A Senior Pastor is a whole lot like the guy in this cartoon. He’s kind of the head of everything or the hub of ministry. He’s the “ranking officer of the church.” (That’s actually the job description in our church constitution.) In practice he becomes the Chief Executive Officer and the Chief Operating Office combined into one office. In that context He is the one who speaks for God and he’s the “one” responsible for the church’s success. The Senior Pastor has primary authority and that authority is positional, i.e., it’s tied to his office. Even if the Senior Pastor believes the Holy Spirit is the leader of the church, the congregation tends to think that job is the Senior Pastor’s. Thus everyone believes the Senior Pastor needs to be a part of what they do or else it’s not as important (or they measure the importance of what is done by whether or not the Senior Pastor blesses it and gives his time to it.)
It’s a killer job description; but it also promotes an inappropriate understanding of church leadership and the nature of the church in the 2st century. It is a model that suited well the hierarchical values of the Church in another era. It is a model that could easily be translated by people working in human organizations and the business world.
So why are we shifting from this concept to that of a Lead Pastor? Here are just a few reasons:
1. Effective leadership in the church comes more from relational authority than positional. People best follow a person who they trust not a person who has the power of position.
2. The church is a spiritual organism and the Holy Spirit is the Leader. The Holy Spirit works through the gifts of the Body and persons provide leadership to the rest of us when they faithfully exercise their gifts. That means that there are areas of a church’s ministry that are outside the pastor’s giftedness and when those areas must be at the forefront, people with those gifts must lead.
3. A church has many leaders all of whom are responsible for the faithfulness and fruitfulness of the church.
4. The pastor (i.e, the Senior Pastor) is chiefly responsible for vision-casting and equipping (see Ephesians 4). He is responsible to lead not manage. Management is often concerned with day-to-day effectiveness and maintaining the organization. Leadership is about the big picture and helping the church grow to the full potential of its calling from God. When the two are combined, the managing side wins because a whole lot of time is consumed being sure the group is operating efficiently and little time (or energy) is left for the Big Picture (Vision) and paying attention to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
5. The pastor is the chief spiritual officer of the church which means he must have time in the Word, in prayer, and focusing on helping the church understand and live from its core values as the Body of Christ. That is his work. It is the work of the church to do the work of the church.
6. Younger adults and unchurched people see Senior Pastor as a business or institutional concept with all of its baggage, not a spiritual one. They trust someone who leads, not orders. They relate to the heart of a pastor to commit themselves to his leadership and they want that heart to be connected to God’s heart.
7. A Lead Pastor has come to be synonymous with servanthood not rank. It is associated with humility not power. (If you don’t grasp that, read John 13).
These are the reasons why the Elders and the Church Council have approved a new title for their former “Senior” Pastor.
How that will be put into practice is the subject of our next blog posting.
Note to readers of OUTWARD FOCUSED CHURCH. You can read this post in its original and related posts at HOLY SPIRIT INCUBATOR.
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