The Unstuck Church Podcast

A few trends jumped out at us from the Q4 2018 edition of The Unstuck Church Report. From increasing vs. decreasing weekly attendance, the relevance of church membership, and whether or not you should fire all of your part-time staffers... In this episode, we're sharing the conversation Tony, Amy, Sean, and Michael had on a recent live webinar. It gets down into the nitty-gritty of what the number...

Your church building might be saying more than you think. Your architecture is either helping or hindering your ministry. From the design to the people in charge of it all, there are ways to leverage your church building that actually help your church's mission. Mel McGowan is Co-Founder of PlainJoe Studios as well as a church architect. In this conversation with Tony Morgan, Mel shares compelling...

Do you ever feel like you have to choose between creating a healthy team culture and getting results? It doesn't have to be that way. Lance Witt is the author of  Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul and is a former executive and teaching pastor at Saddleback Church. In this episode, Tony and Lance discuss how to lead your team to find the essential balance between health and performance. You ca...

Has the way you do church become more important than why you do church?  It's tempting to try to keep the people you already have happy. But the moment you stop focusing on reaching non-believers, you've become stuck. In this episode, we identify four signs that your church has become inwardly focused and give some solutions on how to reach new people. You can see the show notes, download the Conv...

Your worship leader is great.  That doesn't mean he or she should lead your Creative Team. Music is obviously creative, but we need more creativity in our churches than just music—and we very rarely find worship leaders who are equipped or able to lead more than music. Hiring leaders who can focus on the creative aspects of your church allows your musicians to do what they do best while still gett...

Are events killing your church?  Every church has events, but not every church knows why. Events have the potential to be helpful for people to take their next steps toward Jesus, but it's rare that they actually work. In this episode, Tony and Amy discuss 6 questions to ask when planning events as well as 5 ways to make your events effective.  There is a ton of great information in this episode a...

We've found 12 common issues that routinely cause churches to get stuck. In this episode, we cover two important ones that have something in common: leadership. Whether it's senior leadership or volunteer leaders, if we're not structuring our churches in a way that sets leaders up for success then our churches will become stuck. In this episode, Tony and Amy discuss two leadership issues churches...

What's one thing we almost  never see a church doing well? Even the big ones? Content strategy.  And that's just one reason why church communications is stuck in 2004. We're living through the biggest communication shift in 500 years. As fewer people attend church and more utilize the web for every aspect of their lives, our churches can't afford to not have a strategy. This isn't an add-on to our...

Andy Stanley wants us to rethink how we read the Bible. In his new book, Irresistible , he addresses questions like: What do we do with the Old Testament commands? Are Christians obligated to follow the 10 Commandments? What did Jesus think of the Old Covenant?  In this episode, Tony Morgan asks Andy to weigh in on why a "Mix & Match Theology" is so prevalent in our churches, why Jesus' one comman...

Is your staff structure a lid ? It's worth digging into.  We hear this all the time from churches we're serving: "I knew we needed the ministry health assessment. I knew we needed to plan for the future. But we didn't even realize our real problem was our staff and structure." In this week's episode, Tony interviews Amy on the most common structure challenges she sees getting churches stuck and so...

20 years of ministry.  Tony Morgan left his job in city management to enter full-time ministry as a pastor at Granger Community Church.  In this week's bonus episode, Tony shares the story of how he got started in ministry, the people who encouraged him along in this path, the challenges he faced, and how he met Jesus in the first place. There is one big takeaway that Tony has from his 20 years in...

Rogue ministries. We all know the signs. Ministries in our church that are fundraising on the side or creating separate branding. Leaders who think their ministry is more important than the others in the church. What went wrong and how do we fix it? In this episode, Tony and Amy share 4 ways to realign rogue ministries with your church's mission, vision, and strategy. The fourth one might step on...

Sunday's always coming. You've heard it said. You may have said it yourself, frustrated with the lack of progress your team makes on the ministry's plans. But is it just that ? Or is it that another meeting's always coming? Or that decision rights are confused? Or that key members of the team manage projects with Post-It Notes instead of an effective system? In this episode, Tony and Amy outline 4...

We get into ministry full of hope. But something happens along the way, and we don't see it coming: We become cynical leaders. We let ourselves project past failures onto the future. We get stuck in our own heads. In this bonus episode, Tony Morgan interviews Carey Nieuwhof about leadership setbacks, ministry burnout, and a wonderful aspect of life we give up when we let ourselves become cynics. F...

Friendly, but not welcoming.  That's how Thom Rainer describes the situation at a lot of churches. And he would know—as the current CEO of Lifeway, in addition to his time leading Rainer Group, pastoring a church, serving as a dean at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and authoring more than two dozen books, he has a unique vantage point. Tony and Thom discuss common barriers preventing ch...

How do you adjust to whoever is leading your team? Do you refuse to change your leadership style? Or do you lean into what that leader has for you? In this episode, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson switch places as Tony interviews Amy about what it's like to work for someone with a "driver" personality. She explains five ways to adjust to these types of leaders and why being adaptable ultimately stren...

Do you have a driver in the driver's seat? In Episode 47, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson described the 4 types of leaders they often see on church staff teams. This week they take a deeper look into what it means to have someone wired as a "driver" serving as the lead pastor, and how it affects both that leader and the rest of the people on the team. Tony also shares some common blindspots for drive...

Whenever our team at The Unstuck Group is working with a church, the churches almost always mention their problems with internal communication. Over the years we have found that if you think you're having a communication issue, it's probably just masking a different problem that your church is facing. In this episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson discuss what these ro...

50 episodes of The Unstuck Church Podcast, in the books.  We're taking a look back at the 5 most downloaded episodes to date, and Tony and Amy share a few new thoughts on those most popular topics. 3 Roles a Senior Pastor Can't Delegate - Episode 16 How to End Mediocre Weekend Experiences - Episode 28 Church Structure: Optimizing for Growth - Episode 24 Pruning: 3 Ministry Areas to Tackle - Episod...

When planning your annual budget, it can be easy to want to give all of your ministry areas the same amount of funding. However, like Tony points out in this week's episode, "life isn't fair." When planning your budget, you need to strategically plan where you're going to allocate funds and how much you want to spend. In the 50th episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson...

The Bible teaches church leaders that they must equip God's people to do His work. A church that is not properly engaging with its volunteers is a church not walking in its full God-given calling. In this episode, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson discuss the four main barriers they see in churches when it comes to enlisting, utilizing and equipping healthy volunteers within the church body.

While it's not something we like to admit, at some point we have to face the facts: God did not create everyone to be a leader. And for those of us who are leaders, we are gifted to lead in various capacities. However, God gives us opportunities to grow and stretch our leadership abilities. In this week's episode, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson explain how to identify, label and increase your staff'...

There's a common gap. We see it on too many church leadership teams. It results in lack of follow-through, lack of role clarity, and a "Sunday's always coming" mode of operation. In this episode, Tony and Amy highlight why church leadership should be a reflection of the whole Body of Christ. They break down four different "wirings" they typically see in church staffing, and the next steps you can...

Two weeks ago, Tony and Amy started a conversation on some unexpected findings related to ministry leadership in growing and declining churches from The Unstuck Group's latest research. As promised, they are back with more to share. While the results may surprise you, remember that the information is based on numbers and not opinion—even if the truth is hard to swallow at times. Show Links: Leadin...

In this week's episode, Tony interviews Amy about the most common "misses" she sees when churches welcome first-time guests. Whether it's a crowded bulletin or a lengthy message, these issues typically have easy (and inexpensive) solutions.