“Over the course of their vocational lives, many pastors find themselves charged with leading a church staff.” Click here to read my article on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog that names the challenges and the opportunities of supervision, plus some questions to help you navigate this responsibility.

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I am hearing - across denominations, locations, and church sizes - that it is increasingly hard to find an interim pastor to lead congregations in between settled ministers. So what is a church to do? Click here to read my suggestions on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

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In its report “Twenty Years of Congregational Change,” Faith Communities Today reported in 2020 that 44% of all US congregations averaged 50 or fewer attendees each week, with another 25% falling into the 51-100 attendee category. I would not hesitate to hypothesize that the numbers of churches in these size ranges have grown in the past two years. What this means is that there likely is a growing number of churches led by part-time pastors.

This reality presents some challenges, of course. It is becoming harder for pastors - and particularly associate pastors - to find full-time congregational ministry positions. They might need to piece together multiple jobs in order to bring in the income they need to pay monthly bills and to chip away at student debt. They are harder pressed to secure benefits such as health insurance, which typically come only with full-time roles. (I’m happy to get on my soapbox about why insurance should not be tied to employment, but that’s a conversation for another time.) It can be complicated to align the work schedules of two or more jobs.

But even as the numbers trend toward smaller churches with reduced financial resources, there are some real opportunities here. I am privileged to know some pastors who are purposely and purposefully serving in part-time pastor roles. I have learned a lot from them about the beauty of multi-vocational work. (I highly recommend that you check out Rev. Rachel McDonald’s substack “My Other Job.” She has taught me a lot!) Here are some of the advantages to part-time pastorates:

Pastors’ identities are separated from their congregational ministry positions. In this season of discernment and pastoral turnover, I’m hearing an amplified version of a theme that has often run through coaching conversations: Who am I if I am not the leader of [insert name of church here]? Ministers’ sense of self easily becomes intertwined with their roles at particular points in time, making the thought of vocational change - even welcome change - an existential threat. Having more life outside of the congregational context helps pastors sort out who is the person and what is the role.

Churches and pastors can cultivate more intentionality around work and rest. When pastors are paid for twenty hours a week, both they and their congregations must think more about what is essential for the pastor to do - and not do. This practice can lead to more focus on mission and values rather than all the tasks that get lumped under “other duties as assigned.”

Pastors’ income is not wholly dependent on one source. This offers pastors freedom not just in a financial sense but also in allowing them to take more faithful risks in preaching and teaching. This gives them permission to offer the gentle challenge that can lead to significant spiritual growth.

Laypeople can discover and use gifts they never knew they had. When pastors lay down some responsibilities, that creates space for others to take them up. There are no doubt others in your church who can deliver a good word from the pulpit. Pastoral care can become congregational care. People can tap into their convictions and connections to initiate new ways for fellow members to serve. This is the priesthood of all believers at work!

Pastors’ relational networks expand. Many pastors lament that they don’t have time or energy to make friends or serve the community outside of their ministry role. With more time available, they can meet a whole new demographic of people at another job. They can have interests and hobbies that have nothing to do with church. They can establish friendships with peers who are not clergy. They don’t have to be The Pastor in every space.

Churches’ ministries are not as built around programming. A lot of churches are still solidly buying into the attractional model: if we have a great [children’s ministry, youth ministry, etc.], people will come. Maybe, if you’re a megachurch. But most people are looking for relationships, not one more thing to add to the calendar. Having a minister who doesn’t have work time to start and staff programs takes off this pressure to overschedule and properly reorients planning toward mission.

Pastors can flex different muscles. Related to several of the points above, pastors have made themselves (or allowed others to make them) one-dimensional. But God made us all much more complex and contradictory than that! When pastors are part-time, they can try new things or use skills that don’t get called upon in ministry. This faithfully un-flattens them.

I have a lot of hope for the Church and for its impact on the world in the coming years. I don’t think the future of the Church, though, lies necessarily in bringing in waves of new members and their wallets. The part-time trend will only grow, and it’s much better to be proactive in moving from full-time to part-time staffing structures than to hang on to old ways of leading and being until the coffers are depleted. If you want to read about how to make this shift well, I highly recommend G. Jeffrey MacDonald’s 2020 book Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy.

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Even as church life and ministry are challenging right now, I am very hopeful. One of the reasons is because I believe that all of the turnover in pastoral positions will lead to more congregations looking in different places for new kinds of leaders. I write about this phenomenon as an opportunity for congregations in the latest issue of CBF’s Fellowship Magazine. You can read the article by clicking here and navigating to page 24.

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Coaching is not just for individuals! Did you know that I also coach church staffs, teams of lay leaders, and entire congregations? Anytime there is a gap between where you (as an individual or as a collective) are and where you want to be, there is fertile soil for coaching. A coach approach to meeting benchmarks and overcoming challenges can provide structure, tools, and encouragement to groups as they strategize in ways that make sense in their context and utilize their specific gifts. Coaching also builds ownership of new insights and plans among coachees, because it does not result in a solution handed down by an outside “expert.” In coaching the people doing the work in a particular space are understood as the true experts, and they are the ones who map the way forward.

And guess what? This time of year tends to be one of the best seasons for coaching. Summer vacations are tapering off, so it’s easier for groups seeking coaching to meet consistently. Fall programming is mostly settled. There’s some breathing room in the liturgical calendar before Advent, when the focus (rightfully) shifts to the journey to Bethlehem.

Coaching doesn’t have to break your church’s budget, either. Now that we are all very familiar with video conferencing, you only need to plan for an hourly coaching rate. No longer do you have to worry about travel and other expenses that can add up quickly.

If you sense that your congregation (or some segment of it) needs the kind of nudge that coaching could provide, here are some areas in which I specialize:

Congregational self-study during pastoral transitions. In the time between settled pastors, it’s important to do this good work to undergird the search for a great-fit minister. Who is our church apart from the personality and passions of our former leader?

Figuring out church after(ish) Covid-19. In pre-post-pandemic, many questions remain in order not just to do church but to be church. What is our role in the world after a big shift in people’s priorities and ways of life? How do we rebuild relationships and establish new ones both within our congregation and in the larger community based on what we’ve learned about ourselves and our neighbors over the past couple of years?

Setting new touchstones and metrics. The pandemic shook many markers loose. What is it that is consistently grounding for and true about our congregation? What are helpful benchmarks that let us know our impact in partnership with God?

Visioning and discerning next steps. We might only see half-steps forward right now, but we can figure out how to recognize them. How do we listen for invitations from God? How do we engage in a continuous cycle of experimentation, assessment, and learning in a way that brings excitement and delight instead of a sense of failure and shame?

Pastor searches. Teams of laypeople (appropriately) have a lot of questions about how to find someone for a role they themselves have never held. What do we need a pastor to do? Where do we look for people who can do these things? How do we invite candidates to consider our ministry opportunity out of a spirit of welcome and generosity?

I would love the chance to talk with you about any of these congregational coaching possibilities, as well as potential coaching topics that are not mentioned above. Please schedule a free exploratory call here. If you don’t see a time that works for you, contact me so that we can figure out a window that will.

Hopefully we are now nearing the end of Covid-19 as a defining reality of our lives. The effects of the pandemic are likely to be long lasting, though. Finances (personal and institutional), politics (since Covid became such a wedge issue), and relationships (deepening or stretching, sometimes to the breaking point) are a few of the areas in which we will all continue to deal with fallout.

In my work I talk with a lot of clergy who are having a crisis of vocation either brought on or amplified by the pandemic. But I’m noticing that in general the repercussions vary according to when each pastor entered the system:

Those who were already contemplating retirement or a change in contexts. These pastors tried to hang on for a bit to get their congregations through the pandemic. When it became clear that the end of Covid was not imminent, many (understandably) decided to make their exits rather than persist under the stress of pastoring during a pandemic.

Those who were serving in their context for more than a year pre-Covid. These pastors got a full cycle of firsts under their belts before the pandemic arrived and put everything familiar in disarray. They had had some time to understand their contexts, build trust, and inhabit the role of leader. (They also had had enough exposure that they had begun to develop detractors, as happens in any pastorate.)

Those who had served less than a year but had at least led during a major liturgical season (e.g., Advent) pre-Covid. Going through major observances and signature events together often serves to bond pastor and people in mutual ministry. The relationships were still new and fragile, though.

Those who started their roles in January, February, or early March 2020. Many of these pastors are really struggling. They started a position and didn’t even get their feet underneath them before the floor dropped out. With varying degrees of success they have cobbled together their understanding of congregational culture and their ever-altering place in it.

Those who changed churches mid-pandemic. Some of these leaders are only just now getting to know their people in person after lots of time together online. They had to try to build relationships in less traditional ways, and sometimes they had to launch experiments and make decisions without all of the information that in-person community offers.

Those who are coming into new-to-them churches in this pre-post-Covid time. The Covid fog seems to be clearing, and now a new phase of the work begins. Pastors in new-to-them churches are, then, jumping into big questions without the benefit of the honeymoon period that many ministers enjoyed in The Before. How do we right-size our infrastructure? Are these people we haven’t seen in a long time gone for good? Do we keep up hybrid worship or switch back to fully in-person? What will the polarization of the last election and the partisanship around Covid mean for relationships among church members? What work around anti-racism is more possible and pressing now that we have physically re-gathered?

I make these distinctions to highlight that the pandemic has been challenging to all pastors (and all people!) and that there are nuances to the issues. I hope that lining out the obstacles to thriving for each group helps leaders locate themselves and begin to see why varying aspects of Covid have been harder or easier depending on each pastor’s level of rootedness in the context. Naming the barriers is the first step toward strategizing ways to minimize or maneuver around them.

A note to congregations: not every pastor is in vocational crisis. Some are even thriving. But all are attending to the challenges that the pandemic has presented to them as clergy and as humans. Please keep this in mind when your hopes for your church or your expectations for your minister’s leadership do not align with what is unfolding.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

Yes, your church will want to speed up the search process to put an end to the discomfort and uncertainty of not having a settled pastor. Over at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog, though, I share what gifts of a search your congregation will miss if you hit the fast forward button. Click here to read the article.

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Let’s be clear, I am not urging anyone to quit! The question of how to resign well comes up often, though, for my coachees and in clergy groups. Thoughtfulness around your announcement will make your remaining time in your current context more pleasant. It will also allow you to be a leader as much through your leaving as through your pastoring up until this point. Here are some commonly asked questions about submitting a resignation, along with my responses:

Whom do I tell first? Before there’s a congregation-wide announcement, a departing pastor will typically want to tell a few individuals in the church. Most obvious is the person or group to whom you are primarily responsible, such as a personnel committee. If you are not the lead pastor, your supervisor will also need to know. And there might be others who get a heads-up, such as people in your church who have served as references, other staff or lay leaders with whom you’ve worked closely, the chair of the search committee that called you, or the chair of your congregation’s governing board. (Don’t neglect to inform your judicatory leader as well, if that person has not been involved with your search.) Keep in mind that there might be some people who don’t need to know your news before a congregational announcement but who will merit one-on-one conversation afterward, such as church members to whom you’ve become close.

When do I start telling people? Remember that if you are going to another congregation, the folks there will be excited about you. They will start spreading the word as soon as your call is official (and sometimes before, despite requests to the contrary). The people in your current context need to hear your news from you, so cue up conversations or communications so that you’re ready when the call is finalized.

What do I say? This is hard. You’re moving on for a reason, yet you’ve put a lot into this church you’re leaving and the people there. Here’s an outline that can help scaffold your announcement.

• Acknowledge bittersweet nature of news you’re about to share (e.g., “It is with mixed emotions that I tell you…”).

• Tell where you’re going and what your role will be (if applicable).

• Name your last Sunday and last day in the office.

• Give a brief explanation about why you’re leaving (e.g., “I wasn’t looking, but the Holy Spirit nudged…” or “Because of changes to my/our situation, I’ve/we’ve felt the need to…” or “Because of all the ways you have encouraged me and helped me grow in ministry, I now feel ready to…”).

• Identify a couple of things you are grateful for about your current congregation.

• Explain how you are working with others to make sure gaps are addressed in your absence.

• Share how you’ll be spending your remaining time (e.g., “I will be prioritizing…” or “I will be in and out as I try to sort out details here as well as in my new home, but I will be paying attention to [tasks] over the next [time until leaving].”).

What should I expect after my announcement? Well, you and others will feel all the feels. (Read more about this here.) Also, you might feel a frantic energy to tie up every loose end or an utter lack of motivation to get things done. If the former, decide what is most important (hint: it will probably be relationships) and lean into it, knowing you will not get everything done and giving yourself grace for that. If the latter, make sure you have at least transferred passwords and knowledge that lives only in your head to someone else or to a document that your successor can access and offered some sort of opportunity for closure with you.

Giving people news they don’t expect and don’t want is always hard. Plan for self-care afterward and through your remaining time. And if you need help leaving well where you are and starting well where you’re going, contact me or schedule a call to find out how I can coach you through those two important periods of your ministry.

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Here’s something that most ministers don’t know until they experience it: leaving a church is HARD WORK. Yes, there are all the hours spent compiling your materials, researching congregations and communities, interviewing for a new position, and being evasive about where you were when you preached in view of a call. Yes, there’s the energy directed to putting what’s only in your head down on paper and straightening your office for the next occupant. But what I’m really talking about is the emotional component of leaving. No one warns you about all the feels you might encounter.

You might feel guilty. Every congregant has a different reaction to a pastor’s departure. And many of your congregants, particularly the ones you know best or have worked most closely with, might project those feelings onto you. The spoken or unspoken messages could include “What did we do wrong?” and “How could you do this to us?” and “What will we do without you?” This anxiety is normal, and your people will be ok. They are experiencing a loss, and they need time to grieve.

You might feel relieved. All those aspects of your job that you liked least? (We all have them.) There’s now an end in sight for them, at least in this context.

You might feel ready to go. Once you have turned your face toward your next call, it is really hard to stay engaged in the last weeks of your current one. You are excited about what is ahead, and there are a million details unrelated to your old position to address.

You will feel exhausted. As I said, leaving is hard work. That’s partly because of the scramble to wrap up loose ends, but it’s primarily because of the feelings mentioned above.

You might feel grateful. Depending on the circumstances of your departure, your appreciation for the church you’re leaving might be muted or delayed. But you have no doubt learned valuable lessons and developed relationships that have formed or encouraged you. That’s worth celebrating at some point.

Oof. That’s a lot, and it’s important to give yourself space to deal with all the emotions. As you do, it’s ok if not every detail makes it into the cloud for your successor. It’s ok if you leave work early to run or take a nap. It’s ok to feel what you feel, whatever that is. More than anything else, it’s important to focus on people as you wrap up your time - including yourself, because you are a people too - because that’s what those you’re leaving behind will remember most.

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When leaders in the church need to gather information from congregants, often the first inclination is to distribute a survey. It seems like a quick and easy way to take a church’s pulse and make needed decisions.

That might - or might not - be true. Here are the situations when a survey could be helpful:

When you need to gather hard data. If you need to gather member information (e.g., length of membership, distance members drive to the church) or assess interest in certain volunteer ministry roles, a survey could be the ticket.

When you’re laying the groundwork for further conversation. A survey could give a good indication of which issues need to be addressed in live interaction. For example, “what are the biggest questions you have about our church’s future?”

When you’re asking about gifts or needs. What needs in our larger community bear addressing? What are the strengths of our church? These kinds of questions broaden discussion in helpful ways.

On the other hand, there are times when surveys should be avoided:

When the topic is nuanced or conflictual. These issues absolutely must be addressed via conversations. The anonymity of surveys opens the door to hurtful and unhelpful words (e.g., “our church will never grow until we have better leadership” or “the preacher needs to stop using a manuscript”), and people must have the give-and-take of dialogue to get on the same page on topics that might be (or become) confusing.

When you are asking about personal preferences. This sets up the expectation that those (often diverging or conflicting) desires will be met. Asking about what qualities each member wants in a pastor or what they do/don’t like about worship are particularly big landmines.

When the survey is the conversation, not a prelude to one. Rarely is a survey a one-step solution. The only time this might be the case is when you are gathering hard data (see above) that is clear in its interpretation and application.

When your area of inquiry is wide-ranging. Not only will long surveys not be completed, the ones that are returned will give you so much information that it will take a lot of time and energy to interpret.

Surveys might seem like the simplest way forward, but they can complicate a decision or process in a hurry if not designed and used well.

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“The pastor search team will meet this Thursday…”

Normally I have a pretty good poker face. In this case, though, I nearly wrenched my neck swiveling it so fast from my notes on the pulpit toward the layperson making this announcement from the choir loft. The congregation’s previous minister had exited a mere five days prior, and a search team for his settled replacement was already up and running. (I won’t leave you in suspense about how this story ends. The church called a pastor who was almost the polar opposite of his embattled predecessor. He served for 3.5 years, then was asked to leave. This sequence of events fit neatly into a long-running, unexamined pattern in the congregation.)

When a pastor departs, a church’s inclination is to ask how quickly they can locate a replacement. That is totally understandable. When we experience change - whether positive or negative - there is discomfort. We want to return to equilibrium as quickly as possible. But the time between pastors is bursting with opportunities that are largely unavailable during more settled periods. Here are a few:

• Healing from conflict or grief associated with the previous pastor (or pastors, if there are still open wounds from situations with the most recent pastor’s predecessors)

• Remembering or discovering anew who the church is apart from the personality of a charismatic or long-tenured pastor

• Assessing the congregation’s purpose, gifts, and needs in a new season of ministry and a world changed by Covid

• Right-sizing or reconfiguring staff to meet those needs

• Inviting other staff or lay leaders to exercise or develop talents they haven’t previously

• Leaning more intentionally into potentially transformational practices as part of the pastor search

• Connecting or reconnecting with partners or resources that could inform the pastor search, and more broadly, the church’s ministry

• Receiving and mulling pastoral candidates’ thoughtful questions about the church’s nature and hopes

• Creating or shoring up procedures that improve communication and strengthen trust

• Considering how to welcome the new pastor in ways that develop mutual care quickly

All of this is the holy work of the transition time. It sets up not just your new pastor but your church as a whole to live even more faithfully into God’s invitations. And your congregation doesn’t need to fear taking the time needed to harness all these opportunities, because while you might want an interim pastor to keep things moving and to help you reflect on the points above, the congregation - not a pastor - is the church.

So please, do not form your pastor search team the moment your departing pastor steps over the threshold for the last time. Breathe deeply. Trust God. Open your hearts and minds to the opportunities. You will be so glad that you did.

If your pastor search team needs assistance with making the most of the transition, contact me about search team coaching or check out this self-paced e-course.

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Pastor search teams are made up of capable people who know their church well and are invested in its future. That said, there is a steep learning curve for most search team members. They have never been involved in the search for a clergyperson. They might or might not have received training and guidance from their judicatory. They do not have the full picture of what a minister’s day-to-day schedule looks like. They have little to no human resources experience, and the experience they have may not serve a calling (vs. a hiring) culture well.

Pastoral candidates, then, have the opportunity and responsibility to provide guidance to search teams in the ways that they show up in interactions. This teaching falls into two buckets.

Assisting with process

• Search teams might not always know the order or range of tasks or the people that should or should not be involved in aspects of the search process. They might want to rush ahead before it’s advisable, be quick to express their desire for you to be the new pastor without getting consensus within the team or considering that you might be the “first” of a particular demographic (thus meriting more conversation with you and with the congregation), or make compensation promises before consulting the finance or personnel committees. You can help the search team slow its roll and think more carefully about the pieces of a healthy process and the purposes behind them. For example, you could ask about what exposure the church has had to a woman in the pulpit and the resulting reactions or who all might need to be involved in certain decisions for the search team to feel confident about them.

• Search teams are often laser-focused on their goal of calling a pastor, and they might not have taken the time to consider the opportunities and big picture questions that a pastoral transition prompts. Your queries might stump the search team, and you could wonder aloud what it would take for the search team to formulate the answers.

• Search teams sometimes neglect to ground the search process spiritually. The search process is long, the congregation is anxious, and the responsibility is heavy, so the team wants to cull as much “soft” work as possible. (I contend that spiritual grounding is not in any way soft or extra but the heart of the matter.) You could offer to pray for the search team and its discernment at the end of an interview, if no one else indicates a desire to close in prayer. You could also ask how their involvement in the search process has impacted their discipleship.

• Clarity and thorough communication (among the team, with the congregation, with the candidates, and with the judicatory) are often the biggest challenges for search teams. You can encourage both through questions such as, “What is the tentative timeline for your process moving forward?” “How are you bringing the congregation along as you do the good work of the search?” “Whom should I contact and by what means if I have questions about the search process?”

• Once a search team and church as a whole become excited about your arrival, they will want you in the church office tomorrow. You can lead by sharing the importance of saying goodbye to your current context well and having a bit of space between calls - that you want to show up in your new congregation on day one having done the emotional work and the rest that will allow you to focus fully on this new season of ministry. And, of course, you’re certain the calling church will want to celebrate well the good work of the interim minister. All of this intentionality honors important relationships and models healthy ones.

Becoming the pastor

• Simply the way that you enter a space says something about how you will be as a pastor. This is not about charisma, though. It’s about attentiveness and engagement. Think about how you want to show up in your interviews and what would make that possible so that the search team can begin to imagine what it would look, sound, and feel like to have you as a pastor.

• Stating your needs and setting healthy boundaries begin during the search process. For example, you might need to help a search team design an in-person visit that leaves space for downtime, nursing, and/or exploring the community on your own: “I am so excited to be with you and to see your church and your city! I want to be at my best when we are together. I will need transition time between events so that I can rest and process my experiences.”

• You will never be in a better position to share with your prospective new church what you require in terms of compensation. Be prepared to help the search team (and possibly other committees such as finance and personnel) think through the various pieces of pastoral compensation, particularly as they relate to your experience and the local cost of living. Urge them not to lump everything together (e.g., salary, insurance, retirement), because that obscures and often lowballs what your actual pay for the ministry being done is. You are teaching the value of the pastoral office, establishing your self-advocacy, and showing your attention to detail.

• Entering a new call is not like showing up to the first day of a secular job. You are assuming a position, yes, but also joining a faith community. You also might or might not be bringing family into that faith community with you. All of this merits more than a passing welcome on the church’s part. You might have to share explicitly with the search team and congregation what hospitality looks like to you. Is it helping with the move (or not)? Are there connections the church can help make regarding a spouse’s employment? What would help kids feel cared for? These invitational aspects come naturally to some congregations but not to others. It’s good and right for you to be clear about what you need so that you can engage deeply and meaningfully with your new congregation.

In short, remain curious and open and ask for what you need. This stance will get the pastor-parish relationship off to a solid start, paving the way for your mutual ministry. But beyond that, it will seed a way of thinking in the congregation that can bear fruit in future processes, pastor search and otherwise.

Photo by Paul Green on Unsplash.

Pastoral turnover is happening, and more is to come. Part of this is due to normal cycling in the mutual ministries of clergy and congregations. Much is related to the stresses ministers experienced during the pandemic, when they were called upon to take on more responsibility (and sometimes authority) than ever before, often with less support. These shifts created fissures or widened pre-existing ones in ways that now seem difficult to bridge as Covid continues, particularly in pastors’ exhausted states.

Whatever the cause, if churches and their leaders are parting ways, it is essential to conduct an exit interview. This kind of meeting offers the pastor closure and provides the church a wealth of insight that it can use for discernment during the transition between settled leaders.

Here are some considerations when planning a fruitful exit interview:

Framing

It’s important that the leadership group setting up the exit interview sees the departing pastor's insight as a gift, a way to get a head start on the church's self-assessment work in the interim time. Pastors can view their full participation as one of their final acts of care and leadership for the congregation. This mutual understanding sets the table for a productive, even if at times difficult, conversation.

Timing

Set aside ample space in the last couple of weeks of the pastor’s tenure. If the exit interview is too early, the minister might not feel comfortable being completely forthcoming, and if it is after the pastor departs, she might not have the same level of investment in giving complete answers.

Parties involved

Typically exit interviews are conducted by the personnel committee or other leadership team to whom the pastor goes to ask questions or express concerns about how the mutual ministry is functioning. You might consider inviting a third party to facilitate this conversation, particularly if you think the conversation might become contentious. Judicatory leaders, pastors of nearby churches, coaches, or consultants could fill this role.

Clarity about confidentiality

All participants in the exit interview should decide together how the information gleaned can be used. Who can take notes, and where will they be stored? What pieces can be shared, and with whom? Gaining agreement in these matters builds trust in the process, making it more likely that the church will glean useful knowledge.

Questions to ask the pastor

• What were your hopes when you started your ministry here? In what ways were they realized? What made that possible? In what ways were your hopes not realized? What were the contributing factors?

• How would you describe the initial welcome our church offered you (and your family, if applicable)? How did that welcome affect your ability to minister alongside us?

• What goals did you set for your leadership during your time here? What made living into them more or less possible?

• How would you describe the support and encouragement you received from our church for your leadership? For you personally? What was the impact?

• Where do you see untapped potential for our congregation? What do you think is the biggest barrier to living into that potential?

• What do we need to celebrate about our ministry together? For what do we need to forgive on another? In what ways might we go about both?

• What has been left hanging in your ministry that we need to attend to in your absence?

• What else is it important that we name in this space?

After the exit interview is over, the church must not simply stick the fruits of it in a drawer or argue with what was said. Instead, ask, “What does it say about us, in delightful or challenging ways, that our pastor feels this way?” This is a solid step toward transitioning to a new season of leadership with hospitality, direction, and faithfulness.

Photo by Michael Jasmund on Unsplash.

[Note: This article was originally published in the July 2021 issue of Christian Coaching Magazine. It is republished here by permission.]

Confessions of a clergyperson: I love the church. I love ministry. I love working with lay leaders. And - I have banged my head on tables so many times during pastor searches that I have a permanent bruise on my forehead.

This action born of frustration and the resulting injury might be metaphorical, but they are also very real. I have either participated in or resourced a number of pastor searches as a search team member, candidate for the position, coach (to the search team or the candidate), and interim pastor, and the common thread through all of them is the anxiety pulsing through the searching church and its representatives.

Rarely are people at their best – their most faithful – when anxious. In the case of pastor searches, panicky churches ask questions that don’t give them the most helpful information or that are off-putting to candidates. They act on personal preferences rather than tuning into subtle nudges from God. They make decisions that are hasty or based on the wrong criteria. They fail to see their candidates as people who are also discerning a big decision and making life changes that are about family and faith community and calling as well as a paycheck.

Add to that the reality that very few pastor search team members have experience hiring an employee (much less calling a pastor, which has some significant differences from your standard human resources procedures), and there are any number of points at which the search process can go off the rails.

These are expensive mistakes, and not just in financial terms. Churches that have to search again shortly because of a poor fit are left spinning their wheels instead of sharing the love of Christ and making big impacts in their communities. Discouragement and distrust in processes set in. Power vacuums are created and filled, often by those who shouldn’t. Pastor carcasses begin to pile up outside the sanctuary door.

Even so, I believe that church members are best situated to find their next leader. They know their congregation, its history and culture. They are deeply invested in its future. They want to do this good, hard search work well. And they absolutely can – with the right resources.

About five years ago I applied for a grant from the Louisville Institute so that I could devote significant time to putting together some kind of toolkit for pastor search teams. I wanted to help them navigate their anxiety so they could harness the opportunity that comes with a leadership transition, that time when a church is most free to assess its direction and needs because it is unattached to a pastor’s personality and vision.

A how-to guide wouldn’t cut it, because each congregation is different. And, as any coach knows, simply telling people what to do cheats them of owning the work and its rewards. What emerged from my eighteen months of research and development, then, was a framework for coaching pastor search teams, a set of handholds by which pastor search teams could feel their way toward calling a great-fit leader.

Searching for the Called is divided into five major stages, with substages in each:

• Pre-search

• Developing the search team

• Designing process and core documents

• Engaging with candidates

• Covenanting with the new pastor

Within every substage search teams can find:

The goal of that stage. This is the big-picture view of what a pastor search team is trying to accomplish and how that work fits into the longer arc of the search as a whole. This framing helps a search team understand why it’s important not to skip ahead in the process. The primary coaching questions here are, “What will the impact be if you complete this stage well? What might happen on down the line if you don’t take the time you need?”

An outline of essential tasks. These to-dos are the foci of each substage. Without checking off each, a search team knows it is not ready to move on to other tasks. Here I ask, “How will completing these to-dos help you meet the goal of this stage of the search?”  

Key questions. These reflection prompts contain coaching questions and allow pastor search teams to customize the goals and tasks of the substage to their particular contexts.

Best practices. Giving search teams a picture of what it looks like to complete the essential tasks well allows me to ask, “What would it look like for your church, with its gifts and challenges, to embody this best practice?”

Tools for carrying out the essential tasks. Here I have developed some resources that pastor search teams to use on their own to do such things as facilitate congregational discussion, ask great interview questions, and put together a fair compensation package. Coaching questions around these tools could include, “How might you use these resources in a helpful way? What do you need that you don’t find in this toolkit, and where might you locate it?”

Candidate perspective. This aspect of the framework is critical. We all have a limited ability to walk in another person’s shoes, but a search team’s willingness to try to understand what their candidates are experiencing allows them to carry out their search process in the most compassionate way possible. Here I ask, “If your candidates are feeling this way, what does that mean for the way you interact with them?”

An assessment so that the search team knows whether it’s ready to move to the next stage. This checklist provides a bookend to the goal and essential tasks of each substage: Here’s what we were trying to do. Did we do it? If not, I can ask, “What’s left hanging before you can move forward? What will it take to complete it?”

Deep dive resources for those who want to know more. Sometimes there is a member of a pastor search team who gets very energized by an aspect of the search process, so I offer books and articles by which that person can learn more.

The word that kept bubbling up for me as I read books and interviewed ministers, judicatory leaders, and search team members in building this framework was “hospitality.” I felt a clear imperative to create a process and coaching around it that warmly welcomes the voices of pastor search team members, the congregation as a whole, the larger community, candidates, and the Holy Spirit. As a result, every aspect of Searching for the Called is geared toward developing relationships, with the hope that pastor search teams will both bless and be blessed by their work.

What I like about using this framework in coaching is that it gives pastor search teams confidence – the counter to anxiety – that they can carry out the important job their churches have commissioned them for as they tailor the process to the specific needs of their congregations. Many search teams emerge from this framework coaching experience not only having called a great-fit pastor but also having developed deeper trust with one another; greater understanding of themselves, their churches, and the ingredients to a healthy process; and a renewed sense of God’s work in, around, and through them. (With regards to this last benefit, the most meaningful feedback I’ve gotten on coaching around Searching for the Called is that it “feels like church.”) The effects can ripple out even beyond single congregations, as candidates who are released from hospitality-rooted search processes feel valued and affirmed in their ministries in ways that positively impact the churches they end up serving.

When individual or team coaching clients are embroiled in change, a service we can provide is not just our coaching skill but also clarity about how they can get where they want (and avoid where they don’t want)to go. A framework like Searching for the Called can do just this, letting prospective search team coachees know that I as coach have an understanding of what they’re trying to do and what they need in order to do it. This builds their trust in our work together even before our first conversation, making it more likely that clients will take a courageous leap toward a hope-filled new normal and saving us all from indenting hard surfaces with the shapes of our skulls.

Schedule a free discovery call here if you’d like to talk about pastor search team coaching. (If there are no available times that work for your search team, email me to coordinate a day and time.) Alternatively, your search team can enroll in the Searching for the Called online course for guidance with your search.

For ministers in the search & call process, there are times when you look at a prospective church’s profile or job description and think, “Can this search team see inside my brain?” The responsibilities align with your gifts, the congregation professes values similar to yours, and the salary range is exactly what you’re looking for. When the search team representative contacts you to set up an interview, it’s the start of an exciting possibility.

You will likely not feel so clear or enthusiastic about every initial interaction with a search team. This is normal! If it’s obvious that this is not the role or place for you, graciously withdraw from consideration. After all, your focus is better spent elsewhere, and search teams are made up of volunteers who are giving a lot of time and energy to looking for a leader. If, on the other hand, you are intrigued by what you read or hear but have a lot of questions, or if the position or context sounds great but seems like a stretch for your experience, don’t prematurely end the conversation. The Holy Spirit might be up to something.

That something might not turn out to be a great fit. But a search is about more than a minister finding a job and a congregation finding its next pastor. When you talk with search teams, you are changed - hopefully most often in positive ways. You meet new people who might end up playing a surprising role in your journey. You receive feedback that helps you grow. You practice showing up as a pastor in interviews.

Search teams are shaped as well by their interactions with you. It could be that you nudge the search team to make its process more hospitable, both for yourself and for others. Perhaps you ask a question that pushes the search team to face a reality or that challenges them to think bigger or that sends them back to the congregation for more discussion about identity or direction. Maybe your very presence, particularly as a “first” of some sort, cracks the door wider for someone else to serve this church on down the line. You might never know the results of your interactions with congregations that don’t immediately jump out as your dream scenario. This willingness to engage, though, is part of what it means not just to be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses but to be part of that community of the faithful across time.

So yes, absolutely look for that best fit and negotiate for what you are worth. And, along the way, remember that you are in ministry to churches through the way that you search, not just in the position to which you are ultimately called.

Photo by Ana Municio on Unsplash.

Over the past several months I’ve seen a big uptick in inquiries about congregational coaching. Usually these requests stem from a pastor or lay leader knowing that something is changing or needs to change but not knowing how to go about making that transition as positively as possible.

I can help with that. In congregational coaching I work with leadership teams or entire churches on moving forward with faithfulness and curiosity. This work begins with listening for a congregation’s gifts, circumstances, and yearnings. Based on what I hear, I design the parameters, process, and prompts for congregations to have fruitful conversations among their members and with God. While I carry over some tools from one church to the next, I largely start my approach from scratch because I believe each church’s story is one of a kind.

Here are some of the coaching conversations that I have had recently or are in process:

• Creating structure for a congregation to rebuild trust and imagine its way forward as a result of renewed relationships.

• Rediscovering purpose as a church after years of neglecting or eliminating needed procedures and in the aftermath of major damage to the physical plant.

• Helping a newly-called pastor and church begin their journey together with expectations and boundaries that lay a good foundation for mutual ministry.

• Searching for a new pastor, with complicating factors overlaid on the search process.

• Designing a new pastoral staffing model that better meets current and future needs.

• Making difficult decisions about church buildings and land and the accompanying debt in ways that contribute to identity and mission.

• Identifying how best to regather after lockdown, using this transition to ease into bigger-picture discernment.

I can coach your congregation through transitions like these, encouraging you and broadening your sense of what you’re capable of and what God might be inviting you to consider along the way. These coaching conversations take place by Zoom, making them easier for your leaders to schedule and lowering the cost of processes that can have a big impact on your church.

Is your congregation facing a change with a bit of uncertainty and trepidation? Let’s talk.

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash.

Back in the fall I predicted that a tidal wave of pastoral departures awaited near the end of the pandemic. I stand by that assertion, particularly now that:

1. This might be the hardest stretch of the Covid-19 crisis for clergy.

2. It is becoming more possible for searching churches to host on-site visits for pastoral candidates, meaning search activity is picking up.

3. Ministers are starting to accompany their congregations beyond the most restrictive distancing practices, a milepost many had set for themselves before searching for a new call.

4. Clergy could potentially have in-person closure with the churches they are departing, which is important to many.

If you are a pastor who is searching or whose search is imminent, please do not settle. There will be - and already is, in many denominations - so much turnover. Instead,

• Cast a wide net. After a year of staying at home and doing things differently, you probably have developed some new self-awareness. It could be about the shape of your ministry, the kind of place you want to live, your values, or your gifts. Permit yourself to take all of these factors into account as you search.

• Apply for positions that seem like stretches to you. The worst a search team can do is say no, which feels terrible but also broadens your network and provides you with more information for discernment. And what might have been a reach for you in a tighter job market might not be now, particularly since you have lots of examples of how you lead well even in crisis.

• Name your non-negotiables and stick to them. This might be about compensation or days off, but it might not. Maybe you’ve developed a new ministry passion or skill this past year that you want to have space to continue building on. Maybe you want to push for more meetings via Zoom than in person for reasons that are helpful to you or others.

• Take your time. Haven’t found the right fit yet? More and more positions are opening up all the time.

• Ask for what you need and for what you’re worth. Yes, it’s important to pay attention to how Covid-19 has impacted a church’s finances and raised questions about long-term sustainability. But with so many congregations searching, now is not the time to undervalue your worth.

• Ensure everyone is on the same page regarding expectations. The church is (or at least needs to be) different post-pandemic. Find out what identity, mission, and leadership pieces the congregation you’re considering has and hasn’t already worked through. Talk with the search team about what covenanting with and educating the congregation about the shape of your role could look like.

In short, take heart and be bold. May your search be a process of embracing who God has made you to be and discovering where you can flourish.

Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash.

[Note: interim pastors, settled pastors planning to transition out, and judicatory leaders, please share this post with your churches.]

You’ve been selected to serve on your church’s search team for a new pastor. This is an exciting task! You will be part of a process that will deeply impact your congregation’s ministry for years to come. Pastor searches are daunting for that very same reason, along with the time commitment required to do the search work well. If you are feeling a swirl of emotions about being named to the pastor search team, that is completely normal.

After your initial reactions, your next concerns might be about how to carry out the work of the search. Most members of pastor search teams have never served in this capacity before and have no background in hiring (or in the case of a pastor, calling). You might not even be totally sure what a clergyperson’s day-to-day schedule looks like.

That’s ok. A congregation’s laypeople are still in the best position to call a great-fit pastoral candidate, because you know your church better than anyone. You just need the search framework and tools to carry out your task faithfully.

In the new online course version of Searching for the Called, you will find what you need to set up your search process and ground it in God, tamp down your own (and the congregation’s) anxiety, engage well with pastoral candidates, discern which candidate with which you can envision fruitful ministry, and help your new minister get off to a fast start. The course breaks the pastor search into bite-sized chunks to eliminate overwhelm and utilizes videos, tools, and assessments to move you along the search timeline. There are also sections dedicated to helping your search team think through common questions that pop up during pastor searches, including anytime questions as well as pandemic-specific issues.

You can purchase two years of unlimited access for your entire search team for $250. (For reading this blog post, I’m happy to offer your team 10% off! Enter the code BLOG10OFF at checkout.) Simply have one member of your search team enroll in the course, and then I will contact the enrollee with login information for fellow search team members. You will also have the capability to contact me through the course with brief questions about your search.

The pastor search can be formational for your search team members, church, and pastoral candidates. Let Searching for the Called assist you in claiming that opportunity.

Judicatory and denominational leaders, I invite you to use my contact form to email me for a free preview version that will allow you to see all course content so that you can recommend it to your churches with confidence.

We’re in a time when many pastoral departures are imminent. Some clergy were on the brink of retiring or searching for a new call when the pandemic began. Not wanting to leave their churches in the lurch, they decided to hang on for a while longer, not realizing the pandemic would go on for nearly a year now. Others were already actively looking for a new place to serve and hit pause on their searches for the same reason. Then there are those ministers who were happily serving when the pandemic hit. Maybe conflict started or deepened in their churches over the challenges of the past months. Maybe they don’t want to pastor in the ways that the pandemic has required, some of which will carry forward afterward. Or perhaps they simply - understandably - want to protect their own health and that of their loved ones.

In short, many churches are looking down the barrel at a time of leadership transition.

If your settled pastor is thinking about leaving or has just departed, here are ten questions to guide your congregation into the early stages of the between-time:

• How do you bring healthy closure to your departing pastor's tenure?

• What are the primary pastoral tasks that need to be picked up by others?

• What are the opportunities and challenges presented by the time between settled pastors?

• What does your church need to figure out about its identity, direction, and pastoral needs before starting a pastor search?

• Keeping responses to all of the above in mind, what kind of leadership does your church need in the transition time?

• How might your church approach the search as a means of spiritual formation?

• What are the qualities needed in pastor search team members?

• How can your pastor search team members deepen their relationships with one another and their mutual trust with the church as a whole?

• What resources does your pastor search team need to conduct its process well?

• How can your church come alongside the pastor search team in its work?

If your church or pastor search team needs more resources, check out Searching for the Called. You can download the manual here, and an online course is coming next week.

Photo by KT on Unsplash.

Whew! You’ve almost made it through 2020. It has been a year of unexpected challenges, hasn’t it? This has manifested in a number of ways, with just one of them being the inability to go to in-person denominational meetings, conferences, trainings, and retreats. This means that you might have a good bit of money remaining in your professional expense fund, even after you’ve attended all the virtual events and bought all the books.

Every December I offer a “round up” special: I will round the amount left in your professional expense line item up to the next session value. My intent has always been to keep you from leaving any of your hard-earned benefits on the table and to encourage you to invest in your leadership growth for the coming year. I can’t imagine a better time to hit both of these marks. While it’s important to steward your church’s money well in these uncertain times, it’s also essential to use your available resources to prepare to pastor in a rapidly-changing world. Coaching is a great way to do that, because it

• is done remotely,

• takes place at your pace and on your schedule,

• is geared toward reframing your situation in helpful ways,

• helps you make positive steps forward, and

• can be completely customized to your goals, leadership style, and context.

If you are looking to make progress in such areas as

• finding a good oscillation between caring for others and caring for yourself,

• developing and grounding yourself in your pastoral identity when others are projecting their anxieties about the state of the world on you,

• searching for a new call and/or leaving your current one well under the restraints imposed by Covid-19,

• helping your church members engage well among themselves and in the community when there is no end to the pandemic in sight, or

• addressing conflict that is even trickier when those involved are unable to gather in person for conversation,

coaching can help.

The round-up special is valid in December only. Contact me or schedule a free exploratory call by December 30 to take advantage of this offer.