The Unstuck Church Podcast

Of all the relationships in your church, there's one relationship that determines whether everything else runs smoothly or grinds to a halt— the relationship between the senior pastor and the executive pastor.  When it's healthy, the whole organization feels it. And when it's not…the whole organization feels that too. And if this relationship isn't healthy, your staff is talking about it too. We i...

Fast-growing churches don't necessarily impress us. More often than not, growth reveals the areas where churches are actually stuck . But every once in a while, we run into a church that is both growing and healthy. City Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has seen 51% year-over-year growth . But they've experienced more than a bump in attendance. They're seeing growth in groups, serve teams, disciples...

The Q2 2026 Unstuck Church Report is here! For this report, we are focusing on  staffing trends in churches of various sizes. In this year's survey, we asked pastors and church leaders to tell us about the biggest staffing and structure challenges their churches are facing. And it's clear that there are some big hurdles churches are working to navigate. These hurdles are real, but as many churches...

"Where do we find great staff leaders? We need them, and we need them now." If your only approach to finding staff leaders is to hire fully formed, fully capable leaders from the outside whenever you need them, you will always be reactive . So far in this series, we've talked about the importance of developing your volunteers and volunteer leaders. But all of that volunteer development work, as im...

You probably have people serving with more leadership capacity than you know, and you may have volunteers who have taken on more leadership than they actually have capacity for. Often, churches hand leadership responsibility to volunteers who don't have the capacity for it. Or they fail to develop the people who do have leadership capacity because they're spreading attention evenly across everyone...

You need great volunteers if you want to hire internally. But to develop volunteers, you need more great staff… It can feel like an endless cycle. But it doesn't have to be. Trying to find leaders as quickly as possible leads to high turnover and hard conversations. But when you develop leaders with a sustainable volunteer leadership pipeline, leaders are identified earlier and developed more inte...

We're back with another "Ask Anything" episode! Sean invited Ron Baum, a  long-time consultant at The Unstuck Group and ministry leader who has served in the local church for over 30 years, to answer some questions that YOU , our listeners, have sent in.  We have some fun questions to address today—a few about space and adding service times and several about strategic planning and getting traction...

For many years, one of the main reasons for stuckness in the Church was that churches lacked discipleship steps . Instead, they just had a lot of programs for church people to engage in.  Now, most churches have done the work of designing next steps for people. They've created a pathway instead of a program calendar. So, why is it still not working?  In this episode, Sean and Tiffany break down th...

Everyone has opinions about multisite.  Advice often gets shared like it's one-size-fits-all, but multisite is complex; what worked for one church in one city at one moment may not work for another church. There are best practices you can follow, but the truth is that multisite comes with a lot of nuance .  In this episode, we're continuing our "This Isn't Working Anymore" series by getting into t...

This isn't working anymore... Too many churches keep running the same plays that used to work , even when the results have clearly changed. Ministry is a moving target, and what worked in 2010 doesn't automatically work in 2026. The ministry landscape has shifted, and it's time to make some upgrades.  At The Unstuck Group, one of our core values is "Make It Better," and we are committed to practic...

"Structure changes have really changed our church... and it's changed me." We're doing something different this week on the podcast. We invited Pastor Donny Wadley from Fountain City Church in Knoxville, TN, to share his experience of going through The Unstuck Process. Before engaging with us, the church was hitting a growth barrier—like many of the churches in our tribe. They had facility challen...

How do you know if burnout isn't structural...but is personal? We're closing out our "Structured for Burnout " series with something that doesn't always make it onto the agenda: caring for yourself and your soul while you're busy caring for everyone else. We invited Lance Witt, a member of The Unstuck Group's lead team and a respected voice to pastors all across the country on the topic of leading...

Noticing signs of burnout on your team? You could have the right people, just in the wrong roles. Teams work best when they're structured around each person's unique wiring. Understanding your own wiring, what each role requires and how your team's strengths fit together can help you lead and work in a way that is more effective, fulfilling and sustainable. In this episode, Amy and Sean sit down w...

A personality might draw a weekend crowd, but it takes a team to create the healthy systems that foster sustained growth—that's the role of the Senior Leadership Team . Without it, you're depending on heroism at the top. If the SLT is structured well, you can take the lid off your church and create space for sustained health. If it's not, you'll keep funneling everything back to the top.  In this...

Pastoral burnout is one of the most critical issues facing church leaders today. And it's not just about overwork or lack of boundaries: Your structure might be the very thing that's creating the conditions for burnout—for both you and your staff . We're seeing this pattern play out in churches everywhere. Lead pastors are drowning under impossible spans of care, unclear role definitions and organ...

Ever wonder how your church's metrics, wins and challenges compare to other like-minded churches? This quarter's Unstuck Church Report shows what the "Big C Church" is looking like in 2026 so far. The data covers the biggest barriers churches are facing when it comes to growth, gives perspectives on finances, informs how well churches are helping people engage in their churches, and many other int...

You can start multisite for all the right reasons: healthy momentum, strong mission and a genuine desire to reach more people. But then a few years in, you find yourself looking around thinking, "Wait… is this actually producing what we hoped it would?" Alignment feels harder. Decision-making feels heavier. Outcomes aren't quite matching the vision you had in mind when you started. And that's wher...

No one goes into multisite thinking, "This model isn't going to work."  Everyone starts for the right reasons: more people reached and more communities engaged. But over time, tensions begin to show up. But it's not just normal complexity; it's the kind that starts to impact clarity and limit effectiveness if you don't pay attention to it. Last week, Sean and Amy interviewed three leaders about th...

"Are we doing multisite right? " The truth is that many churches launch multisite with great intentions but eventually find themselves stuck—operationally overwhelmed, financially strained or culturally fragmented across locations. In this series, we're pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to build a healthy, sustainable multisite strategy. We're starting with something a little differ...

We're trying something different on The Unstuck Church Podcast.  It's our first ever "Ask Anything" episode! The idea for this came from our free webinars, where we typically save time at the end for live Q&A. Some of the best takeaways from those events often happen in that live conversation, and we wanted to bring that fun and magic to the podcast. In this episode, Sean and Amy respond to questi...

​​Two common issues in churches tend to show up together, even though at first glance they don't feel related at all: first engagement steps and physical capacity . On the surface, they sound like two completely different problems. But, in reality, they're way more connected than most leaders realize. You can't grow sustainably if you're not engaging people well, and you can't engage people well i...

Churches everywhere, no matter the size, are struggling with this: the lack of a deep leadership bench.  One of the most common pain points we see in churches is not having enough leaders in the pipeline. This puts them in a constant reactive mode, often filling positions out of desperation rather than developing leaders intentionally. New leaders don't identify themselves; you won't drift into su...

After serving more than 750 churches, we've noticed a clear pattern: No matter the size, style, or model, many churches wrestle with a similar set of challenges . They show up in different ways, but the root issues are surprisingly common across the board. That's good news for pastors and ministry leaders—because if the challenges are common, the solutions can be too. You're not alone. And you're...

For years, the narrative in Canada was slow decline, polite disengagement and post-Christian skepticism. But that's not the story they're living right now. There are people from every background actually exploring faith and showing up at church. What's going on in Canada? We're doing something a little different in this episode of the podcast. Sean and Amy invited our Canadian consultants, Jonatha...

So far in this series, we've talked about how to clarify vision and how to build strong strategies. But even when leaders feel really good about those pieces, there's still a sticking point: getting the whole team aligned and moving together . This is where you might hit a wall. There's a gap between defining your vision and actually making it happen. So it's time to move. In the final episode of...