If you did a deep dive into Ecclesiastes 3:1-10, you’d find King Solomon poetically communicating that life has favorable aspects and some not so favorable aspects. While life’s complexities can certainly pose challenges, he hints at an understated certainty: true meaning in life is only found when we invite God into life’s complexities.

To develop a healthy staff culture is to welcome complexity. Therefore, we’d be foolish to desire a robust staff culture and not give God free reign to shape it. Today, I want to offer a very practical way each member of your team can partner with God to accomplish this extremely valuable objective. Every staff member must embrace becoming a thermostat while resisting the temptation to become a thermometer. Let me explain.

To become a thermostat for your staff culture, encourage every staff member to intentionally embrace an active role in culture building.

Thermometer vs Thermostat

Thermometers are instruments that reflect the temperature of a room. They are passive and reactive. Thermostats, however, are instruments which set the temperature of a room. Thermostats are proactive.

To become a thermostat for your staff culture, every staff member must intentionally look for ways to actively enhance:

Culture building, not culture bystanding
Culture contributing, not culture crushing
Culture developing, not culture destroying
Culture owning, not culture onlooking
Culture producing, not culture participating

Reflect on these questions:

Are you serving the Lord out of the overflow of your personal walk with Jesus?
How are you intentionally adding value to other’s lives?
When you see problems/concerns, do you speak up?

Each of these questions is a personal invitation for you to become a thermostat which will bolster your staff culture.

Leadership Transformation

One of my heroes of the faith, the Apostle Paul, challenged the church in Rome to move from being thermometers to becoming thermostats in Romans 12:2 - “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The original Greek word used here for transform is where we get our English word metamorphosis – the process a caterpillar undergoes to develop into a butterfly. “Conform” refers to outward change only. “Transform,” however, speaks to inward change that results in outward change.

As you position yourself for the Spirit of the Living God to do His grand work in and through you at a personal level, your ability to become a thermostat will mirror the fascinating process of watching a brilliant butterfly emerge from a cocoon. The process is complex, as is all of life, but the end result is beauty to behold.

What will you actively & intentionally do TODAY to set the temperature of your church staff culture?

Malcolm Marshall is the Campus Pastor of Houston's First Baptist Church — Sienna. He has served as a youth pastor, outreach pastor, teacher, chaplain, and more. Malcolm preaches God's Word in churches, conferences, prisons, youth rallies, and through his music as the recording artist Excelsius. He is happily married to Stacey, and they have three children.

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