Your daily catch-up on what matters in church leadership — Monday, July 13, 2026.

In today's episode:

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Ministry Week in Review — July 11, 2026

Ted Rhoades hosts this week's Saturday deep-dive on what mattered most in church leadership.

This week's coverage:

• Gloo Holdings' $438M Crisis — What it means for churches that built outreach infrastructure on faith-tech platforms. Read more
• Mark Dever Returns to the Pulpit — Six weeks after a near-fatal cardiac episode on Memorial Day, Dever was back at Capitol Hill Baptist with one line: "Apparently it's not." Read more
• Barna: Pastors Are Less Exhausted — But Less Fulfilled — Burnout is down from COVID-era highs, but vocational satisfaction has hit a decade-long low. Read more
• Dan Reiland: The #1 Blind Spot Stalling Your Ministry — "If you need people more than you feed people, you will soon be leading from empty." Read more
• Amiable Autocrats — Church Answers on why some of the nicest pastors are quietly exhausting to work for. Read more
• Serve Day 2026 — Bright Spot — 3,000 churches in 19 countries mobilizing today on the 25th anniversary of the Servolution movement. Read more

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Todd's daily podcast: The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

Today's episode covers three stories worth your attention:

• Gloo's $438M in cumulative losses — The faith-tech platform is attempting a stock sale to stay afloat. If your church uses Gloo for digital outreach, this is worth watching. Religion News Service
• The Amiable Autocrat — Church Answers names a leadership pattern quietly wrecking staff teams: the warm, well-liked pastor who leads almost entirely through positional authority. Church Answers
• Church Win: Cross Church, Fayetteville, AR — Arkansas's largest church graduated its first seminary class (fully funded by the congregation) inside a church where 1,000 college students show up on Wednesday nights. Baptist Press

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Also check out Todd's main show: The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

Today on Church Leadership Radar:

• Mark Dever back in the pulpit — Six weeks after a near-fatal cardiac event on Memorial Day, the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church returned to preach a full 45-minute sermon on July 5th — and turned the whole thing into gospel witness.
• Barna research on AI in churches — New data reveals how church leaders are using AI, but the real headline is what's missing: most churches have no formal AI policy in place.
• Thom Rainer on the staffing pipeline — Church Answers is naming what many leaders feel but can't articulate: the staffing pipeline is genuinely narrowing, with root causes that go deeper than job postings.
• Serve Day, July 11 — 3,000 churches across 19 countries celebrate the 25th anniversary of this movement by serving their communities.

Sources & Links:

• Capitol Hill Baptist Church — Mark Dever's return
• Barna Research — Church AI Usage Study
• Church Answers / Thom Rainer — Staffing Pipeline Episode
• Serve Day — July 11, 2026

🎙️ Hosted by Ted Rhoades (Todd's AI twin brother), in for Todd today.

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Wednesday's episode covers three stories worth your attention:

• Craig Hagin & Rhema Bible Church — Felony animal cruelty charges reduced to a misdemeanor after a plea. A reminder that leadership character extends beyond the platform.
• Dan Reiland on Leadership's #1 Blind Spot — "If you need people more than you feed people, you will soon be leading from empty." The drift from shepherd to approval-seeker is subtle — and worth catching early. danreiland.com
• Unstuck Group: The EP & Senior Pastor Relationship — New podcast series launching on the most high-leverage (and often most fraught) relationship in any church. theunstuckgroup.com

The Bright Spot: New Heaven New Earth Church in Washington D.C. showed up at Jones Point Park the morning after the Fourth of July with trash bags — 180 lbs of litter gone in two hours. That's the Church being the Church.

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Today on Church Leadership Radar: A hiring practice that may be filtering out your best candidates; the FIFA World Cup and a real pastoral question about allegiance; and why your congregation's AI anxiety is actually a pastoral care moment. Plus a bright spot on disability ministry — Hope Heals Camp and Joni and Friends doing beautiful, quiet work.

Stories Referenced:

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Healthy Church Staff Podcast: healthychurchstaff.com

Church leadership news and insights for Monday, July 6, 2026.

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It's America's 250th birthday, and Ted Rhoades is holding down the fort while Todd celebrates the Fourth with family. This Saturday edition covers the biggest stories in church leadership from the week — including a historic SBC vote, a striking counseling gap among pastors, a growing seminary debt crisis, and what it looks like to lead a patriotic worship service without crossing into nationalism.

Stories This Week:

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More from Todd Rhoades: Healthy Church Staff Podcast

Ted Rhoades sits in for Todd on this pre-holiday Friday edition. Three stories worth your attention:

• Leadership Integrity in Action: David Hyoo-ee, lead pastor of Guy-er Springs First Baptist Church in Little Rock, AR, voluntarily stepped down after his wife filed for divorce — before any board policy required it. A rare example of a leader choosing the mission over the chair.
• Operation Holy Rollers: Volusia County Sheriff's deputies in Florida arrested 25+ people in a drug and weapons operation allegedly run from property adjacent to Greater Harvest Ministries Church in Holly Hill, FL. A timely reminder for church leaders to know what's happening on and around their property.
• Summer Volunteer Retention: With July 4th kicking off summer, there's a practical resource with strategies to keep your volunteer base engaged when schedules get chaotic. Share it with your team leads today.

Good News: As America celebrated its 250th birthday, faith leaders gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to anchor the celebration in prayer — including Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

Today's Takeaway: Clarity about your own season and your own limitations is one of the hardest things in leadership to develop — and one of the most powerful.

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Today on Church Leadership Radar, Ted covers three key stories for church leaders:

• SBC Constitutional Amendment: The Southern Baptist Convention presses forward with an amendment restricting who can serve as pastor. Rick Warren sat down with Russell Moore to share the theological convictions behind his position. Whatever your church's polity, this moment will shape thousands of churches for decades.
• The False Urgency Epidemic: Church staff teams are operating in permanent fake-emergency mode — and people are burning out not because the work is too hard, but because everything has been labeled a crisis. A must-read for any leader who suspects their team is caught in this cycle.
• The 200 Attendance Barrier: A fresh piece on the ten most common reasons churches hit the 200 attendance ceiling and can't break through — with real diagnostics, not surface-level advice.

Good News: East End Baptist Church in Columbus, Mississippi took VBS into community spaces this summer. Week one: three people came to faith through Gospel conversations.

Key Takeaway: False urgency is a culture problem. Which means it's a leadership problem. Which means it's fixable. This week, name one thing on your team's plate that's been treated as urgent — and honestly ask whether it was.

🎙️ Hosted by Ted Rhoades, filling in for Todd Rhoades

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