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I wish we all could just get along.

But reality is that at some point every church needs to prune away workers, whether staff or volunteer. Your church’s teams are important. Ultimately, the effectiveness of your ministry rests on the shoulders of your workers. Your church cannot afford to keep the workers that do more harm than good. Unfortunately, firing someone is never a pleasant situation.

Hopefully, the next fifteen thoughts will help make it easier in case you do find yourself with the responsibility of pruning your workers.

Margaret Mitterling of Saddleback Church’s (Lake Forest, CA) student ministry offers the following four steps for firing a volunteer:

1. Be careful not to make assumptions. Protect yourself from making false assumptions about a volunteer before actually hearing their side of the story. If possible, have evaluations throughout the year.
2. Confront the problem immediately. Identify the problem and decide on a few possible solutions. Then, allow time for them to correct their behavior or for the circumstance to improve before actually “firing” the volunteer.
3. Suggest taking a “season off.” If the leader is continuing to struggle in his/her position and is unable to meet necessary expectations in their position, they may need to take a “season off.”
4. Ask the volunteer to step down. There are circumstances where the volunteer may be serving in the wrong position, at the wrong time, or they are not meeting expectations. Then, it is best to meet with the volunteer one-on-one and ask them to step down from their position.

Guy Kawasaki also offers advice on firing someone with the following eleven tips:

1. Consult impartial people. As soon as you have misgivings about a person, talk to one or two people who can give you an impartial appraisal of the situation.
2. Get professional advice. As soon as you begin the process of devising an action plan to prevent a firing or you think it’s necessary to fire a person, consult someone who understands employment law.
3. Search your soul. You should be able to articulate exactly what you think is going wrong. Could it be your fault?
4. Give people a second chance.
5. Document everything. Writing things down forces you to clarify your thoughts. When you read what you’ve written, it should be obvious that you’re doing the right thing.
6. Do it yourself. This isn’t something you can delegate or evade.
7. Be firm. Never go into a “final” conversation thinking that if it goes well, you might not fire the person. Decide and then implement.
8. Don’t be guilted into anything. A common request is to provide job references. Don’t promise anything like this because you’re feeling guilty.
9. Show people the door. The day you fire someone should be the last day that person is in the office.
10. Don’t disparage the victim.
11. Look in the mirror. Some of the “fault” probably belongs to you. It’s too late for the case at hand, but it’s not too late to prevent this from happening again, so take a good, long look in the mirror.