The Unstuck Church Podcast

You're under greater pressure than ever… and being criticized more than ever… how do pastors stay emotionally healthy right now? Pastors are telling us they feel like they just can't make a right call. It doesn't matter which decision they're making—they've got people criticizing them from every angle.  It's been an exhausting year, and it's likely you're running on reserves. We hope this episode...

What if we had to rethink the importance of getting new people to a building or a program... for the long haul? As part of a recent Unstuck Masterclass, Tony had the opportunity to interview Nona Jones and Jeff Brodie on the shift that's happening from engaging new people with in-person services to engaging them online. Nona serves as the head of Facebook's faith-based partnerships, and Jeff is th...

Approximately 1 staff person for every 18 people showing up for in-person church attendance... Approximately 1 staff person in dedicated roles responsible for digital ministry strategy for every 1,273 online viewers... We found some interesting—and some alarming—data points in our most recent survey on the state of digital ministry strategy. In collaboration with Blackbaud , we completed another s...

  We need to acknowledge it: A n in-person Christmas experience may not be a draw this year. Most people who are not connected with a church will probably not want to go to an in-person experience, wearing masks, socially distanced in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by an unfamiliar crowd of people.   The opportunity we have this year is to equip our attendees to bring church to their families ins...

"Are there any examples we can follow??" That's the question we keep getting from pastors. You're realizing you need a digital strategy. You're getting lots of inspiration. But you'd really like to see what this looks like in practice. So in this episode, Tony and Amy share best practices and stories from real churches around the country who are implementing a digital engagement strategy effective...

Having a digital strategy isn't the win. Helping become disciples of Jesus—and then disciple makers—is the win. But the need for a digital strategy to help you do that isn't going away anytime soon. The good news is that if you do the hard work of clarifying the big and small next steps for each part of the faith journey continuum, it gets easier to design strategies that work and monitor ministry...

What is the FRONT DOOR of the church now? The COVID-19 pandemic moved churches online—but that shift wasn't really our choice. And what has been revealed through all of this is a huge gap that churches have around their ministry strategies to reach people who are outside the faith and outside the church. While some churches are already returning to pre-pandemic attendance levels, most mid-size and...

We're hearing uncertainty on the lips of church leaders at organizations of all sizes. They're asking this question: "Am I the right leader for our church going forward?" In most cases, yes, you are. God gave you the role you have for a time like this. But that questioning you feel might be a sign you need someone walking beside you. Every good player has a coach. Even the best of the best have a...

It's the catchphrase of stuck organizations... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But healthy, thriving churches and organizations tend to initiate changes before they need to. And the leaders in those organizations are willing to step out in front and lead significant shifts other people may not be feeling the need to make. Almost every organization has had to pivot in some way in recent months....

The last stop before it ends. If you wait until this phase to lead changes, the changes feel huge . You almost have to become a completely different church if you hope to ever return to sustained health as a ministry. From our research with 15,000+ churches, more than 85% self-identified as being on the declining side of the typical church life cycle before this crisis began. And more discouraging...

Keep people from leaving. That's the priority focus of churches in the Preservation phase of the typical church lifecycle. Churches in this phase put very little focus on reaching new people for Jesus, and there's a strong desire to "return to the good old days."  Decision-making gets bogged down in multiple committees and divisive church boards, making it almost impossible to implement ministry c...

Google "Covid Accelerating Change." It's happening everywhere—it's rapidly changing the workplace, our habits, digitization, how we connect and much more. Over the past few years, the Church has experienced a significant amount of change. And, like the rest of the world, the pandemic is accelerating these changes —falling in-person attendance, the use of online, fewer new people connecting, and mo...

Following the leader. A merger is always more successful when each church is clear on who leads and who follows. But for the church in the following role, deciding to merge with another ministry raises difficult questions related to governance, what happens to staff leaders and specific ministries, who has decision rights, and more. In this episode, Tony wraps up a two-part series by interviewing...

Better together? Over the past decade, we've seen a trend in churches merging together for many different reasons... and it seems likely that this trend will only increase in a post-pandemic world. On the positive side—healthy, mission-focused churches are benefitting: Multisite : Ten years ago 30% of multisite campuses came by way of a merger; today it's more than 40%. Church Planting : In a rece...

Paralyzed. Tired. Depressed. Sad. Questioning leadership capacity. Just some of the ways pastors are describing their state of mind right now. If you're leading in a local church in 2020, you're not only helping others navigate change— you're also processing it yourself.  But some pastors are also telling us they feel re-energized by the opportunity to do things they didn't have permission to do b...

The hard truth for outward-focused churches? New people are probably not going to come to our physical locations to try out church—not for a long time. In the last few months, the majority of churches shifted to holding services online, and recently, a lot of energy shifted to re-opening in-person services. But even if we take all the precautions and follow the federal and local guidelines... it's...

How do we DO this? That's the question we're hearing. The shift from analog to digital  ministry is one of the biggest ministry strategy shifts churches are having to make right now.  We reported in our special edition of the  Q2 2020 Unstuck Church Report , that 70% of larger churches told us they thinking about how their staffing structure may need to shift permanently to prepare for the new nor...

Annual reviews. Grading on a fuzzy 10-point scale. Infrequent 1-on-1 meetings... we've all be on the receiving end of an ineffective performance management system. Is there a better way? Does performance management even belong on church staff teams? Pastors frequently tell us they weren't taught the skills to lead an organization in seminary. When teams are small, it's easy to lead the staff and k...

Frustration, silos, turf wars and inaction... There might just be a fuzzy decison-making process in your organization. The good news? These are all solvable problems with clear decision rights. In moments of crisis, it's wholly appropriate for the leader to make more decisions. But now it's time to start shifting to a more collaborative approach to leadership—or you're going to limit the impact th...

We're back from our brief podcast hiatus! And we've got lots of NEW data and stories to share. We recently partnered with Blackbaud for a special edition of our quarterly research report, The Unstuck Church Report . More than 550 churches shared with us how they're continuing to respond to the coronavirus crisis. There was some good news: Churches seem to be finding themselves in a better financia...

Alignment within your church won't happen on accident. You have to maintain it on an ongoing basis, but if your alignment doesn't lead to clearer ministry priorities and more focused action from your team, it's unlikely you'll see the results you're praying for.    In this final and third episode in our Strategic Alignment Pyramid series, Tony and Amy dive into the Action level of the pyramid with...

Busy—Everyone's working hard, but the work isn't organized. It's not focused. And honestly—the church isn't seeing the results you are hoping to see. Sound familiar? Common symptoms of unclear vision, goals and strategies. In Part 2 of our series about the Strategic Alignment Pyramid, we examine how it's possible for your church to do the work of God without doing the work God called you   to do—a...

Times of crisis shine a spotlight on issues like lack of vision clarity and team misalignment. If you sense the future for your church feels unclear and that your team is not pulling in the same direction, you're not alone. In this episode, we kick off a series about a tool—the Strategic Alignment Pyramid —that can help you learn how to reinvent your ministry methods in a way that will unify your...

Overwhelming and confusing—the words pastors have been using when they talk to us about measuring online engagement. It feels like everyone has been talking about what to measure for the last few weeks, and somehow, it's not getting clearer. Here's our take: Churches should give the most attention to tracking things that help them make decisions and lead to wins with the bigger picture ministry go...

There's a lot of change happening in our world right now, and likely a lot more to come. As leaders, we have to be ready to change our ministry strategy, while holding true to our responsibilities as leaders. In this episode, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson are diving into the 4 roles a senior pastor can't delegate (ever), and why you need to bring them back into focus TODAY, given what our churches...