We continue the “Ten Best Ways to Ruin Your Church Staff” to avoid for those pastoral leaders who want to keep and develop quality staff ministry colleagues, (For those pastors who want to get rid of troubling church staff, then this is the way to do it!). Today, no. 7: Make staff members responsible for other people’s functioning.
7. Make staff members responsible for other people’s functioning. A sure sign of reactivity and anxiety is when pastoral leaders start making staff members responsible for the functioning or behavior of others. One of the things that brings staff members to a coaching session with me is when the pastor has triangled them in this manner. For example, a church educator is pressured to increase the number of people attending educational programs; a youth minister is held accountable for the behavior of the church youth; a staff member on the stewardship committee is held responsible for the shortfall in budget giving; a children’s minister is held responsible for the spiritual decisions of the children in the church (read: getting them baptized).
Effective leaders understand that staff members are responsible for the stewardship of their ministry, not for the decisions or functioning of the members in the church.
From, Perspectives on Congregational Leadership: Applying Systems Theory for Effective Leadership, by Israel Galindo. See the new Perspectives on Congregational Leadership blog site.
