Category Archives: Church Staff Articles

Taking care of our business

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Fred Harvey was a name almost every American knew in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This son of Britain had come to America and made his mark in the food industry. Working with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, he built a chain of restaurants across the great Southwest which became legendary for their insistance on quality and their devotion to the customer.

In his book, “Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West,” Stephen Fried says Harvey originated the first national chain of restaurants, of hotels, of newsstands, and of bookstores–“in fact, the first national chain of anything–in America.”

You may be familiar with the Judy Garland movie on the Harvey Girls, another innovation of Fred Harvey’s. He recruited single young women in the East, then sent them to work in his restaurants from Kansas City to California. In doing so, he inadvertently provided wives for countless westerners and helped to populate a great segment of the USA.

All of this is just so we can relate one story from the book.

Once, in the short period before women took over the serving duties for his restaurants, Harvey was fielding a complaint from one of his “eating house stewards” about a particularly demanding customer.

“There’s no pleasing that man,” said the steward. “He’s nothing but an out and out crank!”

Harvey responded, “Well, of course he’s a crank! It’s our business to please cranks. Anyone can please a gentleman.”

Pleasing cranks.

Anyone can please a gentleman.

It’s our business.

Why did that line sound familiar to me, I wondered as I read past that little story. I know. It sounds so much like the Lord Jesus.

Think of it.


“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you….for if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even taxgatherers do the same?” Continue reading →

To church staff members only

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“Only Luke is with me.  Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service” (2 Timothy 4:11).

From time to time, pastors invite me to spend an hour or two with their leadership team, primarily the church staff, at their weekly meeting.  In most cases, it’s informal and conversational and takes place around the office conference table with the coffee pot going and a rapidly diminishing plate of donuts before us.

Some thoughts I share with the team include the following…

One.  Nothing is more important than that you keep yourself close to the Lord.

He is your source. God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalm 73:26).

Jesus Christ is the Giver of everything that concerns you.  He called you into this work (after saving you!) and He sent you to this church.  If either of those is not the case, you would do well to get alone with Him for an hour and clear everything up, then do as His Spirit instructs.

Keeping yourself close to Jesus means exactly what you think it does:  daily quiet time with Him, with your Bible open and your heart in constant prayer, bringing every thought and act under His lordship.  We should begin and end the day in prayer, and offer up prayers throughout the day.  “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17).  We should know God’s word and meditate upon it.  A church staffer should never say knowing the Word is the preacher’s job;  it’s every believer’s privilege and duty.

From time to time, your pastor is going to exasperate you; Jesus will give you patience and understanding.  Your income is not going to be sufficient; Jesus will hear your prayers and send what He wants you to have.  Your job conditions are going to change, and sometimes the assignment dearest to your heart and matching perfectly your spiritual gifts and talents will be taken from you;  Jesus will be your counselor, guide, and protector, or you will be in trouble.

The Holy Spirit will be your Human Resources Director.  He is your Lord.

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The most important person in your church office

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The receptionist–the one who greets the public–is in many ways your most important staffer.

She is the first person most people see when they walk in, the voice they talk with on the phone, and the only one a lot of outsiders will deal with from your church.

Pastor, she can make you or break you.

She can be a light to someone coming in from the dark, lift the spirits of a visitor who ran out of hope miles up the road, defrost the spirit of Jack Frost himself, and protect the beleaguered pastor who desperately needs an hour of study time without interruptions.

She can do all these things and more. But she can also run people off faster than Sunday’s tithing sermon or Wednesday night’s cold ham and peas.

Where does one find a receptionist sent from Heaven?

Answer: Heaven.

Ask God. He knows them all, has full resumes on each person on the planet, and runs the best placement service ever. Pray.

For some reason a long time ago, I began getting invited to speak to meetings of church administrative assistants, a catch-all phrase that encompasses secretaries, receptionists, bookkeepers, and practically anyone else on the office staff. I’ve been to Alabama’s Judson College more than once addressing that state’s church secretaries, done the same at Louisiana’s Tall Timbers Conference Center and Mississippi’s Garaywa Center. Best of all, for many years the National Association of Southern Baptist Secretaries (NASBS) invited me to attend (to address them, hold conferences, and sketch everyone) their bi-ennial gatherings, sometimes at one of our conference centers (Glorieta in New Mexico or Ridgecrest in North Carolina, at other times at Lifeway in Nashville and one year at the First Baptist Church of Dollywood. Oh, excuse me. Sevierville, Tennessee. (smiley face here!)

This is not to imply that I know a lot about their work, only that I spend a good deal of time with them and treasure the difference these ladies–they’re almost always women–make in the church’s ministry.

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The problem of immature church members

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“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

“By this time you ought to be teachers, (but) you need someone to teach you the first principles of God, and have come to need milk and not solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).

A church leader was venting.  “We have so many immature members.  And the problem is, they want to stay that way!”

The leader said, “How do we deal with our discouragement?  How can we keep from becoming Pharisees who constantly see their faults and not their potential?  And how do we love those who cause so much trouble in the church by their immature actions?”

The letter concluded, “I feel like I’m in danger of becoming like the Ephesus church, the one which had lost its first love.”  A reference to Revelation 2:1-7.

My first thought upon reading the question was: “You’re not alone, my friend.  Every spiritual leader fights that same battle, although not to the same extent.”

Let’s do a quick Bible study on the subject, then allow me to make some observations….

Paul saw the Corinthian church split asunder as a result of immaturity.  He said, “I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to infants in Christ.”  (I Corinthians 3:1).

Well.  That was pretty plain.  Wonder how they took that. (Paul was safely at Ephesus, and thus insulated from the barbs of the worst of the bunch.)

Paul continued, “I fed you with milk and not solid food….  For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?” (3:2-3)

‘Their immaturity showed up in a number of problems which are dealt with throughout this epistle:  lawsuits among members, immorality, splintering into cliques, favoritism, pride over spiritual gifts, etc.

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Nostalgia: Not all it’s cracked up to be!

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A few years back, a young friend in our church became hooked on Happy Days, the television series. She envisioned the 1950s as the golden age in American life. She thought it was all Elvis and sock hops and soda fountains.

Finally, I did something really mean.

I popped her bubble.

I said, “Melissa, I became a teenager in 1953. In the ’50s, America fought the Korean War, then went through the Cold War. Our people feared being bombed by Russia every day, and racism was rampant. We were poor, cars were completely undependable, and there were no interstate highways. I wouldn’t go back there for anything.”

Okay, I should have left her alone to her daydreaming. She wasn’t hurting anyone.

The truth is I’m as much into nostalgia as anyone I know.

Nostalgia: Fantasizing about an earlier time in a way that denies the reality. That’s my definition, not one you’ll find in a book somewhere.

The passion for Sherlock Holmes owes its popularity to an idealized love for the 1890s as much as to an admiration for the observation and reasoning skills of the great detective, I wager. This fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle is more popular today than ever, and that’s saying something.

In The Sherlockian, Graham Moore plays to the fascination for all things Sherlock.  The protagonist of his story, Harold White, sizes up the nostalgia thing perfectly.

At one point Harold says to his friend Sarah:

I understand. There’s something….incomplete about our vision of Holmes’ time. I know it’s not real. I know that in the real 1895 there were two hundred thousand prostitutes in the city of London. Syphilis was rampant. Feces littered most major streets. Indian immigrants were locked up in Newgate on the barest suspicion that they had committed a crime. So-called homosexual acts were crimes, and they were punishable by years in prison. It was a racist culture, and a sexist one, too.

Harold takes a deep breath while he thinks of how to proceed with this line of thought.

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That printed material that your church office churns out

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“Your words have helped the tottering to stand; you have strengthened feeble knees”  (Job 4:4). 

Speak clearly.  Enunciate. Use simple, active language.  Avoid wordiness. Never try to impress the audience with large, unfamiliar words.

Encourage people with your speech.  She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the law of kindness is on her tongue (Proverbs 31:26).

Take with you words, said the prophet to God’s people, and return to the Lord (Hosea 14:2).

Words.  They matter so much.  You’re reading a compilation of them right now.  Ideally, I have so arranged them as to make sense and convey a message.

The major reason writers edit their writings is to find the culprits that would hinder communication.

It’s essential not to use a word that would impede, stun, or detour the message.

The newspaper’s food section carried a huge article on how a good salad can improve a meal.  The headline said: “Ameliorate any meal with a simple pasta salad.”

Ameliorate?  The word means to improve, to enhance, to make something bad better.  But ameliorate?!!  When was the last time you used that word?  And why would a newspaper–where reporters and editors presumably work at effective communication–use such a word?

A friend points out the irony of finding ameliorate and simple in the same sentence!

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How God’s people undercut their best efforts and fail Christ

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“Welcome the stranger within your gates. For you were foreigners in Egypt.” — The thrust of Leviticus 19 (see verses 10, 18, and 33-34)

This is one of the greatest frustrations and painful aspects of pastoring.  You try to do well–to prepare sermons blessed of God, to lead your team to present effective ministries, to build powerful worship services, to develop disciples, and reach those in darkness–and then your best people fail to do the smallest thing.  In so doing, they end up negating a thousand good things they do.

They fail to think of the outsider.  They look right past the newcomer.  They give no thought to the first-timer.

My blog from Monday, March 22, 1999—

“I made a number of visits tonight.  Left notes at three homes (no one there) and visited with Carol and Bob Coleman.  They’ve been visiting our church several weeks.  She said, “We love it.  Great music, etc etc–but only three people have greeted us!”

“Three!  Our people think they are friendly but in truth they are friendly to each other.  Bob told me he had volunteered to help Clyde with cooking the wild game supper at church.  Was brusquely turned aside with ‘We already have enough help.’  Then Bob came on to the dinner and brought a friend.  One hour later, they were back.  Said not a soul spoke to them.  So disappointing.”

That church, you will want to know, had a reputation from the previous decade as strong on evangelism and soul-winning.  In fact, when I had asked the congregation to do something heroic and go the extra mile–more than once, our people opened their home to mothers from Third World countries bringing critically ill infants to our Children’s Hospital in New Orleans–they always responded well.  So, they were not uncaring.

They were not uncaring.

They were unthinking.

They were preoccupied with their own plans, their own families, themselves.  They were thinking about everything in the world other than the strangers and newcomers who needed some slight indication that they are welcome and wanted in this place.

It’s scary being a newcomer or first-timer.

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What to tell a new staff member joining your church team

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Let’s say you’re the pastor of a growing church.  The church has just brought in a new minister to assist you in leading the congregation.  He/she might be a worship pastor, minister of music, student minister, or in charge of education or pastoral care. Or a hundred other areas. (They keep finding new titles and creative assignments for staffers!)

One of the best things a pastor can do with the incoming minister is to make them aware of your expectations.  You will want to think them through and write them out, then share them after you both have agreed that God is leading him/her to your church.  Give the person the printed copy and don’t lose your own.  This will be important if the time comes when you have to deal with a difficult or uncooperative staff member.

I suggest you share these graciously, not dictatorially as though you are going to be looking over their shoulder all the time.

You might even follow this by asking for their expectations concerning you.  I guarantee you they have them.  They will expect you to deal with them as ministers of the gospel, to give them room to do their job, to pay them well and protect them on their off days, and to support them when the criticism is unfair.  If the new staffer expects something which was neither spoken nor implied, you need to know that before you get too deeply into the employment process.

What follows are things I shared with our staff members in six churches over forty-two years.  Some of them evolved, while some of them were there from the first.  The list is not complete, but only things I recall at the moment…

–You are a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I promise to always treat you that way, and not as a “hired hand.”  I will go out of my way to magnify your ministry from the pulpit.

–But you must conduct yourself as a God-called minister of the Lord Jesus.  You will have no private life in which you may do as you please without it being a reflection on the Lord or the church. (I once knew a church pianist who moonlighted in a bar.  She insisted her private time was of no concern to the church.)

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Someone is rocking the boat? Good.

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The deacon made no attempt to hide his disgust with his preacher.  As far as he was concerned, preachers were the hired servants of the church. And, as a head deacon, that put him in charge.

“Preacher, I have some new rules for you.”

“You have rules for me?”

“From now on,” said the old man, “you will keep a written account of every copy you make on the copier.  And you will keep a notation on every phone call you make.”

And that was not all.

“Furthermore, you are not to make any personal calls from the church office.  If you have a personal call to make, you will go to your house and make it.”

Pastor: “What if I need to call my wife when she is at home?”

“Then, you will get in your car and go there and talk to her. But you will not call her from the church phone.”

This conversation actually happened, just this way.

The pastor said, “I’m sorry, sir. This is not going to happen.  I will use this church phone in any Christ-honoring way I see fit. And I will not be keeping a record of every call or every copy made on the copy machine.”

“Now,” said the pastor, “is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

There wasn’t.

The old fellow left, one unhappy camper.

The pastor survived and serves that church to this day (i.e., to the day I wrote this).  That deacon, however, after fuming for a year or more, was suddenly summoned home to meet the Lord of the Church (see Matthew 16:18) and give account of his stewardship.

There’s no record of how that visit went.

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Church staff member: The pastor’s best friend and biggest headache

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And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their mission, taking along with them John, who was also called Mark. (Acts 12:25)

The Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them…. and they also had John as their helper.”  (Acts 13:2,5)

Now Paul and his companions put out to sea from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia, and John left them and returned to Jerusalem.  (Acts 13:13)

After some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return…’  And Barnabas was desirous of taking John, called Mark, along with them also.  But Paul kept insisting that they should not take him along who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.  And there arose such a sharp disagreement that they separated from one another.  And Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.  But Paul chose Silas and departed, being committed by the brethren to the grace of the Lord….” (Acts 15:36ff.).

Staff members! Can’t live with them and can’t live without them!

The biggest headaches most pastors will know in a lifetime of ministry will probably involve staff members.  Some will be his best friends, strongest advisors and most loyal supporters.  Others will write the script for his nightmares, will be Absalom to his David, and will turn hairs in his head either to gray or loose.

For many pastors, the three greatest problems he will face in his entire ministry will be choosing members of his ministerial ministry team, overseeing them, and (occasionally) having to terminate them.  A quick look at each of these three areas….

First: Employing a staff member

I make no boast about having a spotless record in choosing staffers.  Several have been the finest companions and fellow servants imaginable.  One or two have been the stuff of nightmares.  And in between are all the rest.

A pastor who chooses a new member of his ministry team cannot be too careful.  He will need a small team of his best people to assist, interview, raise issues, do background work, and advise him.  Almost without exception, I would say that the pastor who tries to do this completely on his own with no one helping him is going to regret his choice.  Don’t do this alone, pastor! If you do not have a standing personnel committee, enlist a small team to assist on this project.

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