How is Your Ministry Team Really Doing? : Wade Brown

Full-Text Transcript

In our local churches and ministry organizations, how can we better understand the health of our staff and ministry leaders?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Wade Brown. Wade serves as the Chief Ministry Officer at PastorServe. For over a decade, he served as the Director of the Rocky Mountain region at PastorServe and has had the opportunity to walk alongside hundreds of pastors, local churches, ministry leaders, and ministry organizations, all in an effort to help them grow deeply in Christ and lead more effectively. Wade has served as a church planter, an associate pastor, and a teaching pastor. Together, Wade and I explore an often-overlooked topic as we discuss staff and cultural health. Wade shares an incredibly practical approach to assessing the health of your staff and ministry leaders so that you can better care for them and make a greater impact for the Kingdom. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of Frontstage Backstage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the honor of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a conversation all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you really embrace healthy, sustainable rhythms so that you might thrive in both life and leadership. We really love coming alongside pastors and ministry leaders, equipping you, giving you these tools, and having these conversations. Our prayer is that you will take these conversations and allow them to shape your ministry. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network, and each and every week, not only do we have a conversation like this, but we also create an entire toolkit that compliments the conversation. In this toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. Now, you can use this growth guide for yourself, and we really encourage you to take the ministry team at your local church through the growth guide as well. This gives you an opportunity to dig more deeply into the topic that we discuss and see how it relates to your particular context. You can find the toolkit and all the resources for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network, so be sure to check that out. As I mentioned, at Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders and if you’d like to learn more about how you could receive a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can visit PastorServe.org/freesession. So be sure to check that out as well. Now, if you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We absolutely love getting to know our audience better, and our team will be praying for you and your ministry. Whether you’re watching us and joining us on YouTube or you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow so that you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. We have a great conversation for you today. At this time, I’d like to welcome Wade Brown to the show. Wade, welcome.

Wade Brown
Hey, thank you, Jason. It’s good to see you again today, buddy. It’s twice in one day for us.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I know, it’s crazy. Wade is a member of our team here at PastorServe, a long-term member of our team. Wade, one of the things that you really bring to our team, and where you’ve really invested a lot of energy, thought, and prayer time, is helping pastors, helping local churches, really focus in on their staff health, the health of their ministry teams, their staff, and the health of their staff culture. This is an important topic. You’ve had the opportunity to walk with local churches, ministry leaders from local churches, hundreds of local churches, and across the country, and really assess and focus in on the importance of understanding where our team members are and what the health of our staff is. So, Wade, to start off because I think this is a super important topic. It’s one of those things that, as lead pastors, we don’t always think about, right? So, to start off, Wade, tell us a little bit about why this is one of those topics that we might not lean into on our own if we’re not reminded through some sort of conversation or relationship with a coach like you that we really need to pay attention to the health of our staff.

Wade Brown
Yeah, that is so good, Jason, thank you for that. The reality is that we recognize that the health of individual team members, really the team at large in any local church or para-church organization, in certain ministry, and really the culture in which they pursue and live out their mission, vision, and values, at the end of the day, those are vital to the ministry. Really the health of, again, a specific church, a specific ministry, and, Jason, I would say, a staff, and the health of the staff and the health of the staff culture, whether, again, that’s in a local church or a local ministry, they are microcosms of the church at large, right? They are a true reflection of the church at large. As we would want our individual team members to be healthy, our staff team at large to be healthy, and our culture to be healthy, we would want those same things to be true of our church at large when you think of a local church or a ministry. For me, I think oftentimes, over the years in serving and senior leadership, I made assumptions about whether or not my team members, my staff at large, or even my culture were healthy because what I tended to focus on, and my guess is many within our audience will resonate with this. I tended to focus on the work that they were accomplishing. I focused on how well they were living out their job descriptions. Along with that, there are certain things that are simmering just below the surface. I think we make assumptions about how well people are doing when it comes to health, individual health, team health, and cultural health just based on if they are delivering on their job descriptions.

Jason Daye
Right. You know, it’s interesting because I think all of us, when we hear you say that, probably many who are watching or listening right now, are thinking, oh yeah. I mean, a lot of our one-on-ones that we have with our team members, a lot of our staff meetings are okay, what are the outcomes of whatever project we’ve been working on or whatever area of ministry we’re working on? I mean, that’s what we’re focusing on a lot of times. But as the people of God who are helping lead a community that God has entrusted to us, right? There is something very important beyond outcomes, and that is how we are relating to one another. Because oftentimes, how the leader goes, how the leadership team goes, there goes the organization, right?

Wade Brown
No doubt. Yeah, absolutely. So, Jason, let me drill down a little bit more. As we talk about these outcomes in people’s job descriptions, and we often like to say at Pastor Serve, I say this oftentimes when I’m working with staff teams, again, whether it’s in a local church or a local ministry, you are not your job description. At the end of the day, you’re not even your job title, right? I mean, you’re a son or a daughter of the living King, and we know that to be true because if you no longer have that job description or that title tomorrow, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a son or you’re a daughter of the living King, of the Lord Jesus Christ. So for me, over the years, you talk about these objectives, these outcomes, related to our job titles, related to our job descriptions, and again, getting back to assumptions, oftentimes there are things that are just stirring and simmering just below the surface. So, just very specifically, here are some of those things. Individuals could be or are more than likely leaning towards low-grade burnout or some level of compassion fatigue because of the long hours that they’re putting in to accomplish those goals and objectives related to their specific titles and job descriptions. There could be unresolved conflict, not just among a few team members but perhaps among many team members on your staff. There could be this feeling or sense of just feeling overworked, under-appreciated, and undervalued within the culture. There could be feelings of angst against you as leaders, as I’ve often had those feelings directed towards me because there’s little, perhaps little-to-no space for true collaboration and input from staff members when it comes to key decisions. Don’t hear me say that we need to invite everybody to the table when it comes to collaboration and making progress on some of our most adaptive challenges. I’m not saying that. But to give people the sense that they’re being heard, right? That their voice is being heard at the end of the day, whether we embrace the decision that they want to go in or not. We’ve got some kind of space in place, a table or a conference room, where we talk about the vision, we talk about progress we’re making on our adaptive challenges again, and we kind of get their voice into that. They need to know at the end of the day, on some level, they’re being seen, and they’re being heard. Here are a couple of other things that oftentimes stir below the surface, there’s more true telling that takes place outside of the conference room, where important decisions and conversations are taking place around our adaptive challenges, than there is truth in the conference room. So it’s happening in the parking lot. It might be happening up and down the hallways or in some cafe or lunch with somebody, and we don’t want that. We don’t want that to be a mark of our culture and among our staff, right? So we just have to know, we have to not be naive about this, that there are often things that are stirring just below the surface, and we don’t know about them until we implode, there’s an explosion or something that was maybe concerning becomes very critical at this point. Again, it started with something stirring just below the surface.

Jason Daye
Right, and if we’re not paying attention or being intentional about finding out what could be stirring below the surface, as you said, that’s when things end up kind of exploding at some point down the road. Now, Wade, we talk about staff health and we talk about culture health, the health of the culture. How are those two things related, like in the local church or a ministry organization? How’s the health of your staff related to just the cultural health of the organization as a whole?

Wade Brown
Yeah. Great question, Jason. yeah. For the sake of simplicity, let’s just define culture as, it’s the way we do things around here, right? I mean, I think people who are much more of an expert on the topic of the idea of culture than I am, I think they would boil it down to, this is how we do things around here. I think you most observe and notice culture not from the inside. It would perhaps be like somebody like you and I stepping in from the outside, and we pick up on some cultural vibes pretty quickly, right? Because those of us on the inside grow accustomed to it and we grow comfortable with it. When I say comfortable or accustomed, it could be something we’re doing really well that we need to celebrate, or it could be something that’s really dysfunctional, and we just don’t simply notice it anymore because we’ve grown familiar with it. We’ve grown where it’s just something we see and experience day in and day out, but at the end of the day, it’s how we do things around here. I would say, Jason, culture is so incredibly important that it’s foundational to how we’re going to relate to one another as staff members. It’s foundational to whether or not we even care about the health of our team members or our own personal health. So for instance, do we live, minister, and serve within a culture that values health or not? Do we even talk about it? Do we live and serve within a culture that’s about trust or distrust in fear? Is it a culture where we truly do value input and collaboration, or is it just more of a top-down kind of autocratic leadership style, where it’s one or just a few select people getting to make all the key decisions and those in the field, so to speak, the staff at large don’t get to give any input or insight on anything or a fresh way of thinking about something? So I would say if you’re going to set out to make one or the other a priority. Make your culture the priority because the reality is, at the end of the day, culture is going to happen. I think the wise, proactive, and intentional pastors and ministry leaders out there, are going to recognize that, and with that, we’re going to work to shape culture in some very proactive ways, knowing that it’s going to happen regardless. So with that, let’s move towards really trying to create, prayerfully shore up, and build a healthy, engaging, and staff-honoring culture, which has implications for how we’re going to relate with one another, whether or not we pay attention to health, whether or not we give people space to rest, and we pay attention to the long hours they’re engaging in. But to me, it all starts with culture, building a healthy team culture.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I love that you reiterated the idea that culture happens no matter what. Culture happens if you pay attention to it. Culture happens if you don’t pay attention to it, right? So culture creates itself. So if we want to be effective in ministry and if we want to be healthy, then we need to pay attention to it and, as you said, be proactive when it comes to culture. There are two pieces to that. One is understanding the culture that exists because every church has a current reality, right? Every church has that culture. So understanding that culture, and then saying, okay, what do we feel God’s leading us to? What’s the healthy culture we’d like to live in? Then how do we get from here to there? So, Wade, talk to us a little bit about that because one of the things that you do is you champion and you’ve trained a lot of our team on doing these assessments, where you really step into, as you said, that outside observer stepping into a local church or a ministry organization and really assessing the health of the staff. What is the cultural health? What is the current reality, as you said? So talk to us a little bit about, I guess, to begin maybe, how at Pastor Serve, we think about and how we approach assessments because I think that’s important because there are a lot of assessments out there. There are a lot of ways to go about assessing things. But I think the way that we approach it at Pastor Serve, there are some distinctives around that. So if you could share some of that, that’d be helpful I think.

Wade Brown
Yeah, you bet. Jason, let me step back for a moment and just give a bit of a justice for my energy, I would say, passion, focus, desire, or aspirations around us as the ministry of Pastor Serve coming alongside, and having the honor and privilege of coming alongside local churches and local ministry organizations, with the importance of staff and cultural health. So for me, this is born out of many years of working with pastors and ministry leaders, one-on-one coaching conversations, and one-on-one coaching relationships. After I was able to just have the honor of journeying with them in that way, after a period of time, after you develop some relational equity and trust, I noticed over the years that pastors would then invite me in to have more conversations, or initial conversations, with not just them, but their staff teams. What you recognize at that point is you go from kind of the bullseye of the senior leader of the church or the organization, out to the next concentric circle or two, and then the different observations, vibes, and even interpretations that you’re picking up on at that point. Because let’s be honest, as much as we believe in one-on-one coaching, and it is a pillar of what we do at Pastor Serve, you glean a little bit more when you bring some other people to the table, so to speak. So as other people came to the table, they came offering observations or interpretations. They came with their angst. They came with their points of celebration. All that to say, all of a sudden, the information now is much broader than just working with one individual leader and there’s beauty in that. So you start picking up on the cultural vibes that are at work. You start picking up on a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about at this point, things stirring below the surface. Then for me to go back to the senior leader and say, Hey, I’m picking up on this. Have you noticed this? Then most often the response was, I had no idea. I had no idea that was stirring. How can you help us with this? Thus the idea of a staff and cultural health assessment. So our philosophy around this, which I think really continues in the vein of what I’ve just been sharing, our ministry is built on relational equity and trust. In fact, I think, at the end of the day, we believe relationships take priority over quick fixes, formulas, or prescriptions. So with that, we seek to be discerning and purposeful in getting to know the churches, the ministries, the organizations, and the individuals with which we’re working before we make recommendations on the pathway forward. Of course, that requires being present. It requires leaning in. It requires active listening, reflective listening, asking probing questions out of a heart posture and attitude of curiosity, assessing the current reality that we talked about a few moments ago, and then that better puts us and positions us in a place where we can offer some God-honoring recommendations on a pathway forward. So again, that’s foundational to us and it’s hard to do from a distance. Again, it just requires us to be up close, personal, connected, and just tethered to one another’s hearts and minds to really make the process work well.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good, and it’s interesting because of that relational aspect of it because you get something different from sitting down and talking with someone or talking in a group and seeing people interrelate than you do from a questionnaire that they might fill out, right? There’s a whole different dynamic to that. When we’re talking about the health of the staff, the health of the culture of a church or organization, that dynamic is very, very important. So, Wayne, talk just a little bit, very practically speaking, about what an assessment like this looks like. Like, if I’m a local church pastor and I’m like, Hey, I would really like to have someone peek under the hood, help us with our team, and help us with our culture. What does that entail?

Wade Brown
Yeah. Jason, for us, it’s really a three-phase process, the first phase, and again, this is building on the foundation of relational equity and trust that’s already there. So we’ve already had some level of heart connection and interaction with one another. So it’s a three-phase process built on this foundation of equity and trust, and the process takes us deeper into trust and relational equity. But the three-phrase process is a confidential questionnaire, and it’s a questionnaire that comes back to us directly here at Pastor Serve. It’s simply a Google confidential questionnaire. It could be anywhere from 30 to 45 questions, and beyond the questionnaire, we do a site visit. We call it on-site interviews, where we actually interview the people who participated and engaged in that confidential questionnaire. Because while the questionnaire will help us to heighten and take notice of some themes, the on-site interviews allow us a level or two deeper, if you will. So with the questionnaire, we’re able to then follow up and ask for some specific examples related to a certain question on the questionnaire. And those on-site interviews could involve any number, from five to seven people. At times, Jason, for me, it’s been 25-plus people. So that is a very large staff and cultural health assessment that consumes probably anywhere from four to five days because you’re spending about 45 minutes to an hour, perhaps an hour and a half at times, depending on the staff member’s position, in those individual interviews. Then finally, after we gather all of this really important information, we deliver a comprehensive final report that includes a summary of our questionnaire results and the areas of commendation. Let me just say this about commendation, regardless of how dysfunctional any staff culture, or any organizational culture, might be without question, there are some really positive things at work within that culture and within that staff. Why? Because God is there, and he’s at work, and even in the midst of the difficulties and the challenges, and I would say even dysfunction at times, God is still working to accomplish some wonderfully beautiful, redemptive things. So we just know that, we make note of that, and we encourage members to celebrate that. Also, in a report, we’re looking at areas of concern and recommendations to address those concerns. So it’s a pretty robust report. Then after that, we allow for an hour, sometimes a two-hour debrief to key leadership on our findings, if you will, and just to give them a greater sense of clarity and confidence moving forward towards the next steps.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s excellent. I love how the process brings together several pieces because you do have that confidential questionnaire so that people can express things that they’re not going to say when they’re sitting in the same room across the table from one of their team members, right? So you have that piece that Pastor Serve holds in confidence, and can really get the honest expression of what people are wrestling with and what people are enjoying and celebrating. But then it goes to, as you said, that presence and that proximity. That let’s get in the room together and hear a little more about what you’re wrestling with, or let’s hear a little more about these different things. Let’s see how the staff actually engages with one another, and observe some of those things. But then the piece that I really appreciate is the idea around, as you said, there are things to celebrate. You know, some people get a little spooked by assessments because they think you’re just going to tell us all the things we’re doing wrong. But a key part of Pastor Serve, which always has been in everything we do, is celebrating what God is doing in and through his people, regardless of all the other circumstances or all the other things going on. God is at work, as you said, regardless of those things. So we can celebrate those things. Say these are your strengths. These are things that you can build upon. But then, hey, here are some challenges, here are some concerns, here are some things that have been voiced, and as you said earlier, Wade, some of those things we would never know, right? We would never even dream that this was bubbling beneath the surface in some of our staff, without a tool, a resource, or a team that could come in and help bring this to the surface. So, Wade, what would you say to a pastor or ministry leader who is considering and just thinking through this process, but might be a little hesitant? What are some of the things that other pastors or maybe other ministry leaders have expressed when they’ve gone through this process and the value of it?

Wade Brown
Yeah, that’s really good, Jason, because you and I both know that that is real. That is present among many leaders. I would say that it was present within my own heart and spirit years ago, serving in the life of the local church. So we know that’s real, that’s valid. So with that, I will say this, it is a mark of spiritual health to do something like this. Because the reality is, at the end of the day, not only do we as individuals have blind spots related to our backstage. The health of our souls, the health of my thought life, my marriage, if that applies, or my other key relationships. So individuals have blind spots, individual leaders have blind spots, and organizations have blind spots. Oftentimes, it takes somebody coming in from the outside who’s able to not only promise confidentiality, but follow through on that, honor people, and care for people. For instance, when we’re there doing the individual interviews, we’re not just there with some type of consultant hat on. We’re really leaning in and trying to be present and care for people, and even in moments to celebrate with people when we learn something about what they’re doing or experimenting with within their own area of influence or ministry, right? We just think that’s hugely important. But to help the leader be assured of that and assured that we’re going to honor people through the confidential questionnaire because once we break confidentiality, the reality is, at the end of the day, our ministry is over. Pastor Serve no longer exists. Because why? Because we can’t be trusted. So there needs to be integrity in the process. But again, if we could get back to the foundation of this and just work through, even leading up to a potential staff and cultural health assessment, many pastors and ministry leaders have made observations along the way, Jason, that we’re true to our word with this when it comes to confidentiality. They’ve seen us lean in and be present with them in a one-on-one coaching relationship. So it doesn’t surprise them at that point that, not only had they experienced that with us, individually, their team will get an opportunity to experience that and then to be able to share with the leader that this will help you in your own leadership because it helps you put a finger on the pulse of how your staff is doing when it comes to their individual health, the team health, as well as the cultural health because that serves to inform. That serves to give you a sense of confidence moving forward and to really be able to kind of step back knowing that this has been an objective process, with people coming in from the outside to do it, and they’re reporting on it. We’re just reporting the themes that are already true about your organization, your individual team members, and your culture. We’re just reporting back what we’ve heard them say to us, but there is hope with a pathway forward when you think of the recommendations, again, highlighted in a report.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. You know this is an opportunity. These types of things are opportunities for, really, the staff team to care for one another, which is a huge component of Pastor Serve. Those of you who know the ministry know that caring for ministry leaders is what drives everything that we do. But an assessment like this opens the door for people to recognize some of the pain points that people might be experiencing. Oftentimes, the pain points aren’t even related to another staff member, they’re pain points the individual is experiencing just on the backstage of their own life, right? And they just haven’t, for whatever reason, felt they’ve been able to voice some of those things. So we’ve all seen, and our hearts have been broken, and all of you watching, all of you listening, know of ministry, friends, colleagues, churches, and leaders that have experienced and have come to a point where they just break. I mean, and sometimes it’s a break, and they just step away from ministry altogether because they just feel so under pressure and under pain. Sometimes the break is more dramatic and it turns into some sort of moral failure or scandal. Then there’s all the collateral damage from that. But just the idea that this is a tool that any local church, any ministry organization, can invite in to say, Listen, we care about our team. We’re not looking for there to be problems, but we know all of us are navigating life and there are things we’re struggling with. So how can we care for one another? And how can we demonstrate that care for one another to the greater body, and to the greater organization, and say, Listen, this is what’s real about journeying through life together. About this whole idea of being the body of Christ, this whole idea of being the church, it’s relational. It’s caring for one another. It’s walking together. It’s journeying through difficult times, through great times, through mountaintops and valleys. What a great tool.

Wade Brown
Yes, and we’re a work in progress, right? I mean, Paul reminds us in Philippians 1:6, he’s begun a good work in us. He will bring it to completion, ultimately, at the day of Christ Jesus. But he’s doing that good work right now. So, yeah, Jason, well said.

Jason Daye
Yeah, brother. Wade, as we’re kind of wrapping this up, I’d love to give you an opportunity just to speak to the pastors and ministry leaders who are watching or listening. Now, what words of encouragement do you have for them today?

Wade Brown
Oh my goodness, yeah, we are so grateful at Pastor Serve for the work you’re doing. We love your hearts. We love your passion. We love your gifting, we love your calling, and we so appreciate you. Again, Paul reminds us that “You are God’s workmanship created in His Son, Christ Jesus, to do good works, which he prepared beforehand that you would walk in and walk out those good works”. It’s interesting that in that passage, Paul doesn’t tell us that they’re easy works, but they are good works, and so in the midst of the good and sometimes challenging works, if there’s anything we can do for you at Pastor Serve, whether, again, it be coaching, just being a listening ear, or if there’s ever an opportunity to invite us in for a staff and cultural health assessment, check out our website, PastorServe.org, or email me directly. I would love to hear from you directly. Wade.Brown@PastorServe.org. Jason, thanks for the time today, and pastors and ministry leaders, we love you.

Jason Daye
Absolutely. We would like you guys to know that links to the website, obviously, PastorServe.org, and then the links to Wade, you can connect with him directly if you have questions, or more questions about what a staff and culture health assessment might look like, or even what some of the precursors to those, some of the initial ways to connect and, as Wade said, build that relational equity, build that trust, get to know us, and we’d love to serve you in that way. All those things can be found in the toolkit for this episode at PastorServe.org/network, along with the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. We really pray and hope that you will take this as one of those very, very practical topics where the rubber hits the road at local churches and in ministry organizations, where you can dive in and say, Okay, God, what do you have for us? What is our health? Just even if you just have a health check-in with your staff, you know? If we can encourage you just to do that, that would be awesome, wouldn’t it, Wade? So we’d love that. Wade, man, thank you, brother, for taking the time to hang out with us and to share your heart. I so appreciate your heart for pastors and ministry leaders and all the work that you do walking alongside them.

Wade Brown
Yours as well, Jason. Thank you, brother.

Jason Daye
All right. God bless you.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.