Staffing an equipping church is one of the most important issues faced by a lead pastor. To fail here, is to fail everywhere. So, let’s look at a few of key ingredients of staffing for equipping.

The only reason you need paid pastoral/program staff is for them to reproduce themselves by recruiting, equipping, deploying, and coaching the congregation into mission. The measurement of success then is how many people a year are actually in mission based on the staff person’s ministry? If they can’t equip, you don’t need them.

The only reason you need support staff is so that the pastoral/program staff have what they need to be the equippers of the congregation. The measurement of success for each support staff is how well they respond to the needs of the pastoral/program staff. If they don’t have a supportive attitude, you don’t need them.

All of the counseling, hospitals, shut-ins, program supervision and implementation should be done by equipped non-paid servants. They only thing any paid staff person does is equip unpaid people to do ministry.

An equipping church has to have a system in place for taking every member of the congregation from the market place to the mission field and every paid staff person, pastoral/program or support, need to know how to use it – and uses it.

The role of the lead pastor in a moving to an equipping church is to:

• Hire equipping leaders

• Remove the barriers to servant empowerment

• Develop an equipping cultureOne last note. I love the idea in the book Externally Focused Church. Why not consider hiring some of your best lay leaders to work ten hours a week recruiting, equipping, deploying, and coaching ten people each month into ministry and pay them $10,000 a year? I can’t think of a better way to implement the final stages of an equipping church.