I grew up in the church, literally.
I was abandoned as a child and raised by a family of church mice. By day we would hide amongst the pews. By night we would scavenge for things people had thrown away. We were like the borrowers, minus the thievery.
Some of that was made up, but I did grow up with a dad who is a senior pastor. In those 30-plus years, I witnessed how hard it is to work at a church.
I saw burnout after burnout as staff members fell away from the church, and in some cases, the faith, after bad experiences.
I thought it might be good to write a piece about that. At first I was going to address it to senior pastors, but then I realized two things:
1. Senior pastors are the most underappreciated people on the planet.
2. As a church member, I am as much if not more of the problem than the senior pastor.
So this post is about us.
You and me, the church attendees and anyone on staff. We’re in this together. We are the church.
And it’s also not about any one church in particular. I’ve worked with dozens of churches.
This is a collection of the types of behavior I think leads to staff burnout. So without further adieu …
1. You’ve never written an encouraging note.
For every critical comment you make about a sermon, you should have to make 10 positive.
The problem is that we attendees only notice when things go poorly. We never notice when they go well.
Next Sunday, thank the sound guy or girl for doing such a good job. I swear their heads will explode.
2. You underpay your staff.
Let’s not wait to get into the hard stuff! A lot of churches grossly underpay their staff. The reality, though, is that there’s not a lot of money in the budget.
I think the real problem is that churches underpay and under-vacation their staff. As a church, you might never have the ability to pay more money to staff, but you have the ability to give them more vacation days.
Don’t steal nights and weekends from your staff and then give them the same amount of vacation days an office worker at a regular job gets. If the special production of a musical costs your staff four Saturdays, which are usually a day off, give them four extra vacation days.
