The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Factfulness: The Urgency Instinct in the Church
Can rushed decisions really derail your church's mission? Discover how the urgency instinct, as discussed in Hans Rosling's "Factfulness," often leads to hasty actions, wasted resources, and unintended consequences within church settings. From the quick hiring of online pastors during the pandemic to the sudden need to replace a youth pastor, we'll explore real-world examples that highlight the pitfalls of acting without sufficient planning or prayerful consideration. Learn practical strategies for overcoming the urgency instinct, emphasizing the importance of taking a moment to breathe, gathering more information, and fostering a culture of patience and discernment.
As we wrap up our series on instincts, I encourage you to revisit previous episodes for deeper insights and actionable advice on building a healthy church. Don't miss out on future episodes; subscribe to the Healthy Church Podcast to receive notifications every weekday at 5 a.m. We value your thoughts and feedback, so please share them with us via email at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com. Enjoy a wonderful weekend, and join us again on Monday for fresh content to support your church's journey toward health and growth.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.
- - - - -
Is Your Church Hiring?
If your church is searching for a new staff member, reach out to Todd for a conversation on how he might be able to help.
Are You Looking for a New Ministry Role?
If you are open to a new church role in the next few months, add your free resume and profile at ChemistryStaffing.com.
Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Today we're going to be talking, we're rounding out our series. It's been 10 episodes. I hope you've enjoyed it. It's on the instincts that Hans Rosling puts out in his book called Factfulness. And today is our last instinct on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi, my name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders of TheChemistryStaffingcom and your humble host here at the podcast. So thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 1:As I said, we're finishing up our series on these instincts from the book Factfulness, and today we're going to be talking about the urgency instinct. Now, the urgency instinct is our tendency to feel this sense of urgency and rush into decisions, even though we often neglect the importance of careful analysis and thoughtful action. And I found that people either have a real problem with this urgency instinct or maybe un-urgency instinct. Right, some people make really rash decisions and some people take way too long to make what seems to me to be a simple decision. But today we're going to talk specifically about the urgency instinct in the church. Now, in the church, the urgency instinct can manifest itself in various ways. We might feel pressured to respond immediately to a crisis. We might feel the urgency to launch a new program without adequate planning, or to make decisions based on fear or scarcity rather than on wisdom and discernment. We might get caught up in the latest trends or fads, feeling like we need to jump on board or risk being left behind. I saw this during the pandemic. How many churches do we know that hired online pastors Only about six months later, when every church in America got to meet again, all of a sudden kind of ditched their online ministry or at least reassigned that staff member. So sometimes you just feel like the urgency to jump on board least reassigned that staff member. So sometimes you just feel like the urgency to jump on board and sometimes that's okay. Other times it's just an urgency instinct that leads to rash decisions that you have to undo later.
Speaker 1:The urgency instinct can really lead to those impulsive decisions, those wasted resources and, a lot of times, some unintended consequences, and it can prevent us from taking time to pray and to seek counsel and to take the time to discern God's will, because we got to make a decision here. It can also create a culture of anxiety. It can create a culture of burnout, as we constantly just constantly feel like we're racing against the clock, and this can be my tendency as well. I don't take a long time to make decisions. I don't think I'm too rash most of the time, but every once in a while, just like man, I got to get this off my plate. So I'll just make a decision, and when I do that, I usually pay for it. So how do we overcome this urgency instinct? Hans, I'm going to, hopefully Hans. Can I call you Hans, hans? This is our 10th episode, so I would hope that Hans and I would be on a first name basis. But Hans Rosling advises us to take some small steps to overcome this urgency instinct. It means and this is the tough one right Resisting the urge to rush into decisions, take a breath, gathering more information, and it means recognizing that most decisions are not quite as urgent as they seem and there's usually time for thoughtful deliberation and prayerful consideration.
Speaker 1:We give me an example of this. We talk with churches all the time that if pastor gets in his office at eight o'clock in the morning, he has no need for talking to a staffing agency like chemistry staffing at eight o'clock, but at 8.15, pastor, can I knock at the door? Pastor, can I talk? And it's the youth pastor. He says I just took another job and I'm turning in my two weeks notice and then all of a sudden, by 8.15, the pastor's oh crap, I got to find a youth pastor. And they immediately start thinking I got to put out a job posting. I got to go to a website and put on a job posting. I need to. Where's his job description? Where's her job description? We need to pull that out and update it and we need to hire this person.
Speaker 1:And what we tell people, and what Matt and I tell people, and what our church coaches tell churches that just have a resignation on their desk, is it's okay to take a second and breathe. It may seem urgent and it is urgent, right, you need a youth pastor, but it's not so urgent that you make mistakes, that you make rash decisions. So we just tell people sometimes you just need to breathe. It might be for a few hours, it might be for a to breathe. It might be for a few hours, it might be for a few days, it might be for a few weeks, but you need to take a breath and gather more information and make really good decisions. And in the church it means cultivating this culture of patience and discernment and it means taking time to pray and to seek wise counsel, and sometimes I thank God that he's put me in a position with chemistry staffing, that I can be a part of that wise counsel for church at least I hope it's wise. I can be a part of counsel for churches, okay, but to help them weigh the potential consequences of their decisions when it comes to staffing.
Speaker 1:And it also means sometimes you got to be willing just to say no to certain opportunities or certain initiatives, recognizing that we all can't do everything at once. Not everything is urgent. Check out a podcast I did on the Eisenhower matrix. It was a few back, but you can check that out. It talks about urgent and important and all of those things. That's really a great tool. But sometimes you just have to say no, you can't do everything, you can't, you just can't. But sometimes you just have to say no, you can't do everything, you can't, you just can't. You can't do everything at once anyway, and sometimes the best decision sometimes is just to wait. So I want you to think about this throughout your day.
Speaker 1:How are you with this decision-making and the urgency instinct, as you have decisions that you need to make come across your desk, maybe today, even when you're faced with a decision today, resist the urge to react immediately. Take a step back, breathe. Take time to breathe and gather a little bit more information. That's some decisions you can just make really quick. You can make them in your sleep. But other decisions have some long-term effects financially, spiritually, health-wise, all those things, those kind of decisions. Take a deep breath and resist the urge to react immediately. Seek wise counsel if you need to Contact some trusted advisors. If it's a staffing issue, maybe it's a hiring or a firing decision, maybe it's just you've got a staff member that needs some coaching and some outside help. Seek some wise counsel. That could be me maybe. Like I said, I don't know that I can guarantee wise, but I can guarantee counsel. Reach out to me podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. I'd love to be able to talk with you and see how I could serve you or your church.
Speaker 1:Another thing is just pray for discernment, ask God for wisdom and guidance as you really work your way through the decision and then finally just be willing to say no. Sometimes, like I said, you can't do everything at once and sometimes that means you just the best decision is either to say no or to say not right now. Just we're going to wait. God's perfect timing is absolutely perfect. It just is that we don't know what that timing is. He doesn't. I've always said it would be so helpful of God because God, I really believe, has a plan for all of us. Just show us the next couple of pages of that plan so that we can know what's coming. That's not how God works. We have to trust him. I think that's part of our faith. That's a huge part of our faith journey. We have to trust in his guidance. We have to resist that urge to rush and make things happen on our own, and we need to make decisions that are really rooted in wisdom and discernment and faith, and those kind of decisions cannot be made as a snap decision.
Speaker 1:I hope this has been helpful. I hope this series has been helpful for you on the instincts so you can go back and listen to any of them. If you're not subscribed to the podcast, I would encourage you, wherever you're listening, to go ahead and subscribe. That way, you'll get new notifications whenever we drop. It's usually, I think, five o'clock in the morning every weekday that we drop a brand new episode here on the Healthy Church Podcast, so I hope that you'll become a regular listener and again. Reach out to me anytime with any input, any thoughts, any feedback I would love to hear from you. You can reach me via email at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Okay, if you're listening to this on Friday, it's the weekend. Go, have a great weekend service, enjoy some time with you and your family, and we'll see you back here on Monday.
