If your church has been growing and you’re hiring more staff – praise God! Hiring more staff means more growth and more people you can serve, but it doesn’t come without its own challenges. The bigger your church is, the more management will be needed to keep your entire staff and volunteer teams running strong.
Let’s talk about how to keep your staff healthy AND pursue growth as a church.
1. Delegate Responsibility
As a rule of thumb, we recommend that no leader in a church should have more than 7 direct reports under their care at a time.
If you’re a pastor, it’s important to know your limits when it comes to hiring staff.
Many pastors have their staff members report directly to them, which can work well in many scenarios. But we advise that leaders never just assume they can handle the responsibility of managing their direct reports. Some pastors have a larger relational and managerial capacity than others. It’s crucial to know yourself and your bandwidth so that you can bring in support when it’s time.
Have a plan in place to delegate your staff-management responsibilities when the time is right – whether that’s when you have 3 full-time staff or 10.
2. Focus on Momentum + Growth
If the church exists to bring more people to Christ, then healthy growth is something we should desire for our churches. Tracking this growth looks like being willing to do new things, from using Slack instead of email or tracking more data than you would expect from a church pastor.
Whatever works best for your church to remain supported, motivated, and innovative is what we encourage you to pursue.
This is an area that MHA is eager to support your church in. We’ve found that one of the very best ways to grow as a church is to learn from churches that have knowledge they can share with us! Whether a great software system or team huddle tips, it’s so much better to learn from your support system versus trying to figure it all out on your own.
3. Shepherd Your People
Another way to talk about “managing your staff” is shepherding the people who serve in your church.
Of course real management should happen, but attentiveness to the humanity and spiritual health of those under your churches’ care is crucial for their well-being and flourishing in their roles.
One way this is done at Mission Hills is by asking direct report staff questions about their families weekly, knowing specifics of their lives, and being able to celebrate or grieve with them as needed.
