Ten Best Ways to Ruin Your Church Staff

For those pastoral leaders who want to keep and develop quality staff ministry colleagues, here are the ten most common ways that pastors ruin church staff—and how to avoid them. (For those pastors who want to get rid of troubling church staff, then this is the way to do it!). Today, no. 1: Demand perfection and conformity.

1. Demand perfection and conformity. Insecure leaders tend to demand unrealistic expectations. If you are a secure leader, however, you will seek out mature and competent staff and free them to work out their ministry. You will learn from them—they will be good teachers to you, challenge you, and be colleagues in ministry (I often tell associate staff that “Job 1” of any staff specialist—education, youth, worship, music—is to educate the pastor). If you get a novice staff member, then remember that you’ll be doing a lot of on-the-job training. Part of your ministry then, is to be a mentor. That’s a call to stewardship.

Effective leaders let their staff make their own mistakes and remember that their mistakes and failures along the way are not a reflection on the leader’s competence. Pastoral ministry is not science, it is relationship. Staff relationships take a long time to cultivate and along the way, it will be messy.

From, Perspectives on Congregational Leadership: Applying Systems Theory for Effective Leadership, by Israel Galindo. See the new Perspectives on Congregational Leadership blog site.