Avoiding Mad Church Disease

Last week, I wrote about Mad Church Disease – the website and book project by Anne Jackson. In that post, I wrote about my experience of working at Resurrection and hearing that there have been many changes in the way in regard to staffing over the past few years to avoid some of the symptoms of mad church disease.

I have heard that a good deal of this work has come from an initial survey from the Best Christian Workplaces Institute taken in 2004. The survey was taken by church staff again in 2007, and I had the opportunity to participate in this survey. There was a significant improvement over these years, that was made possible by intentional work of the executive team and Staff Parish Committee.

Clif at The Appian Way brought my attention to several articles about this process through this post – Best Christian Workplaces. Thanks, Clif! You can find links to the articles below:

• Strong people practices lead to healthy, growing churches – This article outlines several aspects of intentional changes made at Resurrection, including a comprehensive annual review process and hiring practices. This article also includes information from two other churches participating in the survey.
• CE Interview – This article is a one on one interview with Dan Entwistle, Managing Executive Director for Programs and Ministries at Resurrection. I found the interview to be instructive and insightful.

Bottom line, my hope is to always be the pastor at a church at which the congregation, volunteers and staff are thriving, active agents for change in the world who are living into the Kingdom of God.