The Unstuck Church Podcast

A lot of stuck churches have stuck teams. But healthy churches need leadership teams that are both healthy and high-performing. In this new podcast series, we'll be working through three of the signs that your team is stuck. This week, Tony and Amy are breaking down a recurring theme in team assessment results called the Fundamental Attribution Error, and explaining the effect it has on team healt...

We recently hosted a virtual roundtable event called RE-ENGAGE: Carrying the Mission Forward in the New Normal where pastors from across North America got together to share the successes and challenges their churches are experiencing as they begin to reopen and re-engage.  In this episode, you'll hear the replay of that roundtable conversation and gain insights in the areas of attendance, giving,...

Oftentimes in the busyness of our roles, our days get filled with the things that are urgent. We spend a lot of our time trying to do all the work of ministry by ourselves. But in the end, this only serves to stunt the potential growth and impact of our church. This week, Tony and Amy were joined by Andrea Lathrop, Executive Pastor of Leadership Development at Oaks Church , to discuss the core shi...

Most churches start with the same mission: reach new people for Jesus. But over time, this mission shifts from reaching the people on the outside to appeasing the people on the inside. Once this shift occurs, the church is headed toward decline. This week, Tony sat down with Michael Moore, the Executive Pastor at Faith Chapel and consultant at The Unstuck Group, to discuss the ways his church has...

Out of the 15,000+ churches that have taken our Unstuck Church Assessment, about 85% self-assessed as being on the declining side of the lifecycle. So if you find yourself in one of these phases, you're not alone. This week, in the final part of our Ask This, Not That series, Tony and Amy are discussing the declining side of the lifecycle: maintenance, preservation, and life support. We'll break d...

Today, we're celebrating, because our podcast is officially 200 episodes old. They grow up so fast! To celebrate this special occasion, Amy and I decided to take a quick pause from our current series and "pull back the curtain" of the podcast. You'll get to meet the full team of Unstuck rockstars that help us record, edit, publish, and share this podcast every single week. We'll also share our ins...

If we're winning, why would we change? Churches in sustained health are often wondering how they can preserve what's working, when they should be asking what they need to change. In this week's episode, Tony and Amy discuss why healthy churches still need to embrace change, explain the three multiplication strategies every healthy church needs, and offer a reflection exercise for your team. For th...

Most organizations start, grow, thrive, lose momentum, decline… and eventually end. The same is true for most churches. In our new series, "Ask This, Not That," we're exploring the seven phases of the church lifecycle: launch, momentum growth, strategic growth, sustained health, maintenance, preservation, and life support. This week, we'll unpack the first three phases and discuss the questions ma...

When it comes to giving and stewardship, you need to remind people what you want for them rather than what you want from them. In the final part of our re-engagement series, Tony sat down with Bronson Crawford, the Stewardship Director at Athens Church in Athens, Georgia. Even before Covid, they were thinking intentionally and getting creative when it comes to engaging their congregation with the...

The days of us turning on the "We're open" light and waiting for people to show up for church are behind us. Reopening and re-engaging your congregation has likely already been more challenging than expected. We need to engage our mission field and compel them to come (see Luke 14:23) . There are no real experts in this season, but churches in some parts of the country are a month or two ahead of...

On the other side... You've been waiting for this day for months. Instead of talking about how ministry strategy needs to shift because of the pandemic, you're starting to talk about what ministry will look like on the other side of it. But if you're like most of the pastors we're talking to, reopening and re-engaging your congregation has already been more challenging than expected.  There are no...

Giving and attendance —If you were used to measuring church health only by tracking giving and attendance, then the last year has been very confusing . It's not an overstatement to say most pastors have been struggling to get a pulse on the health of their ministries. But truth be told, even before the pandemic most churches didn't know what to track beyond giving and attendance. With the Vital Si...

No one TRIES to lead ineffective meetings, but any leader can get a bit lazy. The 9 key practices we share in this episode aren't rocket science, but they are things we see many church leaders just letting slip. When a team is clear on direction and wins, and puts these principles into practice in their meetings, people actually like meetings. They help us clarify our work and move things forward....

What drives leaders completely crazy? Lack of follow-through.  It's honestly one of the most common frustrations we hear from church leaders. They invest time, prayer, dreaming, talking, and planning around what God has next for their ministry, but then nothing happens. There's no follow-through. A distraction, or a crisis—something that feels more urgent—consistently derails the leader and the te...

Are you leading too many direct reports?  A senior leader's span of care can significantly impact a team's ability to clarify roles and maintain alignment. Part of span of care is giving direction related to the mission, strategy, and priorities of your church, but the other piece of it is the discipleship of the people on your team. Many leaders think that by directly trying to lead as many peopl...

How do you define reality for your team and why is it important?  In 2019, 85% of churches that took the Unstuck Church Assessment self-identified as being in the "declining" stage of the life cycle. Now, having survived 2020, more churches than ever are feeling stuck. So we're kicking off a four-part series on how to create alignment in your ministry strategy and among your staff and volunteers. ...

"Do we have to embrace digital ministry?" "Do churches need to mimic the business world when it comes to online options?" "Do we really have to hire new roles for our staff team?" We've been getting a lot of questions about digital ministry strategy now that we're a year into the changes that COVID accelerated. The initial changes churches were forced to make are being reevaluated as many places o...

How important is data? What role should data play in your ministry strategy? What should you measure?  In this week's episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast, we sit down again with the Sun Valley Church team to dig into the practical ways they use data to inform their ministry strategies and how churches can leverage data to help reach more people with the message of Jesus.  For the full episode tr...

Where do you find the right person to lead your digital ministry? What should your digital ministry focus on? How do you reach new people online?  For months, we've been coaching churches to find a leader for their digital ministry strategies and in this week's episode we're sitting down with a church that has done exactly that. Paul Alexander serves as the Executive Pastor at Sun Valley Community...

How can you maximize your ministry impact? Your team plays a big role. We've heard from a lot of churches that have questions about how to structure their team. They're re-evaluating what roles they need to have on their staff team and looking for clarity on how to structure their leadership team moving forward.  If you're wondering how to structure your team to be healthy and high performing, you...

What are the common mistakes multisite churches make in staffing and structure? Now that the church has embraced multisite for over 20 years, there are predictable outcomes that we see related to how churches design and structure their multisite churches. Some of those outcomes are good and they help the church grow and expand in healthy ways. And some of those outcomes lead to what we have starte...

What do church mergers have to do with multisite strategy? And why is this such a critical conversation right now? Pre-COVID 20% of churches who took our Unstuck Church Assessment identified that they were in the "life support" stage. For many struggling churches, merging with a healthy, thriving church is their best option. And for larger, healthy churches, merging can be a way to expand their mi...

What are the common challenges that multisite churches face? Should your church consider going multisite?  Multisite churches have come increasingly popular. 20 years ago, there were only 200 multisite churches across the country. In 2019, there were more than 5,000.  The pandemic has also contributed to a growing interest in multisite strategy as churches consider how to grow and reach more peopl...

What should churches be measuring right now? What's been happening across churches over the last 9 months of doing ministry in the midst of the pandemic? In this week's episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson unpack key findings from The Unstuck Church Report and dig into trends in giving, staffing, online engagement, and reaching new people.   For the full episode tran...

How do you equip your congregation to bless their neighbors? How can you create a culture at your church where you're developing meaningful friendships with people outside the faith?  Barna's research indicates more than six in 10 non-Christians and lapsed Christians say they would be open to talking about faith matters with someone who listens without judgment.  In this week's episode of The Unst...