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How Many People Can One Pastor Supervise?

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / July 14, 2017 / 0 Comments

Only the largest congregations have the resources to hire full-time supervisors. The average congregation employs a “head of staff” who also preaches, teaches, provides pastoral care, leads mission and ministry, and guides the work of the board. Given this breadth of responsibility, how many employees can a pastor effectively supervise? What happens when a supervisor […]

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Have We Failed?

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 4, 2016 / 0 Comments

Barb shared her decision to end the day trip ministry. “I simply can’t organize these trips anymore. We began this ministry to address the loneliness and isolation of older adults. It’s been wildly successful in terms of participation. People love going on these day outings and enrollment fills up immediately. But our funding source is […]

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Working Around Incompetence on the Team

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / May 11, 2015 / 0 Comments

We aspire to build staff teams of competent, motivated individuals who work in dogged pursuit of a clearly articulated vision. What most of us have are teams with some outstanding staff and some not so outstanding staff, working side by side towards a vision that seems clear, on some days. Most of you are grappling […]

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Silo Mentality: Breaking Through to Collaboration

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / March 16, 2015 / 0 Comments

We have great leaders.  They just don’t work together collaboratively. What we accomplish together is sometimes less impactful than the sum of our individual parts, because we spend precious time and energy protecting individual or departmental turf. This is silo mentality. Silos are artificial boundaries put up to accomplish personal   goals and keep others […]

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Breaking Our Dependence on Praise

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 28, 2014 / 0 Comments

“You like me.  You really like me!”  Let’s face it. We are all guilty of defining our self-worth by what others think. When people praise us we feel successful.  Are we? Courageous and adaptive leadership requires leaning into our own incompetence, and pointing out the incompetence of our congregations.  Leading beyond our own competence will […]

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Acting on on Our Plans

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / September 16, 2014 / 0 Comments

In the world of congregations we are good at planning and doing. We enjoy thinking great thoughts and crafting lofty ministry ideals. We are fair at experimenting with our ideas, and taking tentative steps in the direction of our plans. We are great at running programs, running programs, and running more programs. However, we are […]

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Building a Discerning Team

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / August 18, 2014 / 0 Comments

Most teams in congregational settings assume they are being Spirit-led.  They believe that God will be self-disclosing and guide the work of the team, so long as good people gather with good intent.  They expect that discernment will happen automatically in the context of good decision making. And so, they demonstrate little intentionality when it […]

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Pastoral Transition-Lifting the Veil of Secrecy

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / July 15, 2014 / 0 Comments

Organizations in all walks of life openly plan for leadership transition. The Church is unique in the veil of secrecy that we draw around pastoral transition. We don’t want to watch people grow anxious, so we withhold known information about departure. In doing so, we postpone the hard adaptive work of leadership transition into the […]

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Is Our Busyness Masking Spiritual Boredom?

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / July 10, 2014 / 0 Comments

The large church is known for the quality and depth of its programming, and for the exhaustion of its staff team. It’s true, every one of my client congregations is functioning with a burned out staff team, and pastors on the brink of exhaustion. We assume that a growing and thriving church is always adding […]

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Size Matters

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / June 25, 2014 / 0 Comments

Size Matters…at least it does in the world of congregations. Don’t get me wrong. The size of a congregation doesn’t automatically make it any more or less impactful. Small churches and large churches can be equally effective in ministry. However, a congregation’s perception of its size, and how it functions in relationship to that perception…that […]

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