Marketplace Team or Ministry Family?

If you knew there was someone out there who could tell you your future, wouldn’t you want them to tell you? In my book Transitioning Well, I give a glimpse into a possible future and how you can get prepared for it. In 2007, I stopped running away from God’s calling to serve in the operations side of the ministry and took my first job as an Executive Director of an 800 member church.

I didn’t enter the ministry wearing rose-colored glasses. They were a little tinted and that meant stumbling into a few bear traps along the way. During the first two years in my new role, I wandered through a semi-painful transition for everyone who was involved. I have to admit that I set out to fix the back office of the church and in the process, the church fixed me. During the transition, I had 12 realizations about the difference between the corporate world that I had left and the new ministry world I was trying to figure out. 

Transitioning Well defines these realizations, offers ways to survive with them, a few questions to help you process what you are learning, and a brief prayer from me to you. To help you get a feel for the content of the realizations, this excerpt from the book focuses on the question Are we a team or a family or both? I hope this brief section helps you feel more prepared and gives you a roadmap to follow as you answer God’s call to serve Him in your new ministry role.

Are we a team or a family? Or both?

This is a question that shocks a transitioning leader because it is not an issue in for-profit settings. In the marketplace, the staff is a team and hardly ever referred to as a family. Answering the question correctly matters a lot to the leadership and staff in a non-profit/ministry culture. When I compared relationships in the marketplace to a non-profit/ministry setting, I found ministry professionals to be relationally oriented at a level that was unsettling to me personally. That does not mean that it is wrong. It is just very different from where we came from and something that you need to be prepared for. A ministry professional’s expectation of a high level of relational connectedness with the staff is a re-occurring theme throughout my book. I double-checked with other transitioned leaders. They agree that this was something that unsettled them at first and that it was not just my issue. They all experienced it as well.

At first, I thought that it was just me and the double-hula-hoop space I always required around me to prevent excessive hugging. It is not just me. Marketplace leaders are trained by HR to never touch other staff or share too much personal information. For the marketplace, this is a legal and risk reduction issue, and violating the policies will get you fired.

When I first entered the ministry world, I answered the question of whether the staff is a team or a family wrong by choosing team. I was quickly corrected by my pastor/boss that we are a family because we are in ministry and that is very important to the culture. Graciously I was allowed to answer that we are a team with strong family aspects. This definition works for some cultures and is a good compromise for transitioning leaders who are struggling to fit in and feel comfortable with the new expectations.

In the marketplace, there is no confusion about this issue and the answer is clearly that we are a team. The term family has many different meanings for people ranging from a good to a very bad thing. Marketplace leaders only use the word family to describe their relationships with relatives outside of their occupation. Caring environments that promote family-like interactions are generally not a part of the for-profit mindset. They are perceived as an inappropriate expectation and a potentially costly legal risk. Here is a chart that I hope breaks down the differences between the various definitions of a ministry/nonprofit family or a prof-profit team.

I have been in ministry and non-profit leadership for over 15 years, and there are aspects of the family configuration that are sweet and more fulfilling than working in the marketplace. For transitioning leaders a family-focused culture is unsettling because the marketplace does not devote energy or resources to encouraging its staff to connect at a personal level. I have heard marketplace leaders remind their staff that the for-profit organization is not there to be their personal social club. Rather it exists to get things done and to create a profit for the owners or stockholders.

After nearly 25 years of working under that mindset, I found it difficult to switch gears and adjust to creating family-formatted interactions and policies. The marketplace mindset felt safer and less messy when compared to the new non-profit/ministry family mindset. From a business perspective, it is easier to focus on accomplishing projects than it is to create a safe place for staff to share feelings and personal stories. Most for-profit leaders may perceive these actions as nice or a warm fuzzy feeling if the organization is profitable and a waste of resources or time if it is not. Goals and what is allowed are totally driven by profitability.

Once I became acclimated to the environment and learned that most ministry professionals could be trusted with my stories and issues, I found the family version of a staff culture better because of the deep relationships that I was enjoying. The key to surviving long-term is to remember that staff in a ministry/nonprofit setting are extremely human and may not always do a good job of stewarding your personal information properly. 

They will be better than most because of their training. They can slip up too and you need to protect yourself and share only what the Holy Spirit prompts you to share. One of the ways that personal information is shared is during times when staff is praying for other staff members in a group or ministry meeting. Information that you shared in confidence can become the subject of earnest prayers being lifted to God in a public setting. I want to believe that they truly do not understand the damage that they are doing by sharing. Other times, I am not so sure because I have been the victim of being a subject of prayer after I had asked the pastor to not share my information with anyone else. 

Although Pastors are care providers first and leaders second, they still need to be careful about who they tell what. With your marketplace training in appropriate relationships and interactions, you can help them walk the thin line between being family-oriented and team-legal.

One time I was scheduled for minor surgery. My pastor/boss found out and wanted to know all of the details so that he could pray for me. I told him that I would share the information with him only and that I did not want the staff or congregation to know because it was a private matter. My request for confidentiality lasted one day. Then the information was out in the public eye when the pastor/boss shared it during the weekly staff meeting as a topic for prayer. Suddenly I had several people sharing their medical stories with me, requesting the status of my recovery, and spontaneously praying for me in front of even more people who then wanted to help or share. It was an absolute nightmare even though I know they meant well. I am the type of guy who likes at least two Hulu-Hoop’s worth of space between me and the person trying to touch me. That desire, and my request for confidentiality, were tossed out the window in just 60 seconds. I felt incredibly exposed and unsafe. 

This experience taught me to choose carefully whom I shared family-level information with. The family culture of a ministry/nonprofit can be both a wonderful and terrifying experience. The sooner that you understand who a safe person is and who is not, the better off you will be. I would like to say that you are good with anyone that has the title of Pastor. It has been my experience that they can be some of the worst offenders because they want to help. That is what I have experienced, and it is not true of all pastors or staff members.

Share a little bit with different pastors and see what happens. You will know if you have crossed a line by the looks on the faces of the staff or leaders that you are interacting with.  Read the room and determine if you are in a group that is a family or a team. It can make a really big difference if you guess wrong and share sensitive information with someone who is a teammate and not a ministry-minded family member. 

Strategies

The technique of reading the air is an ancient Japanese practice called Kuuki who yomu. The Japanese practiced this technique to determine the temperature, emotional state, and expectations of a meeting or interaction that they are participating in. The technique also helps the leader read the people in a meeting and determine what is needed to communicate and what should be avoided depending on the mood and expectations. If the room is tension-filled the person speaking would read the air in the room and decide to either not speak or be more conciliatory. This technique is valuable to the transitioning leader because they will often find themselves in emotionally charged settings where participants are angry, emotionally hurt, or in need of calm wisdom or gentle correction. Reading the air will help them be prepared and not over-share or share the wrong information.

Don’t be surprised if the situation that you walk into already has decided some things about you. These are called Confirmation Biases and they are tough to overcome. They are always based on perception and not reality. Sadly, perception tends to be a reality in a ministry/nonprofit setting.

Try your best to always refer to the staff team as the family or a team with strong family aspects. If you can just say a family, you will have to field a lot fewer questions or hurt feelings. This is one aspect of the ministry/nonprofit setting that directly impacts how people will perceive a transitioning leader. You will find that there is already a confirmation bias created about you being a cold-hearted businessperson or even a corporate hatchet person. Reminding them that you perceive them as family and that they are more than just a teammate will help fight against the confirmation bias and its negative interpretation of you or your heart. 

I have also found it helpful to refer to the people whom I have built a relationship with as a brother or sister. This is a very common part of the ministry/nonprofit parlance and will help you be graphed into the church family faster.

Questions to Consider

• Is there a difference between how a team interacts and how a family interacts?
• Do you think that staff can be productive and effective if they spend time interacting at a family level and maintaining close relationships?
• How will you change the perception that you are a hatchet person or a cold-hearted corporate businessperson?

A Prayer

Dear Lord,

Bless your transitioning leaders as they change their perception of the staff and followers from teammates to more of a family. Help them to read the room and be sensitive to hurting people who need the love of God from a caring person. As they do their job, I pray that you would help them feel comfortable switching from a business mindset to a people-centric mindset that helps them create family-centric policies and systems. As staff prays, please bless them with sensitivity about the information that they share and help them to protect the safe environment that you call your church to be. God bless your pastors, staff, board members, and followers as they represent the body (family) of Christ to a broken and searching world.