whether you are growing, declining or plateaued. In times of significant growth, you may need to do this every year or two.
7. You have to get the “right” people in the “right” roles. And this will change over time. God designed the body of Christ to embrace spiritual gifts to fulfill our mission. Any time we have people operating outside of their gift mix, we are minimizing the potential ministry impact.
8. Pay close attention to chemistry and connection with your vision and strategy. This is huge. It’s very unlikely that you’ll ever have to fire someone because they don’t have the capacity to get the job done. If you have to let someone go, it’s more likely to happen because they don’t fit with the rest of the team or they don’t embrace your vision and strategy.
9. Maintain a healthy staffing ratio. Try to target one full-time equivalent staff member for every 100 people who attend your church. That includes pastors, directors, housekeeping, administrative assistants and anyone else you pay. To calculate full-time equivalents, add up the total hours that your part-time staff works each week and divide by 40. Then add that number to the number of full-time staff. Trying to maintain this ratio will force you to think volunteers before staff.
10. Pray and listen. You’d think this one would be a given, but I’m amazed at how many times leaders downplay Holy Spirit promptings, gut feelings, that voice in your head or however you want to describe that sense that someone is or isn’t the right fit. Pay attention to those checks that cause you to second-guess. Again, this is why it’s so important to have others involved in the process to help discern the intangibles.

That’s my list. Based on your experience, what would you add or subtract from this list?

By the way, I’d love to serve you and your church if you need help revisiting your staffing strategy. Let me know if you’d like to talk.

Are you using performance-based pay to motivate your staff? Better think again. That pay system may actually be demotivating your team.

In this clever 10-minute video, Dan Pink explains what drives us. The answers may change the way you approach leading your team…and how you pay them.

Based on Dan’s findings, the three factors that lead to better performance are autonomy, mastery and purpose. Contrary to what you might have thought, we are not motivated by money. You can read more about this in Dan’s recent book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you think your organization does a good job of creating an environment that promotes autonomy, mastery and purpose?

[HT: The Practice of Leadership]

In my consulting role with churches, one of the most common requests I receive is to help assess church staffing and structure. Ironically, I had four of these inquiries from various churches across the country just in the last couple of weeks. Though I serve churches in a number of ministry strategy areas, this is my favorite. I love helping a church position their staff team to best fit both the ministry and the individuals involved.

I could be wrong, but I think many churches are at a place now where giving has plateaued or declined, yet their ministry impact still continues to grow. Because we’re in a new economy in what appears to be a slow recovery, churches are recognizing that waiting for giving to increase to address staffing needs isn’t going to work. Churches are restructuring and repositioning staff to free up resources to fill needed ministry roles.

When I engage with a church to review their staffing strategy, I typically do the following:

• Have the ministries complete an initial online survey to get an overview of the current health of the church
• Learn about the church’s vision and discipleship strategy to form the foundation for the revised staffing structure
• Have the key staff leaders complete an online profile to learn about their unique gifts, personalities and passions
• Facilitate group conversations with the staff leaders to talk through what’s working and what needs to be tweaked to fulfill the church’s vision
• Meet one-on-one with the senior pastor, executive pastor and all the key staff leaders
• Provide an executive summary outlining a recommended structure, realignment of current staff and identifying gaps for future hiring

Honestly, it ends up being a pretty fun process for both the staff teams and me. I love hearing the stories of how God is working in different ministry settings using uniquely gifted people to reach very different communities and cultures. And, I love watching people light up when they recognize God has gifted them differently from their peers. There’s nothing like watching the body of Christ coming together as God intended it.

If you’re curious to learn more about how I’m serving churches with their staffing and structure needs, feel free to contact me. I’d love to talk through potential next steps.

Here’s a free spiritual gifts assessment we use for everyone we hire at West Ridge. This is one of several profiles we use to make sure we are hiring the right person for the right role.

I just took the test again today. Here are my top five gifts according to this assessment:

1. Apostle
2. Leadership
3. Administration
4. Discernment
5. Giving

Probably won’t surprise you to learn that “mercy” was near the bottom of the list right above speaking in tongues. (Sorry my charismatic friends.)

How has God wired you? Just curious to know the profile of the folks that are a part of this conversation.

A few months ago, I asked you to participate in a survey from the Leadership Network on lean staffing. The results are in. Some of the findings might surprise you. For example:

• Lean staff churches do a better job with volunteers and lay leadership development.
• Lean staff churches invest a noticeably higher percentage of their budget beyond the walls of their church.
• Growing churches spend a smaller percentage of their budget on staffing costs, so they’re “leaner” than plateaued or declining churches.
• Staff costs become leaner with size — as overall weekend worship attendance increases, but not dramatically so.

Visit the Leadership Network blog to find out more about the results. There you’ll have the opportunity to download the full report for free and to participate in some additional next steps.

So, what do you think? Should spending less on staff be a priority for churches? If so, what would you do to help make that happen?

In case you missed the news, yesterday William Vanderbloemen announced the launch of the Vanderbloemen Search Group. The group has the sole focus of helping connect the right ministries with the right key staff people.

I’ve been partnering with William in the last year to help with church leadership search. We’re working together to help churches find leaders including their next senior pastor, executive pastor, campus pastor or lead pastor. The creation of this new group provides a new focus, but what doesn’t change is our continued partnership to assist churches with their ministry leadership search needs.

Check out our new website to read about our team, our process and the churches we’ve worked with in the past. Feel free to contact us with questions about how we might help you.

I’m really excited to announce two leadership openings at a church here in the Atlanta region. Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, Georgia is hiring both an executive pastor and a children’s pastor. Mountain Lake was planted by its lead pastor, Shawn Lovejoy. The church is about ten years old. It meets in a brand new facility and currently runs about 2,500 people in attendance.

If you are interested in either role, please email William Vanderbloemen, my teammate at FaithSearch Partners, with questions or to submit your resume. All correspondence is kept in strict confidence. If you want to chat with me about either role and see Mountain Lake Church, then attend the ChurchPlanters.com conference, Velocity, in two weeks.

On another note, we have been able to secure ten free tickets to the Velocity Conference. We have decided to give those away to the first ten children’s pastors who contact us. Just send William your email address and a contact phone number. He and I will announce the winners in a couple of days. See you at Velocity!