there's three reasons that you're overstaffed one is that you have too much ministry that you're trying to do right when they're paying above that 55% for staffing or if they're staffed one full-time person for every 30 35 people you're either trying to do too much ministry so really we're never going to have enough people we're just way too broad in our approach on our ministry strategies the second is Welcome to the Carrie New Hoff Leadership Podcast on YouTube so glad you joined us today hey is your church overstaffed answer is maybe probably we're going to talk about that and a lot of other church metric stuff with Amy Anderson she is the principal of the Unstuck Group and you may know the Unstuck Group tony Morgan its founder and CEO passed away very unexpectedly last year we talk about the dynamics what happens when your leader dies what do you do how does the organization continue what about grief all of that and a whole lot more so really glad you joined us today make sure you like subscribe leave a comment to join the conversation and we will get to my conversation with Amy Anderson right after a word from today's partners then we'll dive into the conversation this episode is brought to you by Glue Messaging so I got to ask you are your church messages hitting home or are you getting lost in the noise like if you're ready to make your communication more personal and more effective why don't you check out the new free Glue texting platform with glue messaging it's easy to segment your audience into groups think like small group leaders volunteers parents new visitors so that you send the right message to the right person at exactly the right time and here's the point it is not onesizefitsall okay it's personal it's powerful communication that actually gets read so here's what's going to happen you're going to save time your people will feel more seen more valued and more connected and it's free glue gives you 10,000 texts every month and three groups at absolutely no cost so start using group texting to lead better today sign up now at glue.com/meaging that's [Music] glow.com/meaging hey this episode is brought to you by The Art of Leadership Academy so if this podcast is part of your growth and rhythm in leadership I think you're going to love what I'm going to share with you inside my art of leadership academy we have just opened up a few brand new spaces for you to lead more effectively and grow your leadership and the price you're going to love it it's absolutely free so what I would love for you to do is go and set up your free account today because you're going to be able to join a lifegiving online community think social media but only for pastors and church leaders who are looking to grow and support each other you can cut the noise the the trolls the the junk you get everywhere else actually it's just a community of church leaders who really care about the mission of the church i would love for you to be involved and the big part of this is you'll be able to connect with other podcast listeners about each episode of my podcast including me i'm going to be active on there you'll get exclusive insights by asking questions sharing insights and learning how others are applying what they're learning on this podcast to real life situations in their church and ministry or their business so everything you get will help you lead more effectively to grow faster and thrive in life and leadership i'd love for you to get started today and here's how you do it create a free account it's pretty simple click the link in the description of this episode or visit the arttoofleershipacademy.com couple clicks you're in it's free look forward to seeing you inside amy I'm really glad to have you on the podcast thanks for saying yes yeah great to be here with you Carrie and I just want to say I mean the sorrow of losing Tony Morgan was such a shared sorrow i mean for Emily for his family his kids for your team but I that was I mean I love Tony and loved him on a personal level but also really loved what he was able to bring to the church and I know I speak on behalf of a lot of people who listen to this podcast just to extend you know my sympathies for for losing uh Tony um can you walk us through because there's always you know I think I know what happened with Tony it was a very sudden passing and and the thing that really surprised me is I've had a lot of meals with Tony the dude eats the salad not the fries you know what I mean he's fit he takes good care of himself and for his life to be cut short so quickly was I think a shock as well as a lot of sadness can So can you tell us for those who may not know um kind of what happened with Tony and the Unstuck group and his his um really sad passing yeah yeah well it was shocking absolutely you know for me and I'm sure for many others it's one of those moments where you always remember where you were what you were doing uh when you heard the news and it was on Monday September 2nd uh this past fall that he had a heart attack and you're right it was completely out of the blue there was no forewarning there were no signs of illness nothing in fact those first you know first hours and days we were hopeful for a recovery thinking we might have to bump some of his clients back and you know part of it and you get this uh Carrie cuz you're a remote team but it was really a rough couple of days being a remote team because we weren't able to be present with Emily or with his family and we weren't able to be present with even one another right and then the shock of Wednesday when he died i mean uh it he was here and then he was just gone and it was really really hard to come to terms with that he was so much more than our boss like you said he he was our friend just a faithfilled mission-driven man to the end and and his insights i mean I used to well still do hang on to the you know for the Q1 Q2 Q3 yeah uh unstuck reports i always thought that was fascinating and he just had insight like nobody else and you know cause of death I believe was a heart attack correct yep yep he had a heart attack breaking his leaves in his in his yard yeah he and Emily were just out doing light yard work honestly and he just wasn't feeling good and he said you know Emma I'm going to go in and just lay down for a little bit and thankfully she went in with him so there's you know a sense that he was with her when he you know he never came back after he had that heart attack his body was alive for a couple of days but um she was able to be there with him but it was nothing strenuous it just that's why it makes it all so shocking i've been to that house i've been to their house and uh can can I just I just feel for all of them taking over for a founder is is no small thing and you know the business was Tony was sort of the face of the business but he had a whole team and a group of consultants and everything um what was going through your mind in the first few weeks after Tony's passing i mean you think about the impact of a team and I'm sure there's a lot of people who can identify with and maybe even if they can't identify can imagine what would happen if the senior pastor if the CEO if the the leader and particularly a founder there's something about a founder that is very different than just oh yeah we're the 40th pastor in you know 200 years or the eighth CEO there's something about a founder that is really unique so what was going through your mind in the days and weeks after Tony's passing you know man from a personal standpoint nothing was going through my head those first few weeks we were all literally in shock and it seemed absolutely impossible to believe and again being a remote team we didn't have any of those cues that helped us accept the loss there was no empty office for us to see there were no gatherings to process what happened it was just disbelief i kept expecting him just to show back up in our Zoom rooms right so once the funeral had been set uh we all just focused on gathering with our unstuck team and to say goodbye to the man who had pulled this rag tag group of leaders together we call ourselves the unstuckers you know a group that really shared his passion uh for the local church and yeah after that as we began to take our first steps forward which by the way was really hard Carrie you know in some ways getting back to our ministry and back to the routine it it just felt wrong like it didn't feel right doing this without Tony almost like it was dishonoring him to be carrying this forward without him and I guess I guess that's the way we feel in loss right like the whole world just needs to stop for a while what What do you think was underneath that why why did it feel wrong oh me personally I felt like I don't deserve this i didn't build this i didn't create this tony did all this and I got to be a part of it and so to think about doing it without him being there was really a really hard thing to wrestle with um but our team you know we knew from Tony that his desire was to see this ministry continue long after he was in leadership it was always his desire to see the leadership torch pass to the next generation of leaders and he and I being the same age we had many conversations about succession for each of us we were making plans i just I just thought we'd exit together but apparently I'm the bridge now and you know a side note I think Tony has always been well I know he has always been such an advocate of women and leadership and I think it would make him smile that this will be a part of our history now unstuck history but back to your original question what was going through my mind when I realized the Unstuck group's future was now in my hands i honestly never did um we have always been such a team-based organization in fact our team was up with you back in 2019 yeah we were talking about that that was such a good trip you came to my house backyard hung out for a couple days i don't know that I helped you but you guys really helped me i still have my notes from that day you've got a you've got a you've got a chip in your brain I don't have about kind of future and actually just like Tony it seems like you both can take a lot of information and just bring it down to a really concise um statement I have to process out loud to ever get my thoughts to come together no it was it's an incredible team um when you and Tony were talking about succession what what was the conversation like and and good for Tony and again just to set the context that probably started what when he turned 50 or before that a few years before he passed yeah we would probably have been talking about it for about 3 years at that point i had shared with him when I was going to retire he was actually kind of on that same time frame and uh it was interesting and it was always a tangled conversation because if we had an opening on our team the ability to add someone uh we are always trying to look for a unicorn like we want someone who can do content uh who also has this and this and this and this and finally it was Tiffany who threw the red flag in and she's like stop it let's just you know figure out what our business needs right now and not entangle this in succession because it always went that way like and maybe this hire could become X but the truth is you weren't going to hire another Tony and another Amy you're going to have a whole different mix of giftings that were going to need to come to the table so yeah so our leadership team you know there were four of us and now it was down to three but I said to the team we're a three-legged stool and that still offers support and stabil stability so we just leaned in together and started asking again in these early days what would Tony do and we each used our giftings to carry Unstuck forward you know my lane is a little more public and Tony and I definitely carried a lot of the consulting so that's where I put my focus you know creating content for pastors serving churches and being the leader of Unstuck and I just have to say Tony he set me up well to step into that role and God really gave me a peace and a confidence just to lean in in this season h one of the things I'm very cognizant of because I didn't do this well in the early days of leadership but uh a mentor of mine Terry Wardle talks about grieving your losses and how important that is how did your team grieve Tony's passing oh some ways we still are um Yeah it hasn't even been a year no seven months something like that i um when we went down for the funeral I actually rented a big Airbnb and so all of the Instalkers from across the country we were able to stay all together for those couple of days that we were in Atlanta um we brought in Antiggo Pizza which was one of Tony's favorites we you know we just we did things like that and we just hung out and we found a space and lots of rooms where we could just remember Tony and grieve together again that the remoteness of it it was a delayed grief and it I think it takes longer to walk through some of the I don't know milestones of grief when you can't be present so for us all of us getting together was a really important part of those two days when we were in Atlanta and then uh we're we're trying to see if we can get everyone together at the end of this year again uh we we're still processing uh but I'll tell you what Tony poured into us so much and we are all enjoying pouring back to his legacy and into the unstuck group and God has just shown up in amazing ways for those people who are founders or senior leaders what did Tony do well to set you up for this unexpected transition i mean yeah it's coming down the road right but nobody the timing was totally premature and out of the blue yeah well we're me and Tiffany were talking he was just ridiculously focused on keeping the main thing the main thing so there's ideas there's a lot of things that you know people ask us if we'll do this we'll do that and he just kept the lane of what Unstuck is about really clear and as he built out our team he was so good at putting together different skill sets different giftings to really make a solid team where we weren't all alike we were very complimentary and so that laser focus I think is something that helped us because we are we're good planners we work our plans we re-evaluate we have you know our culture shaping behaviors that we talk about it's things like constant improvement it's things like um you know missiondriven interdependent skills you know on the team that we're all confident in what God's given us but we completely lean on one another's gifting so that's just the culture he set that we were able to lead out of when we didn't have him leadership styles are always different you and Tony work together you hosted a lot of things including a podcast together um but your style is going to be different than his what were the biggest what are the biggest differences between you and Tony and then how did how has that impacted the team yeah well Tony and I do have a lot in common when it comes to leadership style although we are hardwired very differently and I would say again very complimentary actually so Tony you know if we look at the desk Tony's high D he's more analytical me I'm a high eye i'm much more relational my team will say that I'm the one that brings the fun you know it's really funny you mentioned the podcast when Tony and I first started recording it you know we would give each other feedback and I said to him early on I said "Can you just bring a little more energy?" And he's like "This is it this is all I've got." Tony he wasn't a monotone but like he was he was like always just steady as she goes yes he was uh working genius tony's invention discernment man I know you saw this he has such a gift of discernment but me I'm more galvanizing enablement i love to move work forward build systems and processes in fact I think Tony knew we needed systems when he hired me uh prior to when he offered me the job on the team I was actually a contractor with Unstuck so I had a full-time job but I served churches throughout the year and I noticed when I came on board we just had very little documentation of our systems so when it was just Tony of course he didn't need them it was all in his head it was just pure talent but for someone like me I want clarity like on what we're doing and he had invited me to an annual planning meeting again before I was on staff and I just said I think we need to define the unstuck way so that whoever we send to a church we have confidence that our brand will be well represented and uh the next week he offered me a full-time job so it came together fantastic um what do you do you mentioned you know you asked the question uh what would Tony do uh which I think is very fair and we're not even a year into it but um how much is that something you want to continue doing because Tony was very good at adopting right like 2025 is not the same as 2024 and that's right you know look at what's happening in the economy right now it's a yo-yo um where have you broken with tradition so far do you do you feel a permission to say "Yeah Tony probably would have done it this way but we got to preserve the mission change the method." I'm just wondering how you're looking at that months down the road yeah you know the good news is is that I worked um with Tony for 10 years and I'm my style is I tend to study my leader and then I have to figure out do I agree with it and I was just so in step with Tony on his philosophies so there's going to be a lot of easy parallel with kind of how I make decisions i'm sure the day will come when I would maybe want to do something different than what I think Tony would have done but I think in when that arises I'll pause because you know I I will think on that it won't be a fast move and I'll lean in on Tiffany and Sean who have some of those discernment gifts before we do it but if I feel it's the right thing I'll make the call and you know we'll either find out it was the right call or we'll fail forward so yeah what did you do to stabilize the team Amy um well I mean when when Tony died like how Yeah when Tony died like it's a it's a you know I know I was uh swapping texts with friends who are like did Tony have a succession plan is anyone like we didn't know right and you may have had a much greater sense of what to do but I'm just wondering everybody's reeling personally and they're wondering do I have a job in 2 months etc so what did you do to stabilize the team because I found like even going through COVID 5 years ago oh yeah one of the first things I did was tell everybody hey we have margin in the company you've got a job we got we got you know multimonth i think it was a six-month runway before we really have to look at cuts uh we're just cash surplus people i know Tony is wired in a similar way very similar way and I'm like hey everybody it's going to be okay let's just figure out what to do and of course it went on to be our our best year to date at that point but I'm just curious like what do you do to stabilize the team and let everybody know that hey we have a future here yeah you would have thought that's where our brains would have gone like what's going to I mean we did have some of that right what what's going to happen with unstuck will this will this um survive the loss of the main face of our organization so definitely some of that going on but you're absolutely right again credit to Tony he built up cash reserves and so we knew there was nothing urgent that we had to worry about from a financial perspective and that helped us really put our focus especially you know in the months that followed on good communication with our clients um you know internally checking in on one another and just um diving into some of the areas of the ministry that none of us had experience in especially like the operational side right um taxes finances legal uh you know taxes were due right around the time that Tony passed away and none and his wife Emily would be like I have no idea and so we had to we were distracted with things like that that we just had to figure out so I don't think we worried so much as we wondered and then just got busy with the things that we had to do to keep everything running and rolling but yeah Emily's not on this podcast so I want to be careful in how I ask the question but you know I think about this too because you know Tony and I my wife started the company it's a personal company etc etc and we just recently merged with Glue but when you when you have that kind of partnership it feels like a family business even though there are a lot of other people how have you now and and I'm asking the question because a lot of churches operate that way um as you know you're a church consultant you know I mean not so much in mainline denominations but if you're a founder or you're part more of the charismatic world it kind of feels or or functions more like a family affair than otherwise so how have you navigated those dynamics with with Emily yeah this is again it just sucks being remote can I say that because we would love to spend so much more facetime with Emily and share meals and walk with her so we try to I actually end up going to Atlanta quite a bit so in fact I just had Emily join me at a church in Athens uh Georgia so that she could see the process you know she wasn't on the business side of things but she was definitely Tony's partner in Unstuck becoming a reality and how she supported him so I brought her out just to see the process in action i try to share a meal with her whenever I'm going through Atlanta she'll join us um on our calls our Zoom calls just to be around the business you know she doesn't she trusts us to run it uh but she does she'll call she'll text the churches we're serving she'll send the thank you notes so she's still staying engaged and I think that helps her helps her navigate especially this first year of just this was so much who Tony was helps her stay close and uh she's very mission-minded too with when the unstuck group you know came into being it was her who said "Maybe you should do this you know instead of being on staff at a church." So we try to stay in contact the best we can and see her whenever we can uh she's coming out here to Minnesota in July for our team meeting and then we're going to have the next one at her house in the fall so those touches um help what's been the most difficult moment for you as the leader the CEO now let me think about that sure no rush mhm [Music] um I think the most difficult part for me it's going to sound so cliche is not doing this with Tony mhm um there's a missing foundation that we have now and and at the same time it was a really helpful conversation for me i mentioned earlier you know that well I don't know remember how I said it but a little bit of that guilt you know as we moved forward without him um I was actually kind of frustrated that we started to thrive again and I know that sounds weird but again part of me felt like this should come to a screeching halt without my friend you know there there's part of me that said that felt that way in the background and you know trying to balance those thoughts out i remember we were on a call with our advisory team and it's the first time we gathered since we had lost Tony so um you shared the story and we're talking about things but one of them said that as long as we have churches we need the unstuck group and I thought "Yep that's true." And it also aligned with the fact that Tony wanted this thing to go to the next generation and that was a little pivot in my brain that helped me just start to lead forward with confidence and to feel good about the fact that we were doing well feel good about the fact churches were signing up that the podcast was you know had rebounded because none of us knew again what it would be like without Tony's main face there so that was that was a helpful conversation and confirming as we moved forward out of 2024 into 2025 i think it probably is a bit of a surprise i mean Tony did build out a team he didn't brand it wasn't the to Tony Morgan company but I think it is a little bit of a surprise that within months the company is thriving what were the factors like do you have a theory on why the company started to thrive why churches kept reaching out going "Yeah can you come in and do a consultation with us?" Like any any thoughts on that Amy yeah you know part of it is just again the leader himself Tony wasn't it John Maxwell who wrote about the level five leader that when they step down from ministry the business the ministry moves on seamlessly and if I'm quoting it right a level five leader is described as someone people follow because of who they are and who they represent so I just I think our team followed Tony's leadership because of who he was and what he represented and we were set up long before he stepped down before we lost him to you know be decision makers to think strategically to be an interdependent team and again his superpower was keeping us focused so we just got back we plan well and we started running the plays we were working our plan and I think we just had God's hand of protection on this ministry so that flywheel started going by running the plays we had already designed by following how Tony led and of course we asked the questions once in a while like what would Tony do right that's still a regular question for us but that helped us move forward and lastly I would also say the unique factor that enabled us to move forward was really the people that make up our team uh this is not a job for any of us I know you get this in fact I think we all took pay cuts to actually join the team but it wasn't about the corporate ladder it wasn't about worldly achievement it was just this shared passion for the local church and I think that's why that comment hit me like as long as there's churches we need the unstuck group because my life's trajectory was completely changed because of the local church well Jesus of course but the local church they were ready for me they were ready for me and for my husband and our three little kids in tow and that experience changed our lives uh Tiffany on our team she's a pastor's kid so for us it was our mission that drove us to continue our mission yeah i want to dive into the data because I love the Unstuck report that comes out uh I read it voraciously just some meta trends that I want to drill into which I think a lot of people will hold up the mirror and go "Uhoh or good for us." But one of the trends that shows up is growing churches have 30% fewer paid staff and 20% more volunteers i mean percentages will vary from season to season but interesting if you're a growing church you have fewer staff not more and you have more volunteers what is behind that trend Amy yeah and actually it's 30% fewer paid staff and 20 20% more volunteer leaders leaders is the key word not just volunteers volunteer leaders that's right that's right so um these healthy growing churches have done some specific things not rocket science but number one they're hiring multiplying equipping leaders into staff roles right and so these people who are hired on staff they know that regardless of their title whether they're the family pastor the disciplehip pastor they are primarily team builders they are not doing the ministry they've embraced this Ephesians 4 let's give ministry away to the body and that's their perspective you know sometimes in declining churches you'll have um staff who feel like serving's a burden right they don't have the time they say no for people these churches no they've embraced like 1 Corinthians 12 we got to build out the body of Christ so they're pursuing volunteer leaders not just volunteers but they're they're inviting leaders like to they share a problem will you come help me solve this they sit across the table from them and invite them to own something within the church tony often said "Highle volunteer leaders don't want a job description they want a cause they want a problem something they can dive into." And these churches actually build out their org charts to include volunteer leaders in them so it's an intentional buildout and then of course this was actually a quote I heard at Tony's funeral was talking to my good friend Kim Meyer and she said "You know when Tony hired me at Gringanger he congratulated me on being hired and said um you're here because of all your gifts and talents what you've accomplished but just know going forward I will never praise you for what you do i will only praise you for what you give away." So that's the mentality in these churches that are staffing lower and engaging high volunteer leaders how do you think churches because I run into this question regularly it's always "We need more staff we need more staff." And sometimes you look at the percentage of their budget that they're spending on staff and it's like "Actually you're probably overstaffed." Yeah yeah how do you How do they How do you think churches fall into that trap well I'll tell you what the churches that often feel like they're the most understaffed are usually the most overstaffed it's true it's You're absolutely right it's like you know the people who want to pay you the least are the most trouble it's weird yeah and I think they've just developed a culture where every time they have a need they think they need to hire a staff person to do it and that's a low level of leadership unfortunately so we're hiring people onto our teams who are really wired for like that tenacity area get stuff done i have to do it myself that's why they're paying me and they haven't been envisioned and challenged and actually give them permission to let things go and to build it out um the way that they should other times I often say it this way there's three reasons that you're overstaffed one is that you have too much ministry that you're trying to do right when they're paying above that 55% for staffing or if they're staffed one full-time person for every 30 35 people you're either trying to do too much ministry so really we're never going to have enough people we're just way too broad in our approach on our ministry strategies the second is they don't have enough volunteers engaged in their ministry and the third is that they're doing both of those i'm actually working with the church right now and their staff was just in the in the health assessment we're underst staffed we're underst staffed and I'm sitting there you know with the vital signs in my back pocket going you are so overstaffed but we'll discover that what are some of the vital signs like I I want to get into that a little bit more because it is a very common problem um for someone listening they're like "Yeah no I'm definitely underststaffed." How would they know that that's accurate yeah there's two metrics I look at one would be what percentage of your budget are you spending on staffing and that's by the way all staff it's ministers it's operations it's janitorial yes it's benefits it's all Does that include contracts uh like independent contractors yeah we would put that in that bucket too okay so basically anybody that you're paying to do the work of ministry yeah we are actually we're running um our for to get ready for our next unstuck church report we're actually delving into a few more questions about what we're paying in contracting dollars and what positions so I'm excited to be able to share that information there's just very little information it's all inclusive part-time full-time facility contractors and what are the healthy percentages of total budget so we would say healthy growing churches are in that 45 to 55% that's what they're spending on their staffing um the other helpful metric and this is where I'll talk about full-time equivalents so full-time equivalent would be you know taking all your full-time people and say you've got 30 and then you take all of your part-time hours add those together divide by 40 to get a full-time equivalent to that we would say you want to take your average weekend attendance and divide it by your FTEES and what is healthy is that you hire one full-time equivalent for every 75 people that attend your church mhm um and by the way it used to be 100 to one but we've kind of incorporated in the whole trend that people are going to church less so we backed off it a bit but right now I think in our last report it's something like we're hovering around uh 62 somewhere between 55 and 62 so we haven't gotten back yet to that healthy level overall with churches so still over staffed mhm so according to your metrics then once your church reaches a sec let's say 150 you should be looking for a second full-time staff person yes i get this question a lot so let me pick your brain who would you hire you're let's say a church plant or let's say you're a legacy church uh I'm thinking about the churches that I started at uh yeah a while back now and I was solo solo until we hit about three years in about 150 and I hired an assistant just to help do you have a recommend pardon me a recommendation as to the best person to hire as a second person yeah so once the lead pastor can bring some people on obviously you need at least in today's context you need worship and production so that that was another hire too around but you can contract that out for a season um but that's a that's probably the next critical position and then children's pastor would be our recommendation get someone over that children's children ministry side yeah children's explain that why kids before students um it's just as we've gone through and looked at the data on things churches that have a healthy thriving kids ministry um then you will actually have a student ministry going forward but if you put the emphasis on students and not the kids you're going to lose that opportunity to connect and attract and to engage families young families a real emphasis in the church in the last few years has been disciplehip disciplehip disciplehip i'm getting more questions all the time about do we need to hire a disciplehip pastor would that be one of your first hires and if not why not uh probably not the first ones um you know if we just do the math if okay now we've got the lead pastor we've got worship covered we've got kids ministry covered there might be some operational role that needs to come on board at some point you know we talk about facilities admin support something in there i would probably think something like that would show up first unless you've got a high level volunteer who can run finances i guess you know we do have committees and things so if that stuff is covered yeah I would go towards disciplehip i'm backpedaling a little bit but that leader who can oversee all of those next steps that you want people to take beyond the weekend service h another interesting trend that has been in your studies and other studies for years and and Tony was the first one to point this out to me um of course yeah declining churches actually have higher per capita giving yes they do and that's like totally counterintuitive so you got money in the bank you're exceeding budget and you're you're actually declining but growing churches are often strapped for cash true did I get that right well here's what we No one metric will give you a a good picture of your health right or the story of your church but let's just talk about this financial one you know when it's when it's strong um let's just say for example if your per capita giving is increasing it's high and so is your attendance number of people being baptized number of people serving then celebrate the increased giving because it looks like it's just a reflection of people following Jesus and becoming more generous but let's say your growth is actually down 5% um and the percentage of people serving is like 80% groups 80% and giving is up well warning warning warning those are telltale signs the church is becoming insider focused because they're moving from the momentum side of the church life cycle to the declining side does that make sense it does cuz I study this stuff but can you explain it a little bit more it would be like wait what is what is that a sign of like not enough new people or what yeah uh well attendance is down but more telling is that they have so many people in serving in groups and giving that there's nobody new offsetting any of those numbers so it looks good on a report card to have 80% 80% but there's a story behind that number right and by the way overall if giving looks strong but your reach metrics are lagging that's also a warning sign because if you don't interrupt that the church will be moving towards maintenance and becoming an insider church focus club and by reach metrics I mean in-person attendance that's going to give you an indication if new people are connecting to your church online attendance uh new people in your database uh baptisms or decisions to follow Jesus those are all lead indicators that point to a growing church versus a declining church okay super helpful um what are two or three other surprising data points like you know that most leaders would find surprising in your reports in the studies that you do of churches sure like the differences between growing and declining churches exactly yeah okay so none of it surprises me i've been looking at these differences between growing and declining churches for 10 years now and the data consistently repeats itself like growing churches are 50% more likely to offer one style of worship okay the key word there is only declining churches are much more likely to have multiple styles of worship for people okay can we break that one down i want to hear them but I want to do them one by one sure that totally resonates with me mhm so in other words is that like they either started with one style of worship or somebody bit the bullet and said enough with this blended traditional contemporary stuff i'm going to you know go through a season of discontent like why why is that such a such a a consistent data point like what is underneath that i think when churches nail down one worship style they have clarity on who they're trying to reach and they're saying "What is the best hour we can put together that's going to reach them?" I think when the churches that have multiple worship venues or styles they're trying to keep people happy so and then that blended example I love it i think a blended service nobody likes it nobody wins in that one right it doesn't it doesn't reach anyone but when we try to keep these other services alive we aren't thinking strategically well I should back off there are some churches that I coach and say "Yes keep your traditional service because of the legacy because of you know factors it's a large group of people but we really talk about we have to design what the main offering is going to be and we need to more internally like let's not promote that service let's not confuse people who want to come to our church by telling them come at this time for this this time for that that time for this we want to be really clear frontf facing on what is the main invitable service we're trying to bring people to but there are some church to honor that group yeah why would you give some churches a pass on that what would you say it's okay for you but not for most people because I bet you most listeners are like "Oh that's me i must get a pass." Yeah i would say try not to take the pass but I there's a large church I'm working with in Oklahoma right now and they're just learning how to turn the ship's rudder they're just starting to turn their church and I think if they if they kicked it into we're we're a lake family out here right in Minnesota we're on lakes over the summer you kind of know like if you're in a speedboat and you go from 1 to five you're going to shoot a lot of people off the back of the boat that's what they're doing they're trying to get up to speed but they're going to have to make some wise strategic timing decisions about how they get to their destination so churches they need to find a destination and then create a plan to get there because here's the deal whatever you decide you're going to lose people it's just choosing who you're going to lose is there a timeline that you recommend when when I was on that journey that was a number of years ago now um I picked five years it's like okay we're here but in five years this is what we're going to be and we blended and it was sort of blending in a little bit of the new stuff and then at the end it was blending out the last of the old until we made the transition yeah i think that whatever aligns with your vision because vision has to precede these changes the why has to become known people need to get excited about the why and so you know if there's a three-year vision it it should be included in that what we're so everyone knows what we're working towards what the milestones will be and again sometimes three years to five years a lot of those issues take care of themselves right we're we're it's we're moving towards it so and you know when the churches start to see how making some of these strategic changes are beginning to fill their seats with their kids and their grandkids it's very motivating to get behind and support the change what are some other surprising differences between growing and declining churches again probably not surprising but continuing again year-over-year declining churches have larger church boards and four times as many committees and so these churches the growing churches right they have more volunteer leaders they put leaders into ministry not into meetings and they get clarity around this is how we make decisions this is where we have input but declining churches with these large boards and these large groups of committees they might have high volunteer percentages but they're all caught up in meetings and they aren't really doing ministry they're making decisions not disciples yeah anything else that is surprising between large and small or declining and and growing churches nothing that I can say is surprising i mean I could throw out the one too that growing churches use small group strategies declining churches use Sunday school strategies and we've been saying that for years but the data keeps coming in to parallel that gen Z you argue are dramatically under represented on church staff teams can you give us an idea on how under reppresented and then what are some solutions to that yeah I don't know if I can speak to how underrepresented but I I can talk about solutions and just want to credit Dan Zambardi he's the executive pastor at Sandals Church out in California we interviewed him on our podcast a while ago and what they've really embraced is this come follow me approach to this generation he said um part of my strategy for equipping is to bring young leaders to as many significant meetings and presentations as possible to accelerate their development so if we want to empower next generation leaders we have to equip them but we also have to invite them along on that journey he cited you know what Jesus modeled come follow me I will send you out to fish for people so we need to be intentional about looking for those come follow me moments to raise up the next generation we need to give them a seat at the table right they don't they don't want a job they want to they want to just like all of us we want to contribute we want to be heard so you don't have to put them on your senior leadership team but you should get them a voice and a seat at the table now and again you know as you preach right they should be in those message meetings they should be giving feedback and and part of it so it's just about engaging them not pigeon holing them and and not giving them just a job but getting their voice in the mix and valuing their perspective so I sometimes get questions from leaders who are like like is is the future does it really belong to larger churches and multi-sight churches and a lot of the data that I'm seeing suggests that perhaps it does that the vast maj I think Warren Bird says the vast majority of people attend a larger church with more than one location like yes there are more churches that don't have multiple locations and are smaller but when you look at x you know millions of people attending church the larger multi-sight churches are over represented in that number what is your data showing yeah I mean we're seeing more and more churches are going multi-sight the ones that are growing and it makes sense right because multi-sight's not new anymore we have 25 years of data um we know how it works and it it helps it helps you have the benefits of being a big church but it also helps you be a small church right we're both big and small when we're in multi-sight and so for churches that are growing you're eventually going to have this problem of how are we going to expand and now that out of space and this flywheel is going I was just working with the church again in the Atlanta area and he hired me for one thing to help on staffing and structure but I'm like dude what are you going to do you're you're out of space and um we probably need to get a multiplication plan and process for you so when you've got this flywheel you've got to get ahead of it and figure out what's our plan to multiply and of course multi-sight is an option so is church planting um and there's hybrids in between those two but I think what we've seen play out is that multi-sight has been a more successful way to plant a healthy thriving church and so I think the model is just getting more adapted and it's helping healthy churches kind of repot i'm a gardener right so kind of divide and rroot and help reach more people i believe Tony used to say and and I think the unstuck group would say and correct me if I'm wrong that multi-sight is not a growth strategy that's right it's like oh we want to reach more people so therefore we'll launch another location that it is something that churches that are already growing do can you ex first of all is that accurate secondly can you explain that distinction yeah while it produces growth in many cases it is not a growth strategy it's an evangelism strategy um so there's very specific things you know that we coach churches on when they want to go multi-sight you know churches that do really well with multi-sight they have health and momentum before they launch a new location right they launch out of this place of health and momentum and they're replicating something that's already healthy they're also larger um I don't know how this overlays in Canada because I know churches are you know there's larger churches in America than there are in Canada but you need to have they they launch well because they launch with a healthy core in in the States we say you need to be at least a thousand before launch preferably 2,000 because it's this critical mass and not only launching a new location well but maintaining the health of the original location so those numbers those percentages would probably change you know I I'm working with Canadian churches that are maybe 600 and they're going multi-sight so they don't need a thousand but they probably need a good 60 to 100 to seed and to be in that new church because they need to and by the way we say send people who live in that area that's a mistake we often make we recruit people and say "Will you go there for a year?" And it's like "Well no we want you to live there we want you to invite your friends there we want you to be a part of it." But you're sending out a healthy core that's going to serve give invite so your recommendation is in the US you got to be a thousand ideally 2,000 mhm wow yeah we have bigger buildings i don't know okay um what other surprising findings do you have that church leaders should be paying attention to couple of trends for my seat first off there is a growing challenge for finding and hiring leaders on church staff teams i'm so glad you raised that yeah it's everywhere I go and you know unfortunately when they're in a place of growth it's even more of a place of panic because they don't have the people on the bench to raise up and so I just think churches you need to have a plan you need to play the movie forward and go if we're g just like double your church size if we're 500 people today and we're growing at some point we're going to be a thousand what does our structure look like and who do we need to be looking for because we need to get systems in place to raise up the future leaders you know these outside hires can be good but if we're always banking on just posting a job and hoping the ideal candidate comes to us it's not a good strategy um you know I look at our transition at Unstuck part of the reason we've made it through our transition is because we've had an intentional development plan for our leaders for us so we all need to be thinking about our bench and figure out how are we going to get volunteers engaged how are we going to create volunteer leader positions so that when we have an opening we have a bench within our own church to look at to hire people in i don't think seminaries are growing so for churches who have been relying on seminaries to produce their next pastor we just have to raise these people up do you agree with that i totally agree with it and you know this will be maybe my last question for you Amy most people out there like agreed how like what what are the best ways to do it and you know I think about that i was at Kexus the church I helped found yesterday working with a couple of NextGen communicators in their early 30s and I mean these are leaders we've prayed for leaders we've uh you know raised up to some extent and I know when you find that really great communicator or two it is really difficult like that's not just oh yeah we had 20 to choose from no usually you don't and even for me to find a successor that was like a 5-year project and it was someone we hired almost a decade before he became lead pastor but it was in house like just raising him up in house raising open house rather than me i'm tapping out we're going to bring someone else in from the outside right but that is really hard work mhm what What advice do you have for leaders who are like "Yeah I don't I don't even know." Well there are some roles on your team that you they don't need to be specialists in it if that makes sense you know when I talked about hire a disciplehip leader who oversees all the next steps you want people to take after they attend your weekend service you just need a builder you need someone who's relational well obviously we get you know they need to love Jesus they need to have a strong faith they need to have that type of background or you need to provide some for them but they just need to know how to build teams and how to cast vision and how to focus on developing people versus developing products right um now if you need a um a youth pastor who needs to teach well that's a little bit more of a specialty you're going to be looking a little bit harder for that one over time that you need environments where you can try out people's giftings and by the way I don't recommend on the weekend trying out those gifts i feel like the weekend is a place to use developed gifts not try out new ones but you know these these people are in your church they are often in your church i I look at me I got called out of ministry back in 2002 will you leave your I'm sorry called out of corporate will you leave your corporate job and come oversee this and uh I wasn't an expert in any of the areas I was leading but I knew how to lead the people who were so those are the type of leaders that are huge load liters because some of the specialty positions they take a little bit more time you know when I hire a worship leader I'm not looking per se for a leader within my church i'm saying submit a video so I can see that you have the competence first but Right yeah so a little bit depends on who you're hiring what you said is very true when I always look for leaders I'm like "How do you tell a leader?" Well they're already leading something in other words they're out there in the community they're in their company they're organizing the parents they're active in the community they're doing something and other people are following and then you tap them on the shoulder and go "Hey would you want to give your life to a bigger mission?" And that's that's the thing you're looking for and that was true when our church was 20 people and it's true when it's thousands and let me add to that here's what I see a lot when I'm sitting around the table with a senior leadership team and they have a big gap on their team and leadership I always challenge them who's in your church and it's funny they they say no for people they Well he's the VP of fill in the blank he's probably making eight time he would never and I'm like try I have the conversation god could already be at work and you know I just got an email this week an update from a church this guy left the company took a Let me see he makes a tenth less than what he made in his corporate job i know isn't that crazy um but he's moving into that significance phase and he's excited about with what God's doing in the church and God's always at work before we make the ask so don't say no for people make the ask yeah all they can say is no one of my favorite hires was someone who was working for Pepsi she was young in her 30s and I'm like "Well you want to addict people to sugar water or change people's lives?" And she was great she was fantastic took a big pay cut uh Amy this is great so um thank you so much and thank you that uh by God's grace you were able to continue the ministry of the Unstuck Group uh if people want to connect with the Unstuck Group online follow your podcast what's an easy place for them to do that yeah a couple things really quick i said earlier Carrie like as a church leader if you don't know your data you need to and so for your listeners Carrie we wanted to offer a free month of access to our unstuck learning hub so they can go in and take the vital signs assessment that we were talking about it shows churches we talked about a couple metrics but it shows how churches are doing in 15 areas and how they compare to the benchmarks of healthy churches so I said it your dad is telling you a story so your listeners can get a free month of access um so if you go to our website which is just the unstockgroup.com you'll find our learning hub there and just use the coupon code carry c a r y and you'll get in there for a month and by the way not just the vital signs assessment but there's unstuck teams the unstuck church assessment lots of resources in there for you so 30 days where you can just go around in there and then yes the podcast you know we drop a new episode every Wednesday of the Unstuck Church podcast and it is the number one resource pastors quote back to us all the time um and telling us they find it valuable so sorry you had to listen to my grally voice this whole time yeah well you know we've had some uh internet issues here with a big storm that went through and you're not feeling 100% but this was a great conversation and I want to thank you so much for it Amy thanks for having me Carrie it's an honor and thanks for doing the good work the good work that you do