The Unstuck Church Podcast

Staffing issues get churches stuck. We see it all the time.  We recently took a look at all of the Staffing & Structure assessments The Unstuck Group completed in the last year. We were looking for themes or trends, and boy, did we find some. In this episode, Tony and Amy share 2 of the 5 most recurring staffing pain points we uncovered in our analysis. They share some indicators these issues are...

Depression. Loneliness. Anxiety. They're becoming recurring health issues in our culture—even among church leaders. The danger is the secret, being in the condition alone. Lifeway Research found that 23% of pastors say they've had personal struggles with mental health. Still 49% said they rarely or never speak on the topic to their congregation. The Unstuck Group's team heard Pastor Chris Hodges f...

It's not something anyone in ministry wants to think about—legal trouble, and the circumstances that could lead to it.    The alarming thing we've noticed is that church leaders are often ignorant of the areas of the law that most pertain to them, both the protections and limitations the law creates. And that can lead to nightmare situations.  In this episode, Tony invites attorneys Steven Goodspe...

They're just trying to decide whether or not to come back.  And we hit 'em with everything we've got. We highly value first-time guests... we just don't necessarily know the right ways to show it. In this episode, Tony and Amy share 4 WORST practices for connecting with new guests that they commonly see when serving churches for The Unstuck Group .  Is your church using any of these strategies? It...

"The toughest test of a manager is not how they deal with poor performance — it's how they address mediocrity."  It's a quote we read in the Harvard Business Review a while back, and boy, is it true. Leaders can tend to blame mediocrity on ineffective employees or volunteers, instead of recognizing our own ineffective leadership as the problem. In this episode, with a bit of sarcasm, Tony and Amy...

"Great mission turn into routine jobs if they aren't pursued by great teams."  Tony made that claim a few months ago, and it stirred up a few strong reactions. Is the team really more important than the mission? What about in a church?  In this episode, Tony and Amy unpack what Tony meant when he wrote that line. Plus! They share the key characteristics The Unstuck Group looks for when adding staf...

Research, podcasts, writing—you can find a lot published about  how people are doing multisite.  We see far less written about the actual outcomes  of different multisite models and strategies. Based on experience working in and with many different multisite churches, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson discuss indicators a church is NOT ready to go multisite, principles that set a healthy foundation for...

New year, new church?  January finds our best intentions. Maybe it's the cold, maybe it's the afterglow of Christmas—but we rarely come across a church that doesn't have some resolutions for their ministry at the beginning of the year. In this episode, Tony Morgan shares 4 New Year's Resolutions he hopes church leaders will make in 2019, along with one simple mindset shift that churches can adopt...

Today we're revisiting a conversation from our most downloaded episode of 2018. We chose to re-release this conversation because it happened so long ago, you may have missed it—AND, because we think this topic is an important one for any pastor to engage again heading into 2019. Tony and Amy shared the 3 most common issues they see plaguing weekend church services—the things most pastors don't see...

Almost never. We almost never  see a multisite church succeed with live-teaching at each campus.  So naturally, we wanted to get to the bottom of why it works so well at Community Christian Church in the Chicago area.  In this episode, Tony Morgan interviews Tammy Melchein about how they've become a church that continually develops and resources new, excellent teachers—which makes this model work....

Every church could use more volunteers.  They're crucial to the life of any church. But the truth is, we never seem to have enough for all of the needs our churches have. In this episode, Tony Morgan and Amy Anderson discuss the 5 Barriers to Engaging Volunteers and how you can get more volunteers so you can increase your impact. For more resources and to join the conversation, you can visit this...

Getting your church unstuck is possible.  It's a process that takes time but is effective. Our team is always working on perfecting that process and we have just made it even better. In this episode, Tony and Amy talk through our newly updated 4 Phase Process for getting churches unstuck and how this process can help your church accomplish its mission and help people take their next steps toward J...

Our heart is always to help the church. But sometimes that means speaking the hard truths that keep us from getting unstuck. Recently, Tony published an article called 20 NEW Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Church in America. As you can imagine, it caused quite the stir. On this week's episode, Amy and Tony explore his heart and thinking behind 8 of his politically incorrect thoughts and why he...

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...