A Church Is Only As Healthy As Its Team
When you joined the team at your church, what kind of training did you get in the first weeks?
Did you have an HR meeting to cover the health insurance and retirement accounts? Did you cover how to submit an expense report or reserve a room on the master calendar? How about how to handle a benevolence request or who to send pastoral care needs? These are all staples of onboarding and training in most churches I know of.
It’s less likely that you received information on how to take care of yourself. Or what the church and leaders will do to support your growth and development. Integrating spiritual disciplines, learning new job-related skills, and understanding the behavioral values of your team often isn’t part of the onboarding process, unfortunately.
Most churches don’t spend much time talking about how they will invest in and develop the people on their team. They simply haven’t put much thought into it.
Church leaders have to be wholly invested in the ongoing spiritual health and personal development of their team members.
As a leader, I want to challenge you to push past settling for doing a devotional with your team once a week. Devotions are good, but I think there is more to individual and team health. If you are a staff member, I want to challenge you to ask your leaders to invest more time and energy in your development.
Want to go deeper? Join my free deep dive course on leadership styles.
If you want a healthy, thriving team that is purposeful and effective at serving your church and community well, you have to dig deep and get intentional. Why should you spend time—significant time— thinking about, planning, and implementing a holistic vision and strategy to develop the people on your team?
For a leader, nothing is more important.
Churches are in the people business. We have to remember to include our teams—staff, volunteers, elders, assistants, and interns. Your team is filled with people you are called to serve, love, support, and invest in just as much as the broader congregation and community.
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Use our simple on-demand video training courses to equip volunteers, develop leaders, and teach disciples. Create your own training or use our video library. Our training automation platform makes it simple and fast to get your people ready for ministry.
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