9 Reasons You’ve Not Scheduled that Staff Retreat

by: Bryan Rose

Imagine a day when every staff member and key lay leader wakes up with a clear and shared understanding of God’s better future for your church. A day when the question “What’s your vision, Pastor?” brings you energy and excitement and not dread or suspicion. Imagine a day when every ministry understands their role in fulfilling the entire church’s disciple-making call, not just their role in filling a ministry program.

How does this become a reality? Is it possible that a time away together as a staff and leadership team could lead to these God-sized dreams? It will never happen if you keep putting off scheduling a meaningful leadership retreat.

This type of pastoral procrastination often happens because:

  1. There has never been any measurable return on the investment of the time it will take.
  2. Leadership is living from Sunday to Sunday putting out fires and cannot focus together for long.
  3. Everyone typically makes great relational strides on retreats but achieves very little tactical progress.
  4. There have never been any resources budgeted for getting the team away to pray and plan.
  5. The team’s credibility is at stake if yet another plan gets created but not executed.
  6. It is easier to install yet another “silver bullet” program than it is to invest in a lasting process.
  7. Anyone on the team could lead a good enough retreat, but nobody has the time to facilitate an excellent one.
  8. It has always been easier to just rely on the Senior Pastor for all the answers.
  9. There is so much that needs to be done, it is hard to know where to even start.

If you’ve been putting off pulling away for a staff retreat one or more of the above reasons likely resonate with you. Waiting until you have enough time or money to get the team away just masks the reality that you won’t ever get around to it…

Until a significant enough crisis arrives and forces your hand.

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Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about planning visionary staff retreat.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bryan Rose

Bryan Rose

As Lead Navigator for Auxano, Bryan Rose has a strong bias toward merging strategy and creativity within the vision of the local church and has had a diversity of experience in just about every ministry discipline over the last 12 years. With his experience as a multi-site strategist and campus pastor at a 3500 member multi-campus church in the Houston Metro area, Bryan has a passion to see “launch clarity” define the unique Great Commission call of developing church plants and campus, while at the same time serving established churches as they seek to clarify their individual ministry calling. Bryan has demonstrated achievement as a strategic thinker with a unique ability to infuse creativity into the visioning process while bringing a group of people to a deep sense of personal ownership and passion.

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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
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