What’s in this Episode?

In today’s episode, we talk with Pastor John Dougherty as he gives guidance to 190 churches, their pastors, and constituencies in Georgia. He encourages pastors to be open to how the Lord might be working on the heart of a volunteer to think of going into ministry. We can facilitate that when we build farm teams of leading volunteers who could begin to be considered to fill ministry positions in the church as those might materialize.

 

Read the Transcript:

Dick Hardy 0:06
Hey, friend, it’s great to be with you on this episode of The Church Tips podcast, and I have the privilege today to hang out with my buddy John Dougherty from the great state of Georgia. Georgia, Bulldogs. Are you a bulldog?

John Dougherty 0:18
I am a bulldog, baby. Come on. Come on.

Dick Hardy 0:22
UC, it’s get going with you SEC and Big 10 people, you know? I just say, keep saying to you SEC, people are a bunch of Big 10 wannabes. And…

John Dougherty 0:31
Oh, okay, your podcast is over. I’m sorry

Dick Hardy 0:33
Your Georgia pastors had very little appreciation for these stupid remarks of mine. So, anyway…. Hey, great to be with you today, John. Thanks for slicing off a little time. Today. We’re going to talk about the whole issue of staffing in the local church context. So John has responsibilities for…. how many churches that are you responsible for?

John Dougherty 0:56
Currently, 190.

Dick Hardy 0:57
190 churches in the state of Georgia, and he provides great leadership for them. And a part of the part of the issue we deal with in the local church is staffing. Many churches, course, just the pastor, but but he or she has key volunteers that that help make things happen. But other churches have the privilege to to have a staff member or two or three or four or many more, and John really has some perspective he wants to bring to the table to help us think through our staffing needs in the immediate and in the future. So why don’t you just give us a jump start on this, John of what you’re seeing as you lead these churches.

John Dougherty 1:38
Well, Dick, thank you for having me. I appreciate your friendship and the blessings that you show our Georgia pastors and all that you do through Leaders.Church and cohort we’re doing. I’ll tell you, in the early days of ministry, you know, we could go out and we could look for staff and we there was, you know, you could throw a rock in any direction and hit a youth pastor or children’s pastor whatnot, because there were just this wave of people wanting todo it. But times have changed. As a matter of fact, as a overseer District Superintendent in my district, I get at least a minimum of one call a day, sometimes two, sometimes up to five, from pastors saying, hey, I need, I need this staff person? Do you know anyone? And what we wind up doing is we wind up sort of cannibalizing the staff of other churches. Now, I know that necessity is is there, and we just we’ve got to fill our staffing needs, but what I have seen work the best is regardless of church size, basically establishing a farm team. You know, I know sports analogies are the lowest form of communication, but establishing a farm team in house, and of course, it’s scalable. You know, on, on, let’s say you’re the, you’re the only paid staff person at a local church. You can still do this. It will be on a smaller scale, but basically growing our own growing our own staff. They already have the corporate DNA of the church, already. They you have a deep personal relationships with them. So let’s say you’re pastoring. You’re the onlypaid staff person at a church of 150-200 you should never go to lunch by yourself. You should never go run errands by yourself. There should always be a person, whether it be a young person. I know that we’ve kind of thrown the age demographic out and when it comes to recruiting staff, because it may be someone who’s middle aged, looking for a career change or just feeling the call of God later in life, but growing that own farm team locally in your church, and basically putting them into those staff positions, and not relying on on brick and mortar institutions to produce young ministers, not relying on schools of ministry. Now, if you have a church of size and you have resources and you can establish your own school of ministry or training facility or something along those lines, praise the Lord, you can grow your own. But it is not just dependent upon availability of resources. I had… growing up, I had a pastor just kind of put his arm around me and just say, hey, you know, I want you to just kind of do life well, come to find out what I learned later on, he was discipling me into a ministry context, and I was doing ministry. I wasn’t paid. They didn’t payme. He paid my bought my lunch occasionally, but there was this heart of please Jesus with my life. And so I found that that was very successful in working with me, and I’m seeing that work in the local church context as well, where these churches are basically raising up their own staff.

Dick Hardy 4:47
Well, I am so glad to hear you say that, John, I’m having similar kinds of conversations with guys, particularly ones… and we find that it doesn’t, it doesn’t meet their immediate need. If they haven’t done this, if you haven’t been preparing people and all sudden you need a youth, guy or gal, you can’t just presto, bangle, have it appear. But for those who will hear what we’re talking about today and actually begin to put things in place to bring people along, you’ll be amazed at what can happen. I’ve told I’ve told people, take people in your church out of the box, that you have them in, you’ve got them in a box, that they are a they’re a department manager or a general manager of a Walmart, yes, and you say that’s their profession, or they’re an insurance agent, that’s their profession, and we’re grateful for those professions and the incomes they make and the tithes that… we’re grateful for all that. But that very point you just mentioned about people, particularly in in mid age, we don’t know what the Lord might be saying to their heart in terms of potential career change. And the more we can do to help build a farm team and be willing to think of somebody in a career field to potentially come into ministry is gold. It really is

John Dougherty 6:22
So let me give you an example of what you’re talking about. So we have a pastor, a gentleman who’s pastoring a church. He is the COO of a major hospital chain, a billion dollar budget, 1000s of people in his downline was discipled in a local church setting by a pastor he was just attending, and then he began teaching Sunday school, and he’s serving and all these other things and and through that, that season of discipling, here he is pastoring a church. This guy has the capacity to to do so much, but God spoke to his heart and said, I’ve called you into this later in life. And so here he is, lead pastoring a congregation now, and that’s a great example of what you’re talking about.

Dick Hardy 7:10
Well, it really is. And you know what I’ve I’ve told guys and gals, you know, find, find yourself a little six or seven week devotional study that you do with four or five hand picked people. Yes, pick the book of Nehemiah. Do a little study you, you don’t tell them on the front end, hey, I’m going to disciple, disciple you so you become a youth pastor someday. You’re just discipling them and doing the very kind of thing you just mentioned, John and and you’re sitting around in this setting together where you’re studying the book of Nehemiah. And here’s what you want to watch for. Are they attentive to what you’re talking about? Are they doing the assignment? Are they reading? Are the how are they responding to your leadership in the group. What are they doing to lead in the group? Are they showing up? You’re watching a variety of things… patterns that you would say that’s the kind of thing I want in my staff members of the future. And you just do that over and over and over again, not everybody of your four or five people are going to matriculate into that, but you don’t need everybody. You need a youth pastor. You need a children’s or something, yes. So I would say, the more you can do of that, the better you can, you’re going to be.

John Dougherty 8:41
And it is…. it is time intensive. It does require on our part. And so we have had the mindset in the last 30-40, years that we depend on other institutions to produce our staff. But there’s nobody that’s going to have your vision for your church, have your corporate DNA, your church DNA, and have your leadership DNA more than the individual that you raise up to fill those staff positions. And yes, it is, it’s a lot of work, but I think the product at the end is going to be better than anything you’ll be able to draw from another organization. So personally, I lean into that. And even me now, I take people, even though I have a large organization, I’m still taking one, two or three and grooming them into these positions of leadership, because we do see the potential in them, and I think that that’s really where the church is going to be going in the future.

Dick Hardy 9:33
Yeah, no, that’s good. You know, in the immediate I’ve, I’ve dealt with a few churches, and they’ve said, Okay, I’ve gotta find somebody, you know, you can do the kind of thing John referenced here a few minutes ago, that, you know what we’ve always done. We get on the phone and we try to rip somebody off of some other church, and we don’t use those terms, but that, you know, we’re, what is God saying to you? We do those kinds of things. Yes. Um, or you can engage a search firm, which is fairly new to the landscape in the last 10-15, years. There’s Slingshot Group out there. There’s Vanderbloemen, and we’re not endorsing one or another or any of them, but, but you do have to pay different than calling your buddy and saying, like people call you, Hey, John, I need such and such. You do have to pay for that. If your church is in a position to do that, it would be we’re in the immediate if you haven’t trained people internally, that is one way to get it done, and probably get it done quicker with less headaches. But money is going to be out of your pocket to do that.

John Dougherty 10:42
Exactly, and just talking about economy of effort and expenses, yes, it is going to be time intensive to raise your own.And yes, you may have an immediate need, and I understand that, but you’re going to spend less ultimately raising up your own, and you’ll have a higher degree of quality in that individual, then you would be hiring a headhunter to go out and snipe staff from from other churches. And I know we do cannibalize those and and look, it’s necessity. I get that. I understand. And so I’m not in any way condemning anyone you’ve got to fill those needs. But, man, I think is, if you get proactive now and start really drawing those leaders up, you’re going to find out that you’ve made a very valuable investment.

Dick Hardy 11:30
Well, that’s good. John, give us a parting shot here. You know, if they, if the viewers, the guy or the gal listening to this, you know, they say, okay, Dick and John, I’m with you. What would be the parting shot you’d say, if you don’t remember anything we said at all, you gotta remember this. What would that be?

John Dougherty 11:49
I’ll tell you what the Lord is speaking to me this morning. Is that, the local church pastor… you know, sometimes we get so into leading and we get so into, and we made such a profound life and emotional investment into our church, we forget sometimes that God is more invested and more concerned about the success of your church than you are,

Dick Hardy 12:13
Than you are. Yeah.

John Dougherty 12:14
He is more concerned about that. It is ever present in his mind. And for me, there is comfort and and actually some some liberation in the fact that I know that God is more concerned about the success of this ministry than we are. And so we need to rest in that. And yes, we need to put forth the effort and we need to work hard, but we also need to remember God is ever present in that, and he is more concerned about it than we are.

Dick Hardy 12:38
Oh, that’s so good. That’s so good. John. John Dougherty, thank you very, very much for taking time to hang out with me on this key subject. I mean, it’s boots on the ground. This is right where we live as pastors when we’re trying to fill staff positions and to continue to move the ministry forward. I greatly appreciate you taking time to be with us.

John Dougherty 12:58
Absolutely, anytime.

Dick Hardy 12:59
You know, to the viewers, we thank you for hanging out with us on this Church Tips podcast. I would say if you have need of anything relative to your church, we’ll be honored to have you go to Leaders.Church, we provide a variety of resources for you. Also, Church University, there’s a number of full courses available to you. We just stand ready to serve the local church in any way we can. So to all who have hung with us on the podcast today, make it a great onetoday and be blessed.

Jonathan Hardy 13:31
Hey, Jonathan, here real quick before you go, everything in your ministry rises and falls on your leadership. So investing in your leadership is essential to staying healthy, and that’s why I want to invite you to join us inside the leaders dot church membership. This online streaming service for pastors gives you access to more than 300 videos plus training material to level up your leadership and improve your ministry skills. If you’d like to do that, I want to invite you to go to Leaders.Church/boost. Again, that’s Leaders.Church/boost. Well, thanks again for joining us on the church tips podcast, we’ll look forward to seeing you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

---

Like this post? Sign up for our free blog updates to never miss a post. We’ll send you a FREE ebook to say “Thank You.”

YES! SIGN ME UP >>

---

Discover what pastors of growing churches do to see massive growth and how you can position your church for the greatest days ahead.

Click here to get immediate access to this free masterclass.

Subscribe & Follow:

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Follow on Spotify
• Subscribe to YouTube Channel
• Subscribe on Google Podcasts
• Like us on Facebook
• Follow us on Instagram
• Follow us on Twitter

Other Resources:

• Leaders.Church
• Leaders.Church Blog
• Church University
• Take the Free 5 Day Leadership Challenge for Pastors
• Get Free Access to the 4 Secrets Masterclass

Share This Article

---