(Plus Answers to Your Questions)
Every week, I get the chance to talk with many church leaders.
Here’s my sense. I’m hearing two distinct (yet very different) things.
#1: “I’m encouraged.” I’m hearing how proud pastors and church leaders are at how their church, their board, and their staff have stepped up during the last six weeks. And while the future is still unknown (and sometimes, unsettling), the church leaders I’m talking with are encouraged.
#2: “I’m exhausted.” At the same time, I’m hearing some real cries of tiredness. One pastor told me his job description changed 100% overnight and that he’s struggled to keep up with all the demands. In fact, I’m hearing this quite often: I’m running on all cylinders right now, and know I can’t do this forever.
We want to help you and your church during this time. So for the next few minutes, we’d like to share with you some answers to some of the questions we’ve being asked during our calls with pastors and church leaders. And we’ve asked a couple of our friends (Dan Reiland and Mike Bonem) to help us with the answers.
- What do you say to pastors that are overwhelmed?
- Will online services go away or continue in the near future?
- How should we be planning for our church financially right now?
- How do we communicate the truth with hope moving forward?
- How can I communicate financial reality AND hopefulness for the future?
- What will make your in person gathering extremely valuable moving forward?
- How will we measure participation and engagement and how are they different?
- How should we protect our senior adults during ‘re opening’?
- How do we make staff cuts and maintain our integrity?
- What does it mean to know your church’s ‘cash runway’?
- What should our ‘re opening’ of live services look like?
- What “What if” questions should I be asking my church staff team?
- How do you encourage adaptability on your church staff team?
- How to deal with church staff members that are zoning out during this crisis?
- How do you relate to different types of church staff members during COVID?
- What do you do as a church leader when the pressure gets to be too great?
What questions do you have for you or your church right now? We’d love to hear them. Feel free to email me your questions.
At Chemistry Staffing, we’re here to help your church through this very unique time and season. We know that hiring new staff members may be the farthest thing from your mind right now. That’s ok. Just know that we’re here for you when you’re ready.
And in the current season, if we can help you think through how all this will affect your church in the area of staffing, generosity, or structure, please let me know. I’d love to grab 30 minutes with you to hear your church’s story and to give any input I can about what we’re learning from our many talks with churches. Let’s talk this week…
