John Maxwell says that the greatest leadership principle he has ever learned was that “those closest to the leader will determine the success of that leader.”1 As you move toward building a staff for your new church, keep these words in mind. Finding the right teammates to help you on this journey is serious business. The people you bring on to your staff will either propel you down the road toward fulfilling the vision for your church or serve as speed bumps along the way.

No matter where you are in the process of starting your church, you probably only know one thing for sure when it comes to staffing: You need a staff. Right. Now what? When should you start hiring? What positions should you fill first? Where will you find the people? How will you pay them? How do you make sure you are hiring people who will increase your level of success.

There are three critical staffing tenets that, when taken to heart, can help you wisely embark on this journey of staff building. Use these tenets as your underlying guide as you begin to consider staffing-related issues.

Tenet #1 Find First-Year Staff First

Sounds pretty simple, right? You would be amazed how many church planters start trying to fill positions with no long-term staffing plan in mind. They end up hiring for the wrong staff positions in the wrong order. Remember, there are key staff members that you must have on board during the first year of your new church:

-Lead Pastor

-Worship Leader

-Children’s ministry leader

Because you are more than likely the lead pastor, that top priority position is already taken care of, which means the worship leader is going to be your most important first-year hire. The children’s ministry leader is the next essential position, unless your target demographic does not generally have children. In that case you only need two staff members during the first year.

During your first year, you do not need to hire a church secretary, youth pastor or any kind of specialized pastor. Hiring for these positions too early is a common mistake that church planters make. Not only will you be in a better position to hire later, but you will also fill the position with a strong person by having had time to effectively delegate these traditional tasks to volunteers and watch potential candidates perform.

When you cannot afford staff, you have no choice but to master the art of delegation. In the beginning, never pay anyone to do what you can get a volunteer to do. You will save money, see who your strong volunteers are and set a precedent for future volunteer involvement. This is especially true when it comes to hiring a secretary. Wait until your church has grown well beyond 100 people before you even consider hiring a secretary. Instead, as the lead pastor, you should develop systems for volunteers to do basic secretarial work.

Tenet #1 should serve as a guide to keep you from over-staffing early on, but it should not keep you from staffing for growth should your new church enter a period expansion. If you are growing like wildfire and need more staff than the traditional first-year hires, by all means, staff as you are led!

Tenet #2 Decide How You Will Raise Payroll Funds

What is your fundraising philosophy going to be? You’ll need to make this important decision before you begin hiring. More than likely, you will not be in a position to pay salaries to your new hires, so you will need to work out an arrangement where by they can help fund their position. You must decide how the money is going to be generated and distributed. When it comes to raising funds for staff, keep the following in mind:

-View raising funds as short-term plan, effective only until the church can afford to pay a full salary

-Never offer to raise funds for a new staff person. Let him or her be responsible.

-Never ask staff to raise 100 percent of their salary. The church should provide some percentage, even if it’s a small amount.

-Raise both funds and prayer supporters.

-Don’t ask staff to raise funds if you didn’t raise funds yourself.

Raising funds for your salary staff to raise funds in the early days of a new church start can be a win-win scenario for everyone involved. Your church will grow faster, and you will see the vital role that prayer partners play in the launch to teach you to further depend on Him.

No matter how you decide to raise the funds for salaries you have to gauge for determining acceptable salaries. So, how much should you pay the lead pastor and staff? It’s simple, pay as much as you can without limiting the future growth of the church. (The annual “Compensation Handbook for Church Staff,” available at www.churchstaffing.com, is a resource that we have found extremely helpful in determining staff salaries.) Once you have the facts, you must make a prayerful decision regarding salary amounts.

If you are uncomfortable making these decisions, especially when it comes to your own salary, talk with other pastors in your area to determine an appropriate range. Church planters sometimes set their salaries too high and consequently hinder the growth of the church. Setting salaries too low can often result in families taking the hit. Do the necessary research, and then make an informed, prayerful decision.

Tenet #3 Don’t Be Afraid of the “Big Ask”

Asking people to join in your work can be one of the most intimidating tasks you’ll face in starting your new church. Don’t let it be! You should never be afraid to ask potential staff members to join you-even if it means a salary cut, a drastic position change or a significant new challenge for them. As a church starter, you must learn to ask people to join you in all areas of the process of building up the people who will ultimately form your team. But He’s going to leave it up to you to invite them to come aboard. You can’t let fear keep you from doing your part!

When you ask someone to join your staff, you are not asking that person to make a sacrifice. Instead, you are offering that person the opportunity of a lifetime. As you move ahead with each big ask, be sure that your proposition is clear, carefully presented and reflective of the vision that God has given you.

So, on to the first big ask: asking a worship to join you.

Finding Your Worship Leader

There are three things that every new church must have before a real church: (1) a lead pastor, (2) a start date, and (3) a worship leader. Assuming you’ve taken of the first two items, it’s time to turn your attention to hiring a worship leader.

As you begin looking for your worship leader, don’t feel as if you have found that perfect person who can lead the full slate of future worship ministries. That’s not the person you need to find at this point. Simply look for someone who can lead during your worship services. That’s all. Now, this person may, in fact, turn out to be your ultimate worship pastor. Great! But to get started, your primary need is for a consistent worship leader. So, how do you find this consistent leader?

Become a Headhunter

As you start the search process, set out on a mission to meet as many worship leaders as possible. Ask your friends who they know, attend worship conferences, as your partner churches and do online searches. Become a worship leader headhunter and see who can turn up. Be as aggressive as you can (with out being obnoxious)!

Colleges and Bible schools are a great place to look. One church starter in Phoenix recently found an entire worship team at a local Bible school. Contact music professors or campus ministers and let them know what you are looking for in a leader. They may know the perfect person. If you do end up working with a worship leader who is a student, you may want to establish a trial period before hiring him or her on a permanent basis.

Still Looking…

What if you exhaust all of your resources and still can’t find a worship leader first of all, don’t panic. God will bring you the right leader at the right time if you are truly putting in the effort. In the meantime, during your monthly services you can bring in a worship leader from an area church or even fly in someone you know from a different state. But once you move to weekly services, it’s best to have someone on staff.

As we’ve mentioned, they key in these early days is a consistent presence. Perhaps you can get someone to lead worship on a short but consistent basis, maybe for two to six months. Or you could move ahead with creative options, such as prepackaged worship. You may also consider whether there is a layperson in your launch team that could lead well enough to carry your for a few months.

As a last resort, if you are unable to locate a worship leader, you may want to consider moving your launch date back one month. However, make sure that you are putting in the hard work to find a worship leader and are pursuing all of these options before you even think about changing your launch date. Finding the right worship leader may be incredibly easy for you, or it may turn into a quest you would never have predicted. Either way, once that person is in place, you will have filled the most important first-year staff position for your new church. Knowing that you have the right person on your team will make the pains you went through to get the person fade quickly away!

Using Staff from Partner Churches

Prior to your launch, when you are searching for staff members, don’t overlook your partner churches. The churches that are offering you financial assistance will often loan their staff to you for specific projects or key events. If your partner relation is strong, you may find that you already have a large staff available to you on a limited basis. Discuss this option with the contacts at your partner churches. Their willingness to step in may surprise you.

In addition to your partner churches, there are many resources available online to help with your staffing. Visit www.churchfromscratch.com to see how virtual assistance can help you get started.

Part-time staff members are essential to the initial growth of your church. During the first year of your church and beyond, start looking around to see who is already putting in a significant number of volunteer and service hours. These committed individuals are often willing to increase their hours and become part-time staff for relatively little pay. There are three types of part time staff.

True Part-Time Employees

Traditional part-time employees receive either half or a fourth of a full-time salary and are require to attend staff meetings. They have a set number of hours that they are expecting to work and maintain office hours (if you have an office when they are hired otherwise they work from home and are on call during certain times). As with all staff members, they have an approved job description and clear expectations. True part-time employees could include the worship leader, a secretary, or office manager, a children’s director, or even the lead pastor. Who you hire as a true part-time employee will depend on your particular situation.

$50-a-Week Staff

Works well for very involved, valuable team members.

Interns

Interns are an extremely valuable source for staffing a young church. These are usually students who take on or two semesters off from college to serve with your church.

Successful inter will have: (1) a set time that they are going to serve with you; (2) a clear position description; and (3) a big heart for your new church. Interns truly become part of extended family, as you will generally help them find a place to live, serve as their career counselor, and basically do all that you can to help them have a great experience working in your church. As with all staffing decisions, careful pre-election is the y key to hiring an effective intern.

The big advantage to interns is that they pay their own way by raising their salary and living expenses. You should also have a plan to help your interns grow in their faith and calling while they serve with you. This may include a weekly meeting time with you where you check in, read and discuss books together, or share what you both are learning about the church’s ministry.

You’ll be able to find interns from many different sauces. Connect with your partner churches, contact your denomination leaders and talk with Christian organizations or campus ministers at college and graduate schools.

Hiring Part-time Before Full-Time is a good idea because hiring someone on a part-time basis first gives you a trail run. Both parties have the chance to access whether the position is a good fit. You also have a chance to learn how to help your staff person be a successful as possible, which is truly your role as a supervisor.

Hiring from within can be a good idea because of the following reasons:

-The person you hire is a known commodity.

-He or she is already leading and has a track record.

-Hiring a church member means no moving expenses or acclimation time.

-He or she has seen your strategy and benefited from your ministry.

-He or she has an existing volunteer base to pull from (remember, you hire staff to lead teams, not to just do all the work themselves).

How do you identify those people who would make good staff members? How do you help them work their way up? There is an overarching flow in moving people from volunteer positions to full-time staff. Ideally, here is how the process would work with a hypothetical church members, whom we’ll call “Bob”:

Step 1: Bob begins attending your church.

Step 2: Bob volunteers for a ministry.

Step 3: Bob does well as a volunteer and begins to lead other volunteers.

Step 4: Bob continues to do well as a High Capacity Volunteers, and you move him to a $50-a-week staff level.

Step 5: You hire Bob to a part-time or full-time staff position.

When hiring a new staff person, make sure he or she possesses the three C’s

Character: Is the potential staff members trustworthy? Does he or she have a track record of integrity?
Chemistry: Do you like the person? Is he or she easy to get along with? Does his or her attitude fit with you and the culture you want to establish?
Competency: Can the person do the job? Does he or she have the foundational skills necessary to learn to do the job?

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To read this in its entirety read Launch by Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas

Top 10 Staffing Lessons from The Journey

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You’ll never have enough money up front to hire staff.
Hiring staff precedes growth, not vice versa.
Hire slow, fire fast. One bad apple spoils the bunch.
Hire from within whenever possible
Hiring and firing is ultimately the responsibility of the lead pastor.
Hire part-time staff before full-time staff.
Never hire staff when you can find a volunteers.
The role of staff is to find additional volunteers.
Hold weekly staff meetings
Clarity and accountability are the keys to an effective staff.

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Footnote

Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas, Launch, pgs. 97-115, July 28, 2008.

John Maxwell, Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers), p. 203.