A few years ago I became aware of a new church start that was different than most I had heard about. It was located in a nearby larger city with a vision of reaching the two wealthiest neighborhoods in the community. They understood that wealthy people need a relationship with Jesus Christ just like everyone else does. They were then meeting in a school gymnasium in one of those neighborhoods and raising money to buy land on which to begin building. In about five years they had grown to about 400 people attending their services. What amazed me even more was their staffing. If I remember correctly, they had 14 people on staff and were looking for a senior pastor. They didn't have a Youth Minister. They had a Jr. High Girl's Minister, a Senior High Girl's Minister and others with a focus on special age groups. They were staffed for growth.
Contrast that will how many churches staff their churches. They begin with a single pastor and then add more staff when he or she can no longer handle the growth of the church. The problem with that model is that the church will seldom grow beyond the ability of that individual so additional staff is never added. Seldom does a single-staff pastor church grow beyond about 120 people. The reason is that is the number that most leaders can reasonably relate to. Some pastors might grow the church to 150 or even 175 people, but that number may not be sustained because he or she cannot maintain that many connections. People will begin to leave through the back door until the number gets back down closer to that 120 mark. This is why few churches ever grow beyond 200 people. The single pastor cannot connect to that many people, and the church does not feel it has the finances to hire additional staff.
An old model of church staffing used to believe that staff would be added at about 150 attendees. A much better model today would add staff at 100 people. A church with a very aggressive growth strategy, like the one mentioned above, might add staff at much lower numbers to help facilitate that growth. It's important that churches understand that their staffing decisions will impact their growth strategy.
The church mentioned above had some very wealthy individuals who shared their vision for ministry. They had the funds to support their staffing. Many churches would struggle to have that many fully-funded persons on staff with the number they had attending at the time. One solution to that is to bring bivocational people on staff. Many churches have bivocational pastors who provide excellent ministry. Imagine what might happen with bivocational ministers with very limited ministry responsibilities! Their areas of responsibility might explode due to their focused ministry.
If churches want to grow in the 21st century they will need to rethink their staffing needs. Single-staff churches have already placed a lid on their potential growth. To grow beyond that lid churches will need to add additional staff and engage its members in ministry. Perhaps a model worth considering would be having bivocational ministers leading ministry groups of trained lay leaders. That model would considerably raise the lid of potential growth in the church.
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