Is Your Church Growing Faster Than Your Staff Can Support?

There’s nothing quite as rewarding as seeing your church growth strategy work. Attendance is up. You’re activating new parts of your building. People are feeling the impact. Lives are changing.

But what about your staff? When there are more people coming through your doors every Sunday, you’re adding new services, and opening new campuses, you might start wondering if your staff can handle the pressure.

If you’re wondering if your current growth trajectory is going to leave your paid people burnt out and falling behind, there’s good news. In our experience working with hundreds of the biggest, fastest-growing churches across America, we’ve found the fear of a church outgrowing its staff is, in most cases, a myth.

The truth is that your church will rarely ever grow faster than your staff. Not for long, at least. Sure, there will be points where you feel the pinch, but if you do the right things and maintain the right culture as you go, it never becomes a problem. 

In fact, when real growth happens, you can typically count on staff keeping pace, because, from what we’ve seen both leading and consulting with churches, healthy growth most often occurs specifically when leadership capacity grows faster than attendance.

4 Factors That Create the Appearance of a Staffing Shortage During Church Growth

Often, the reason your staff feels stretched thin isn’t related to the fact that you aren’t hiring enough people. It’s because your people aren’t in the right places focusing on the right things. Here are four ways misplaced people and priorities can give a false appearance of a staffing shortage during a time of church growth.

Your Team Is Doing Too Much of the Work

Everyone works hard to create ministry growth. That “get ‘er done” mentality is important during early growth stages. But once that growth momentum is real, it’s important to know when to step back and pass things off.

If your team is doing the work instead of empowering others in the work, that can be a signal. It might be time to focus on teaching your people to manage others, not do the work themselves.

Your Team Is Reacting to Problems

If you’re growing, the last thing you want a staffer doing is getting stuck in a classroom in your Kids Ministry holding an unhappy baby for 45 minutes straight or standing, waiting to pass out towels to people getting out of the baptism tub.

Those are important things, but they should be handled by a volunteer, not someone who is responsible for making decisions and keeping things moving forward. 

Particularly when more people are showing up to each service, those are times when you want to pull your staff away from “reaction mode.” Instead, focus on developing them as proactive leaders who can head off problems and delegate solutions.

Your Team Is Doing Things at the Last Minute

Growth means more to do, and that can make it hard to keep up — especially for your staff. They’re the ones leading initiatives and guiding schedules. If they can’t maintain the pace, things fall behind, and before you know it, everyone is scrambling all the time.

Again, while hiring more people makes sense at points along the growth process, more people doesn’t always mean things will get done on time. Leadership training is key here. Teach your paid people how to create clear plans, develop meaningful strategies, and put projected ideas into execution well before a deadline hits.

Your Team Counts on “Hail Mary” Moments for Ministry Wins

A Hail Mary is exciting. It’s thrilling. But it isn’t how you responsibly and sustainably build an impactful ministry.

Many ministries we’ve worked with are trying to fit a $10 million vision into a $5 million budget. That’s a recipe for a budget disaster. Really, they should be starting with their resources and then figuring out how they can use them to best accommodate their mission. Less risk, more sustainable growth.

The same goes for your people. Don’t set unreasonable stretch goals and then make your people scramble to meet them. Work with what you have. Set sustainable objectives. Plan accordingly. Then teach your people to do the same.

Stop Making More Staff the Goal and Focus on These Areas Instead

More isn’t always the answer when it comes to staffing for growth. Instead, focus on investing in these four areas to set your existing staff up for greater leadership capacity during seasons when your ministry is thriving:

• Build a clear culture: Make sure your ministry operations are taking place within a healthy, empowering, and fulfilling ministry atmosphere.

• Empower your people (all the way down the org chart): Healthy church growth staffing starts with empowered people who can delegate and work together to share the load.

• Invest in the right structure: Church staffing structure matters. Make sure everyone knows their role and expectations are clear across positions and responsibilities.

• Create (and refine) effective systems: Your church leadership capacity is only as good as the systems around your staffers. Commit to systems that work, so they protect and empower the people you put in them.

Staying Focused on the Right Things During Seasons of Church Growth

If your church is growing quickly, it’s important to stay focused on your people. That includes old and new attendees, staff, volunteers, and everyone in between.

The last thing you want to do during that growth is have to think about practical things, like your facility capacity or finding a new campus. If your staff is feeling the pressure, reach out for a Free Analysis from the Ministry Solutions Group team. We’ll assess your situation together, review your resources, and look at how an owner’s rep can help you stay focused on your ministry while addressing big facility questions along the way.