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Your Senior Pastor search committee spends 18-24 months whittling down a list of 100 resumes to a short list of candidates you pray over, interview, and bring to your church for a weekend before finally discerning which individual is the right fit. Once you make a decision, however, they back out, already took another position, or are no longer interested. Now what?

This is a familiar story. We work with search committee members almost daily who are exhausted from a search that yielded no results. They are looking back on what looks like wasted effort and are concerned they will either have to spend another year and a half searching again, or even worse, close the doors of their church.

If your church finds itself in a similar situation, step back and work through these three steps.

No matter the size of your church, people need community. We are reminded in Hebrews 10:24-25 how important and challenging community can be: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." It can be even more challenging as churches grow. Here are three steps to help people feel connected and known as your church grows.

On today’s Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, Holly Tate talks with Kem Meyer, author of Less Chaos. Less Noise.: Effective Communications for an Effective Church. Kem's passion: helping churches and organizations grow their reach with organized, aligned communications.

Holly talks with Kem about the importance of aligning your organization's communications to reach more people and ensure your message is clearly understood.

An organization has just asked you for a list of your references. This is great news if you already have a carefully constructed, up-to-date reference list ready to be sent. If you don’t, then there's no need to panic. While it's always best to have a reference list prepared before you begin your job search, here are four steps to take to help you get your reference list together.

Congratulations, you just got hired or promoted into a new leadership position! That’s the good news. The not-so-good news: you are now being asked to lead a team someone else built.

In our work as Search Consultants, we always look for culture fit to complement competency, character, and chemistry. Inevitably, these new leaders will be tasked with taking over an organization built by someone else with a team someone else hired. Few leaders will have the freedom to build their teams from scratch. You will likely have to start with the team you’ve inherited rather than the one you would have built yourself.

Here are six common mistakes leaders make when taking over someone else’s team.

On today’s Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, Holly Tate talks with Darryl Dash, church planter and pastor of Liberty Grace Church in Toronto, Canada.  

It's easy for many of us to feel stuck in our faith, to feel like we're going through the motions. Today, Holly talks with Darryl about his new book, How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to All of Life, and his suggestions for getting out of that rut and a practical, habit-based approach to spiritual growth.

While the benefits of establishing a mission and vision are clear, when you get into the routine of day-to-day operations, it is often easy to forget the purpose behind each task on your to-do list. Most churches establish a mission and vision from the beginning to communicate the purpose behind everything they set out to do. What if church leaders applied that same mentality to each project and task presented to their staff and team members?

Here are three ways clear communication on the purpose behind new projects and assignments can motivate your staff members and boost their productivity.

Unless you are like me, human resources is probably not something that excites you. It may not even be something you give much thought to, but it's a critical part of any well-functioning organization. Ideally, an HR professional acts as a liaison between an employer and the employees, advocating for both the best interest of the company and the employee.

Because of this unique combination, HR should be a vital part of any organization. In the early stages of an organization, having someone on your staff whose sole job is HR does not usually make much sense. However, as you grow, the need for an HR professional becomes greater. It may be difficult to decide when the right time is to create that position. A good time to start looking into creating an HR role is when you begin to realize your organization needs help in the following four areas:

On today’s Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, William Vanderbloemen talks with Dan Busby, president of ECFA, an organization that accredits Christ-centered ministries in the areas of governance, financial management and stewardship/fundraising.

William talks with Dan about the challenges church leaders face to maintain financial integrity – and how doing the right things for the right reasons financially starts at the top of any organization.

At Vanderbloemen, our week is often filled with stories about staff turnover within churches. Whether it’s an Executive Pastor talking about losing a ministry leader or a search committee member talking through the difficulties of getting a lead pastor search started, turnover happens. Many times, turnover is unavoidable. God calls each of us to one place at a time, which often means He will call us elsewhere eventually.

However, there is certain turnover that is avoidable, and we've found a few reoccurring themes. Many times these themes go unnoticed until a church has someone from the outside look into the problem. 

Here are the two biggest reasons why great staff may leave a church – and how to address these problems before it's too late.