Navigating Church Staffing: Do We Need To Hire Staff? | Part 1

Welcome to Live Leadership, a podcast designed for pastors, church leaders, and elders who want to grow in their leadership. In this episode, hosts Jon and Ryan explore the topic of hiring church staff. They discuss why churches need staff, the benefits of investing in staff, and the importance of accountability and excellence. They also share insights on when to hire staff and how to plan for it financially. Throughout the conversation, they emphasize the value of staff in empowering volunteers and advancing the mission of the church. Tune in for practical advice and wisdom on leadership issues faced in church ministry. This podcast is brought to you by the Resound Podcast Network.

To find more gospel-centered resources head to https://www.resoundmedia.cc

Transcript

Mitchell
Live Leadership was a podcast made for you, made for pastors, church leaders, and elders like yourself. We're creating conversations specifically for you. There's no agenda behind this. The person who sent this to you loves you and wants you to grow in your leadership. So open your mind and heart to new ideas and get ready to grow in your leadership. Now let's jump into this week's episode of Live Leadership.

Jon
Hey everybody, welcome to Live Leadership. I'm John Delger and I'm here with... I am Ryan Kimmel, lead pastor at Peace Church. And I'm the executive pastor at Peace Church and we are excited to get to talk here in live leadership, which is a chance for us to get to talk not as experts, but as those walking through the day-to-day stuff of church leadership and get to talk and have some of the conversations that we would have anyways, that we are having anyways, and get to have those in a way that others can hear from them, benefit from them. So we hope that you are blessed by them. We're excited just to get to have this time to talk and discuss about leadership issues that we're facing on a regular basis. We hope that this is a blessing to other pastors, whether you're a pastor at a smaller church, a larger church, somewhere in the middle, whether you're an elder in a church, whether you are a volunteer leader of some kind in a church, or whether you're even a member who just wants to know more about what it's like to do leadership in the church. We hope this is beneficial to you. You get to learn a little bit about how things work. And so our basic outline, we're going to just kind of name a topic and we're going to answer some questions related to it. So we'd also love to hear your questions for the future, other topics we can address. But today we're addressing the fun and exciting topic of hiring church staff.

Ryan
Fun stuff.

Jon
Questions we're going to answer are these. Why do churches need staff? Why can't volunteers do everything? Where do you find church staff? And what do you look for when you're searching for church staff? So let's just start with that first one there. So if you're somebody who's asking, why do you need church staff? And maybe you're talking to a pastor who's trying to make that case to their church. I know I've found that in the past in my experience in smaller churches, especially in smaller churches, I think people ask that question. We've got along this far with just having a pastor. We don't have any other staff. And so why do we need staff? Can't people just do stuff for free? Aren't volunteers enough? Why do we need them? If you were gonna make that case, why do we need church staff? What would you say?

Ryan
Man, that's a great question. And I want to underscore, these are conversations we are having and have had and continue to have. And, you know, we've talked about church staff. One of the first things I would do is kind of push back on that notion, like what you just said, that people are like, we've gone this far without staff, do we need more? And I just want to rehash a very old modern day proverb that what's got you here isn't necessarily what's going to get you there. If you can roll on volunteers, great, but I think as your church and ministry grows and develops and matures, there's going to come to a point where you have to have an honest conversation about what does it mean to continue to invest in this ministry. I think about our approach to ministry, most of our ministries have like a line item of a budgeted amount of money to give to this ministry to see it operate throughout a fiscal year. At some point you can't just keep throwing money at it. At some point I think it's appropriate to consider what it would look like to hire a person who has designated time to devote to leading this ministry. Why do we need staff? Because we need people who have designated time to devote to an area and to a ministry that is coupled with a level of accountability by pastors or elders or whatever the government structure looks like for your context. When I've stepped up to the plate to make an argument for a staff position, I think a lot of times I do go back to what I just said. I say, you know, we can't just keep throwing money at this ministry. We have to consider what would it be like to invest into the next level of leadership for this area. More often than not, that results in the staff member. And you've served as executive pastor, lead pastor. How have you navigated those conversations or helped people to understand why staff is a beneficial investment?

Jon
Yeah, you named some of the key ones. So volunteers are awesome. Volunteers are great. We're so thankful for everybody in our church and every church that gives of their time freely, their time, their energy, their talents. So thankful for them. It will always be volunteers. The ministry can't happen without them. There will always be volunteers. Always going to need them. The intention of staff members is never to replace volunteers. Actually, by having staff members, you get more volunteers. But that's a point that we need to talk about. Exactly. So those are some of the basic points that I make is that the first kind of main things I think of when we bring in a staff member, we're adding investment and we're adding accountability. Like you said, you know, with a volunteer, you can have conversations with them about whether they're doing a good job or not a good job, that kind of thing. You need to be able to give that kind of feedback, but it's not the same as with somebody who is employed by the church. There's a different level of accountability that you can provide and say, hey, we saw you do well in this area, we saw you have some weakness in this area, and this is where we think you can grow. You can have that conversation in a different way with somebody who's an employee rather than somebody who's simply a volunteer. And investment, you know, you can keep increasing the budget for a certain ministry program like a youth group or whatever, but at a certain point you say, you know, more money doesn't fix this problem. What we need is somebody who's got training, experience, and dedicated time to lead this ministry, and that's what will take it to the next level, not just a group of volunteers with more access to money, but a specific person who's on staff and can lead. But yeah, one of the key points that we've made, you and I have both made this point here at PEACE, and I'm sure other churches have made it as well, that when you add staff, you're not losing volunteers, you're actually increasing volunteers. So in order to have a... That's part of the investment, right? Exactly. In order to have an excited, passionate, effective team of volunteers, you have to have somebody who loves them, cares for them, coordinates and plans for them, leads that team, invests in them, all those kind of things. Yeah, because they're getting investment from a leader

Ryan
who has the dedicated time to pour back into them. Right. And that has always been an important part of the rationale of why we want to hire staff is because we want to see more volunteers, aka more people of the church, using their gifts that God's given them to see the church built up. It's about building the church and seeing these ministries continue to flourish. That's always, I feel like every investment we've made in staff, that's been a direct result of that. We've seen more people get empowered to use their gifts in the ways that God's used them. And that's happened through through hiring a staff member. That happens to an extent with the volunteer, but again, volunteers have a limitation that the investment of

Jon
staff removes. So if you're an elder, a church member, or some other kind of leader who's kind of evaluating this question of should we have more staff in our church, that's the case that I would make is that more staff actually leads to more volunteers. When you have great staff, they build a team around them, they involve that team in the process of doing ministry and decision making, and your volunteers will be happier as a result. If you're a pastor, I probably don't have to make the case to you because you're going, yeah, we need more staff because I can't do everything. So, Pastor John, this goes into another question. At what point do we hire staff? Is there any trigger points for a ministry in terms of size or just vision? At what point do we hire staff? So the nationally recognized number that larger churches use is 1 to 70. One staff member for every 70 attendees in your church. That's kind of the big picture number that people use. In terms of budget, people try to stay somewhere around 50% of your budget to be staffing. So those are two metrics that we use at Peace to think about whether we have the right number of staff, especially that ratio of one staff member for every 70 attendees is one we use. In smaller churches, I think what you see is usually you've got one pastor until you reach, I don't know, 150 people or so, and then you go to another pastor. But then usually some support staff mingled in there. But yeah, that's the data we use in order to track, do we have the right number?

Ryan
So what you're talking about, then I just heard there's parameters that you can work within, and once you hit those markers, 70 to one, 50% of your budget roughly, then you kind of have to figure out for your own church and your own context, where, given that budget, given that amount, where do you want to place that investment? You know, for us, it's like where our ministry is growing. We don't necessarily create a staff position for a ministry that we don't think is growing. That's a gasoline that we want to put on a fire that's already burning. And so we look at where our ministry is growing that we need to invest in the staff. Now we're at the point now, we've been doing this long enough, there's not one area that's not staff led or at least staff overseen. Is that accurate to say? Yeah.

Jon
I'm trying to think, yeah.

Ryan
Yeah. So I think part of it is also listening to your volunteers. You know, when are they reaching their limits and is the ministry growing beyond their limitations?

Jon
Yeah, and one of the things you mentioned there is, so essentially our strategy is to feed those who are hungry, right? Not those who are starved or not hungry, but those who are hungry. And I think if you're a church kind of wondering where, if you've got everybody in your church saying, we want a staff member, and you're trying to figure out where to put that staff member, that's how we've done it, is we've looked at where is there a ministry that's already thriving, growing, doing a lot of great stuff but needs a staff member now. So we haven't looked and said, where's a ministry that's not doing anything, let's add a staff member there. We've looked and said, where is there a bunch of volunteer leaders who are already doing great, or maybe there's a staff member who's overseeing many ministries that are doing good and he just needs some help or she needs some help. Where do we add a staff member there?

Ryan
Yeah, I also think the other thing you have to think about is we don't hire staff that we can't also invest in. We're not hiring staff and just releasing them, never talking to them again. We're bringing them to a team. Do we have the margin on the team to continue to invest in that? So it's not just a ministry's growing, we got the money, let's hire a staff person. This also has to be couched in a larger vision, in a larger detailed direction that you believe God's calling the church to go. And for us, we want to make sure that we're not understaffed. We've gone through a lot of seasons where we were understaffed, where we weren't meeting that 1-70 mark, we were under the budget, and it just caused frustration among our teams, our ministries were getting frustrated, our volunteers weren't getting developed. And we've decided we're gonna flip that. We're always gonna be on pace. So we're always monitoring what can we afford, how many people is God bringing to the church on a regular basis, let's make sure that we're staffed well

Jon
for where God has brought us and where he's taken us. I was gonna say, yeah, so I think that largely goes back to the idea of a staffing strategy. What is your strategy overall for building and filling out the org chart? And like you said, we just got to the place where we're finally at, one to 70. We went for a lot of years where we weren't at that place and that was largely financial. You know, we couldn't afford to be at that spot. And so, by God's grace.

Ryan
That's why you need a couple metrics. You can't just do one, because there's not a one size fits all that's gonna work for every church across the country. We look at the one to 70, we try to stay somewhere in the 50 to 55 percent mark in our budget. You're going to have to look at your church where God's placed you to do ministry and figure out the metrics that's going to work for you. We try to follow a couple of them so we don't ever get locked in just to one. Yeah, exactly. And if you're a growing church, especially a faster growing church, I would say that ratio is going to be even higher that you know, we're pushing up north of

Jon
55% because we're growing so quickly and so we want to not fall behind in staffing. So we'd rather get ahead

Ryan
Make sure that we can that we're prepared for the growth that can is going to continue to come right? Yeah, so don't be afraid, you know

Jon
If you're in the early stages of being less than that number but just but set goals right set goals for the next year and the next year and plan to finally get ahead and build an org chart, build a plan, so that you've got great high-quality leaders towards the top that can invest in staff members further down who can grow and do great ministry.

Ryan
So Pastor John, here's a for instance. When you were first hired on at Peace, you were hired as the Community Life Pastor. And one of the things that you came in to lead, amongst many things, was our small group ministry. That's gone through some changes in names and also leadership, but you came in and one of the things we wanted you to do was to provide staff leadership to that ministry. Can you talk about what that was like, assuming leadership from a ministry that was in large part volunteer-led?

Jon
Yeah, right. At the time, it was called Growth Groups. Like you said, we've gone through some name changes since then, but at the time it was called growth groups and yeah prior to me there was some staff involvement, but it was always kind of on the back of somebody's plate. Being here before you, I can just affirm that, that ministry got thrown to nearly everyone. Yeah and so really the volunteer structure that was there before I came in and was able to take on leadership of it was that there was a small group of three or four volunteer leaders who oversaw the entire small group ministry. So they were like the coaches to all the other leaders, or that was the role they were supposed to play, and so they were meeting monthly to talk about stuff, and then there was just, you know, different small group leaders kind of doing leadership, and it was happening. But I think by God's grace and by the design of Peace Church Leadership, you know, they brought in a pastor who could lead that ministry. And you know, some of the changes I was able to lead us through was instead of, you know, just kind of this, hey, if somebody wants to be part of a small group, they become part of a small group. A few of the things that I implemented right away was we did, we created an on-ramp three times a year where people, this is the time of the year where you should get involved in a growth group. We hosted an event called Group Launch where I led an event on a Sunday night where people would come together, your new small group leader and all the people from this new small group, and you'd sit around a table, you'd have food, and then I'd facilitate a conversation between you and your new group. you know, a handful of groups. I think that first time we did it, there was like eight or nine new small groups that launched all in the same night. And so they got to have facilitated by a pastor their first night of having a small group. You know, that was a way where we were able to take it, I think, kind of to the next level of, instead of just saying, hey, if you want to be part of a small group, call so-and-so and you can be in their small group. We went to, there's people that are visible and clear, you can sign up with them, you can go to this event, and it's going to launch all these small groups. And we actually saw in that first year, we saw 70% growth in small group participation.

Ryan
Yeah, so what I heard you did was you came in and you brought articulated vision, you brought a clarity of why this is value to a person's connection to the church, you brought in a formalized strategy for onboarding people to that, more clarity to that so people had an understanding of how to actually do it in a way that was promoted churchwide and you brought in proper training for people on how to lead and be a part of a small group and lo and behold 70% growth and that was amazing because small groups ministry especially in a growing larger church that's where a lot of the real connection is going to happen. When you came in and you took that, can you talk about, was there resistance to you kind of bringing such commanding needed, but commanding leadership?

Jon
Yeah, there was. I think thankfully, Peace Church had already done a great job, yourself and others, had already cast the vision for why staff leadership is healthy. So I think you guys had done a lot of great groundbreaking work that helped me a ton when I came in. But there was still, you know, some resistance. Obviously, the the group of people who was meeting as volunteer leaders already felt, you know, a little sense of, hey, we're doing this, and we're doing a fine job, you know, don't tell us there's a better way, right? Again, thankfully, the vision had been cast, and I think that specific group of people in this church, they were already ready and excited for what's next. So I didn't experience as much opposition as I think you would in other churches. But from things that I've seen in other churches, typically what you're going to experience is a group of people saying, hey, we're doing just fine already. You know, who's this new guy? They're not going to tell us what to do. So I saw a little bit of that, but thankfully not a ton of it. But you overcome that by just by showing them, hey, I love you, I love what you have been doing. This is no insult to what has been going on. We just know that you didn't have the capacity to do what we have.

Ryan
Yeah.

Jon
What we're going to do now.

Ryan
Yeah.

Ryan
Yeah. I think, you know, when it comes to any sort of change, especially in the church, especially in the Midwest church where we are at, niceness is such a priority for people. We tend to avoid conversations that we need to have. I think in our context, things can be difficult because niceness is such a priority for the way that we engage with one another. But sometimes conversations need to be had, and no matter how nice they are, it's going to end in a way that people don't like. And so, for us, we had to realize, you know what, no matter how nice we are in this conversation, it's not going to end the way that they are hoping. Meaning, thank you for your service, you've done so much for this ministry, but leadership needs to go to the staff member now. And you've got a team of people who have given time and their heart to this, but they brought it as far as they could because based on their capacity as volunteers. And having that honest conversation in a loving way, but still to say, you love this ministry, you want to see it grow, of course you do, so do we. The way for that to happen is to hand that off to the staff leadership and watch as God's going to do great things.

Jon
And in your case, a 70% growth and so much more investment. And trust them to try new things, right? That was the thing, is you know, I mean a lot of things that I came in to try were brand new. They might have seemed a little strange and even crazy. It might have seemed like a big investment of time and energy and money and boy, is this worth it? But it was, it was worth it. So you gotta kind of give your new staff member permission to fail, permission to try things.

Ryan
And understand they may have to wait and see it. They may have to wait and see it happens

Jon
before they do see the value of it.

Ryan
Yeah.

Jon
Larry Osborne, I heard once say, you know, don't ask for people to buy in, ask for permission. You don't need people to agree with you right away, you just need people to give you permission to give it a try and let them see the results.

Ryan
All right, so, Pastor John, when we talk about staff, you as the executive pastor, one of the things you do is you help oversee the budget. And we know that staff is an investment both in terms of leadership but also finances that we have to there's a financial cost to hiring staff how do you approach that when it comes to the fiscal year like do we just hey time to get a staff member and we just find a way to work it in is how much planning is ahead of time you try to work it into the fiscal year what's your general financial approach when it comes to investing in staff?

Jon
Yeah, good question. So we plan way ahead. I think for us, we're a very, we're a pretty ambitious group of leaders here at Peace. The Lord has been creating growth and we expect more growth. And we just desperately want to reach people with the gospel of Jesus. And so we're always planning ahead. And so, yeah, our budget process starts about six months ahead of when we actually vote on the budget as a church and kick into it. So during that time we ask lots of questions, we think as leaders about where we are currently seeing growth, where we could see growth, and we build that right into the budget as much as possible. We try to maximize our financial resources as much as possible. So yeah, we put in, you know, a full budget for the position. You know, we don't think, what's the cheapest we can get somebody? We think, what's the appropriate wage for somebody who's going to work this job? We pull out comparisons. We use companies like Vanderbilt or churchsalary.com and use, find national averages. We try to plan for a full, healthy, livable salary wage for a person, a staff position, before we even put it on the org chart. So we make sure that we've got the financial resources available.

Ryan
And just to clarify, our budget runs from July 1 to June 30th. So you're saying like, we start talking about budget in a real way around Christmas time. Yes. As we go into the new year.

Jon
Staff are asked to make their proposals. They're asked to start working on their proposals at Christmas to deliver them by early January. Then the process kicks off. Yep, because we have a lot of layers to make sure that we are wise stewards of the resources God give us. But what you're saying is if we want to hire a staff member, we make that so it starts July 1, even though we may not be able to hire that person until September. Correct. So that's money in the bank. We're just ahead if that happens. That also leaves us flexibility for negotiations with the salary, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, because we got a little bit built up then.

Ryan
Yes, right.

Jon
That always helps. You know, so that's, I think if you're a church kind of asking questions about staff and should we have more staff, can we afford more staff, I think that brings up the uncomfortable question that we'll have to talk about some other time, of tithing, and is your church really tithing? Are your people really giving 10% of what God's given them? Pastor John, in my time as working with an elder board, people in our context, people who decide and give the final affirmation for the budget, who give the final okay on opening up staff positions, or at least historically we did, I've talked with Jesus-loving, church-loving elders, Bible-loving, gospel-loving elders who were resistant to staff because they were concerned that hiring staff would make the church operate more like a business and less like a body of believers.

Ryan
How would you respond to that sentiment?

Jon
Yeah, well, I would kind of say, one of the things I'd want to say is, you know, do you think businesses are run well on average? Which businesses? Let's talk about a business. Let's pick a business. Let's talk about Chick-fil-A. Do you think they're run well? Would you like to see the church run as effectively and efficiently as Chick-fil-A? Now, sorry, that's maybe the practical, cynical side of me a little bit. So are we a business in the sense that our chief goal is to make money? No, that is not our chief goal. Our chief goal is to make disciples of Jesus. That's our mission. But we are an organization in the sense that we, you know, we have, we're organized, we have financial resources, we have a legal entity, we have responsibilities, all those kind of things. So, you know, business is just one word for an organization, right? The church is an organization and we want to do things well. And rather than looking at begrudgingly, how is that a benefit to the kingdom? How, in the structure, in the country that we worked in, with the laws around us, is there a way that we can leverage that for more gospel work, for more kingdom impact? And we say, yeah, there is. We can empower more people to dedicate more time to ministry by doing by hiring staff. So you know, I, when the times I've had those conversations with elders, again, there's the cynical approach to that, but there's also the heartfelt, valid concern approach. And I'd say my time it's always been the heartfelt, valid concern approach, which softens my heart towards that. And I want to resonate and say, yeah, you're right. I don't want the church to feel like a corporation. I want the church to feel like a family. But that doesn't mean we still can't hire staff and empower them to do the ministry and set aside part of the church budget that God's graced us with to see those people empowered for ministry so that more again, more ministry can happen, more people empowered for ministry. Well, right. So like you said, you said we want to feel like a family. That's exactly right. The church is a family. We want to feel like a family. And yet, we're also an organization. And that means that we have to run effectively. So, I mean, like, I mean, even to think about it this way, some of the questions that I ask myself is, will the Lord hold his church accountable for all the labor hours that get used? Yes, we will. So we have to make sure that we have good managers in place that are managing staff well. We have to make sure that we do things like annual reviews, like budget process, all these things that sound-

Ryan
We provide levels of transparency so that people can see the level of integrity and honesty.

Jon
These things that sound corporate-y or business-y, they're done for the sake of being effective with what God has given us.

Ryan
That's why we do. Exactly. And just because a business does it, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Maybe that's a good and healthy way to operate. Just because it originated in the business world doesn't mean we can't find ways to make it productive

Jon
and useful in what we're doing. There are wise people out there running businesses. So let's learn from them. Godly wise people. That's right. So we can learn some stuff from them. Let's do that. As we wrap up, let me just try to real quick, we've talked about so many different things. Let me try to summarize some of the points we've made so far. So why do churches need staff? Number one, because more staff leads to more volunteers. The biggest concern people have about more staff is that they'll have less volunteers. In reality, in churches that have staff, that's the opposite of the case. The more staff you have, the more and happier volunteers that you have.

Ryan
That's certainly been the case for us.

Jon
Yes. Number two, investment. If you want to see a ministry grow or if you are already seeing it grow, you're going to continue to invest in it. And if you're going to continue to invest in it, the best way is not simply to throw money at their budget, but to add a invested, qualified, educated, trained, time set aside, staff leader who can take that ministry to the next level.

Ryan
Yep.

Jon
Accountability. We've said that by adding staff you add accountability. You can increase the level of excellence in your ministry by having somebody who you can hold accountable to certain standards, who can be in the office and collaborate with other leaders, who can plan ahead, prepare, coordinate, all that kind of stuff. So it's accountability and excellence added.

Ryan
Which are directly connected. You can't increase your level of excellence

Jon
without increasing your level of accountability. So then we talked about how and when you bring on a staff member. We said if you are a growing church or aspire to be a growing church, then you know staff is something that God uses in order to grow his church. And so you know if you look at other churches, if you look ahead at larger churches and kind of think about how can we learn from them and where they've been, and staff has been a big part of the picture, that when you get to a certain size, you need additional leaders.

Ryan
And there's markers for that, such as your attendance ratio, one staff per 70 people, your budget, around 50% of your budget, we feel is an appropriate level. Again, that's give or take, depending on different seasons of the life of the church. So there's different markers that can help you to know when to pull the trigger in hiring

Jon
a staff. Awesome. Well, hey, thanks everybody.

Ryan
Thanks, Pastor Ryan. Thank you, Pastor John.

Jon
It's been a joy. It's been fun. There's been a lot of leadership just talking about live leadership conversations and issues that we're facing right now. I hope it's been a blessing to you wherever you're at in the leadership walk. Feel free to share your questions with us. We can address them in the future. Thanks so much for joining us, and God bless the leadership that's going on out there to make disciples of Jesus.

Dustin Kensrue
Live Leadership is a production of the Resound Podcast Network. Live Leadership is a production of the Resound Podcast Network. To find more podcasts or other Gospel-centered media, head to resound.cc.