7 Characteristics of an Unhealthy Church Culture

I just started reading a book by Dr. Samuel Chand entitled, “Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code”.  I’m only two chapters in and the book is fascinating.  The purpose of the book is to help church leaders understand the importance of “Culture” and how to build a healthy organizational culture.  Chand begins by plotting a range of common church cultures on a five-point continuum:

Inspiring…Accepting…Stagnant…Discouraging…Toxic

Within each culture Chand identifies common characteristics of each and the impact they have on staff, volunteers, and leaders.  While Chand takes several pages to highlight these characteristics I think his findings can best be summed up in two categories:  Healthy and Unhealthy.  Based on Chands research and my own experience, I have selected seven characteristics from Chands writings that I believe most characterize an unhealthy church culture:

Seven Characteristics of an Un-healthy Church Culture:

1.     The staff isn’t valued - The leadership team sees staff members as production units, not people.  The staff members are valuable when-and only when-they produce.  All praise is based on performance, very little if any on character.

2.     The leader(s) won’t take responsibility - The leadership team often tries to remedy problems, but with the wrong analysis and the wrong solutions.  They seldom look in the mirror to find a culprit.  Instead, the blame is always put on “incompetent” or “unmotivated” people throughout the organization, but these are the only ones who are willing to stay employed there!  They may ask staff to attend seminars or bring consultants in from the outside, but they seldom listen to any outside input.

3.     Staff members are treated like children - The leadership team isn’t happy with the lack of enthusiasm and declining productivity, so they treat staff as if they were wayward teenagers.  They try anything to control them:  anger, pleading, threats, rewards, ignoring them micromanaging them…but nothing works.

4.     Staff members are not empowered - Individual rights and the dignity of staff members are surrendered to the powerful elite.  People are expected to do as they are told-nothing less and nothing else.  The organization’s leaders believe they “own” every employee.  They have exceptionally high expectations of workers, but they offer them little or no autonomy to make decisions.

5.     Staff members are motivated by fear - Fear becomes the dominating motivational factor of the organization, and those who choose to stay meekly comply-most of the time.  Many, though, are to afraid to leave.  They’ve noticed that when people even think about leaving, they’re severely criticized for being “disloyal”.

6.     The Leader(s) can’t take suggestions - As the benchmarks of success decline, the top leaders become more authoritarian and threatening.  They demand compliance and loyalty, and they defy anyone who disagrees with them or even offers another opinion.

7.     Good staff leave - These organizations run off good people, and they attract only the naïve or truly desperate.

If you haven’t read “Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code” I’d encourage you to pick it up, especially if you’re a church leader or staff member.  In my next post I’ll be highlighting the seven characteristics of a healthy church culture.