Tag Archives: lead pastor

The Long and Winding Road*

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With both apologies and gratitude to Sir Paul McCartney and his mates in the Beatles, the long and winding road is an apt description of the journey my family has been on for the past four years. What began as a somewhat uncertain yet anticipatory search for a Lead Pastor role melted into a desert meander through loss, death, grief, depression, questioning, doubting, and more. Yet milestone after faded milestone seemed to confirm two things: first, we were on the right path; and second, that path was leading to a pastoral role. Specifically where the path would lead was an unanswered question.

When God leads people on a journey, there’s always a purpose. Sometimes the purpose, or the path, or both, seems harsh, as with Jonah’s three days living as seafood or the ancient Israelites’ forty-year wilderness sojourn. Sometimes the purpose is simply to train, sometimes to discipline, sometimes to strengthen or transform. Sometimes God uses the journey to refresh and restore, as with Elijah after his battle-to-the-death with the prophets of Baal.

During our journey these past several years, God has been doing some hard work in my life, chiseling off rough edges, testing my commitment to his purpose, leading me from pride toward greater humility (a journey nowhere near complete). One of the most profound shifts I’ve seen in myself is a desire to love—really and simply love—whatever community he might call me to lead. That desire hasn’t always been there for me; so often, I’ve looked more at what I can change in a church than what I can love.

This weekend I stood before the congregation of a small, 150-year-old church in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. After my message (from Colossians 3:12-17), they were going to vote, as all good Baptists do, on whether it was God’s will for me to be their next pastor. With the ten new members being received that morning, the congregation stood at about 50 people – three-fourths of whom are over 65. I could count the children’s ministry on one hand…maybe with a finger to spare. The youth group was doubled in size by my daughter’s presence.

As we were getting ready for church that morning, my wife asked me what percentage I was looking for if we were to say yes to the church’s call. The number in my mind from the start had been 89%; I don’t know why, that’s just what came to my head and planted itself there. Eiley wondered if that was too high; What if it’s only 85%? Or 80?

The vote was overwhelming and humbling: unanimous! That is so unlike my past experience with churches, especially Baptist churches (my tribe). I have heard people say they always vote No just on principle! (I’m not sure what principle that is.) But this small body of hope-filled followers of Jesus is united in their desire to have me as their pastor and to lead them into the next phase of their life—of our life together.

And so, our journey takes a new turn. With a church called, ironically (and appropriately), The Journey. I wonder where this long and winding road will lead.

 

*Photo of Paul McCartney’s High Park Farm in Scotland copyright and owned by Stuart Brabbs. Licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Park_Farm._-_geograph.org.uk_-_434107.jpg

First Dates: Getting Churches and Pastors Together

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the-best-baby-name-bookIt was one of our first dates and we were at a bookstore and coffeehouse called Upstart Crow. I would ask her to marry me in this very place, but that question was still eighteen months off. Tonight, we were just having fun and starting to get to know each other. She was young and fun and romantic; I was a little older, more serious, and in love with love. And the only thing I remember about that evening was one book we looked at together: baby names.

Searching for a new lead pastor can bring about some of the same jitters as dating—for both the search team and the candidates. In both cases, two individuals want to get to know each other. What do they like? What are they like? What moves them? What scares them? How do they carry themselves in public and in private? Of course, these aren’t the questions we ask, they are the observations we try to make as we spend time together. But we need to ask questions, and the questions themselves can tell as much about us as the answers tell about the other person. Even the timing of certain questions can be revealing, just as looking at baby names on our first date revealed something about both my wife and me long before we were married.

One church I applied to asked every applicant to complete a ten-page questionnaire as the first step in the process. They asked for four separate philosophy statements, covering everything from leadership and administration to missions and evangelism. That felt like talking about not just baby names but parenting philosophies on a first date.

Another church I interviewed with handed me a list of thirty questions, from which they had selected six or eight to ask. Every one dealt with moral issues or specific scenarios—from “is gambling a sin?” to “what would you do if a homosexual couple walked into the church?” The questions on those pages told me everything I needed to know about my fit with that church.

There’s nothing wrong with a leadership team wanting to know about a candidate’s philosophy of leadership or how he would handle a moral issue, but I would suggest that they’re not the best first-date topics. So what questions, and types of questions, should we be asking, and when? I’ll suggest some specifics in a future post, but here are four areas to be considered:

  • Vision and Values. Some churches are clear about their vision and values, and expect a new pastor to lead toward those. Others want the pastor to come with a vision and help the church implement that. I don’t think one is better than the other, but this should be fairly clear early in the process, and discussed throughout.
  • Theology. Many churches ask applicants to indicate agreement with a doctrinal statement. Instead of looking for a yes or no, ask if there is anything in the statement that raises questions or concerns. The search committee, working with the church’s leadership team, should have an idea of what theological matters are critical—the die-for or divide-over issues—and where there is room for variation. The critical issues should be raised early on; the less-critical ones can be saved for later in the process, or maybe not even addressed at all.
  • Leadership. This comes down to two basic issues: Who leads? and How do you lead? The first is partly a question of structure and governance: is the church led by staff (i.e., the pastor), elders, deacons, a board of trustees, or the congregation? The second goes to the leadership style of the pastor; is he hands-on or hands-off? A micromanager? The first question may need to be addressed early in the process, while the second may be able to wait.
  • Personality. This can be at the same time both the easiest and the most difficult area to grasp…and is one of the most important. The easy ways to gain insight into a candidate’s personality involve a variety of assessments: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Clifton StrengthsFinder, and other profiling tools can give us common language. Yet there is so much variation within each personality type or strengths mix that only time and relationship can reveal whether a church and a candidate are a good fit.

My wife and I dated for a year and a half before I proposed. We were engaged another eighteen months before saying “I do.” What sustained us over those three years—and for the twenty-three that we’ve been married—was not our shared interest in children or what they would be named, but a mutual commitment to working through the daily challenges of merging two lives into one, and working together to toward a common goal, each growing and learning from each other. The relationship between a church and pastor is not altogether different.

What Level Change?

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Walking into the church for the first time, the pastoral candidate noticed something unusual on the bulletin board in the lobby. Where he might have expected to see announcements about upcoming events, new babies, or community needs, he instead found several invoices under the heading, “If you can pay one of these, please take it.” Clearly, something at the church needed to change if it was to survive, much less thrive as an outpost of the Kingdom of God.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are in the business of change. We look to Christ to transform our lives and we call others to be transformed by Him. But with a 2000-year history that’s as marred by sin as the lives of the people who comprise it, the Church—and individual churches—needs also to be transformed. The question is how, and how much?

The candidate walking into that lobby helped the church by identifying three levels of change:

  1. Minor adjustments. On the whole, we believe we are on the right path and doing well. We just need to tweak a few things to get over the next hump.
  2. Substantive changes. We are doing okay, but need to make some significant, substantive changes if we are going to move forward effectively. These may be in the areas of staffing, structure, systems, or priorities.
  3. Wholesale transformation. We are in trouble if we don’t make some major changes; we may die a slow death, we may implode, or we may simply continue our decline into ineffective mediocrity.

The church admitted that they needed wholesale transformation—and they called that pastor to help lead them in the process. A dozen years later when I came on the scene to serve alongside that pastor, I found one of the healthiest churches I have known, transforming lives, communities, and churches both locally and globally.

When a church is between pastors, one of the most important questions it needs to answer is, What level of change do we need? It’s not a question the search committee alone can answer, but the answer will shape their search; they need to identify candidates with the vision, passion, empathy, and energy to lead into and through the change.

Want to practice? Read the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3. Identify the level of change each might need, and some ways a pastor might need to lead each church through that change.