4 Roles a Senior Pastor Can’t Delegate

Tag Archive - role

4 Roles a Senior Pastor Can’t Delegate

Monday, May 4, 2020

You want to lead a thriving church. But we know you’ve all experienced it:

Everyone needs something from the pastor.

In some churches, the pastor is expected to do everything. In others, the organization has grown complex, and your role has followed suit. You know you have to take the lead in giving ministry away to others, but it’s not always clear which things.

Getting clarity about what you MUST own makes it simple to decide what to delegate.

4 Roles a Senior Pastor Can’t Delegate is a practical resource by Tony Morgan at the Unstuck Group designed to help you clearly define your essential duties and responsibilities. But it’s really more than an eBook: It’s a digital workbook to help you take your next steps in leadership.

Download the eBook

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

Top Posts of 2018 #10 “How the Lead Pastor and Executive Pastor Roles Work Together”

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

For the next couple of days I’m going to be counting down the top 10 posts from 2017 here on Helping Churches Make Vision Real. These are the posts that generated the most traffic, comments, and were the most shared on social media. The most popular topics this year had to do with emotionally intelligent leaders, church finances, church growth, indicators of decline, and becoming an outsider focused church.

This first post as we count down the top 10 has to do with the relationship between the Lead and Executive Pastor. I’m frequently asked how the relationship works, what a Lead Pastor should be looking for in a good XP. This post should help.

The relationship between the Lead Pastor and Executive Pastor can make or break a church staff team and has profound impact upon the overall ministry of the church. Get this right and you’ll end up getting a lot right. Get it wrong, and well, it’s going to be tough sledding.

There are some basic no brainer things that make a great Lead and Executive Pastor partnership and of course trust is at the foundation of it.

You can’t allow triangulation; the Lead and Executive Pastor need to stay connected and on the same page. I’d recommend a weekly touch base meeting to help solve this.
You can’t have a “good cop / bad cop” situation. You don’t want the staff to love the Lead Pastor and fear the Executive Pastor. Executive Pastors remember that fear doesn’t make people want to follow you. On the other side of the coin, Lead Pastors can’t delegate all of the tough decisions and execution to the Executive, the church needs your leadership not just your direction.
A better analogy for a healthy partnership between a Lead and Executive Pastor is more like a mom and a dad leading a family together through mutual submission to one another. Leading in their area of brilliance and submitting in their areas of weakness.
The Executive Pastor needs to support the Lead Pastor publicly and when needed appropriately challenge them privately.

And if you’ve ever wondered what the basic lanes are that the Lead Pastor and Executive Pastor should be running in here are 4 things that each role can’t delegate away:

There are 4 Things the Lead Pastor can’t Delegate

Leadership
Teaching
Vision
Culture

There are 4 Things the Executive Pastor can’t Delegate

Strategy
Execution
Leading the Sr. Leadership Team
Daily Train, Develop & Coach the Culture

Posted in Leadership

3 Shifts that Growing Multisite Churches Experience

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

The decision to adopt a multisite strategy to deliver growth may be a decision that your church is considering. While still young as a movement, multisite is proving to be an incredibly effective strategy for growing churches to deliver growth to new “markets” and reach new people with the Gospel.

However, going multisite will make things more complicated and more difficult for you as a leader and for your church.

If your church is considering going multisite, or has gone multisite but is now experiencing multi-stuck I’d encourage you to check out the Unstuck Group. We’ve developed a unique process to help churches prepare to go multisite as well as get multi-stuck churches unstuck.

Below are 3 shifts that we observe growing multisite churches commonly experience.

1. Staff Roles & Responsibility

When you’re just in one location the Staff Team only has responsibility for the one location. As you begin to add campuses it’s common for Staff to have “dual responsibilities.” For instance, someone may be the Kids Director on the original campus but influence Kids Ministry on all campuses. This is particularly true as you move from 1 campus 2-3 campuses. By the time you’re at 4+ campuses it’s more common that staff have a singular focus. They either serve at a particular campus and focus their attention on that campus or serve on the “central team” and serve all campuses.

2. Attenders

Campus attendance has the ability to shift the emotion of the Staff Team at the original campus significantly. Obviously when there is one location all of the attendance is at that one site. Even when you start your first campus or two it’s not uncommon that the majority of the attendance is still on the original location. However, as campuses are added it’s not uncommon that the majority of people who attend the church, attend at a different campus than the original site. This is a tipping point in your multisite journey where the Staff Team at the original site begin to see themselves as just another campus instead of the big boys on the block and ministry trend setters for the church.

3. Staff Restructures

While going multisite may be a mechanism to help your church reach more and new people with the Gospel it certainly makes things more complicated. There are multiple restructures that happen along the way as more campuses are added. Here are some general trends:

2-3 Campuses: Campus Pastors are hired and usually report to someone already on the team, Staff often play dual roles leading on a particular campus and influencing the entire church at the same time
4-5 Campuses: A Multisite Director is hired to lead the new Campus Pastor Team and the Multisite expansion strategy at the church, a Campus Pastor is hired at the original location and that site is treated as another campus instead of the “mother ship,” a true Central Service Team responsible for serving the campuses is beginning to be built.
6+ Campuses: Regionalization brings a whole new set of issues

Posted in Leadership

5 Proficiencies of Great Church Staff Teams

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Great Church Staff Teams are full of team members who not only care deeply about people and are passionate about the ministry; they’re actually proficient in what they are doing. I actually believe you can fake passion for a while until your heart catches up. But you can’t fake proficiency. You’re either proficient or you’re not. That being said, I’ve been a part of Church Staff Teams for more than 20 years and the ones I’ve been on that are the best are always proficient in these 5 core areas:

#1 Team Player

Great Church Staff Team Members care more about the team than they do about themselves or their own standout performance. They’d rather the team win than get personal recognition for their individual contribution to the win.

#2 Specialty

Great Church Staff Teams are full of role players. They know what they’re brilliant at and they lead in those areas and they know what other team members at brilliant at and they submit in those areas. They play their specialized role well.

#3 Modeling

Great Church Staff Teams are built with people who lead with moral authority. They don’t just say, “Do as I say,” they model behaviors that they want replicated throughout the entire organization. They go first and inspire others to follow through their actions, not just through their words.

#4 Follow Through

This may sound simple, but it’s actually unfortunately rare. Great Church Staff Teams are made up of people who do what they say they’re going to do. They deliver on time over, and over, and over again. They can be trusted to do what they say they’re going to do. They follow through.

#5 Communication

Great Church Staff Team Members communicate early and often with each other. Instead of surprising one another they manage expectations through communication. Everyone doesn’t have to know everything on great teams when great teams communicate with one another.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

What makes a Great Campus Pastor a Great Campus Pastor?

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Leading in a multisite setting I’m often asked by other church leaders, “What makes a great Campus Pastor a great Campus Pastor?” Often times when a church is thinking about moving to a multisite model the last thing they’re thinking about is who is going to be their next Campus Pastor. They’re stuck on logistics and most just assume they’ll stick an existing up and coming staff member on the next campus and hope for the best. That’s great IF you have the right person on the team already, but this can also be a fatal flaw. Trust me, I know and I’ve lived it. So here are 7 things I’m looking for when I’m looking for a Campus Pastor.

1. Relational Skills

They can influence people. They can influence people younger than themselves, they can influence their peers, and they can influence people older than themselves. Influence comes through trust and trust is given in the context of relationship. If they don’t have the relational skills to build trust with the congregation they’ll never be able to influence the congregation to move forward in a particular direction.

2. Communication

They’re a good communicator. I’m not saying they have to be a good preacher, unless that’s how you are planning on handling the weekend teaching in your multisite model. But they have to be an effective communicator on stage, in large groups, in smaller groups, and one-on-one. A litmus test you can use to discover this is can they connect the mission/vision to funding? Can they talk about money from the stage and have people respond?

3. Lead Through Others

Great Campus Pastors don’t just delegate tasks they empower people. They don’t do everything themselves rather they get things done through other people. They know how to manage large multifaceted projects through robust teams and accomplish the stated goals. They know the team outperforms the individual every time.

4. Development

They don’t just lead through relationship they lead through development. In other words people don’t follow them just because they like them and enjoy them relationally but because they are developed into better leaders and better people by following them. They don’t just attract talent they develop talent.

5. Driven

They have a bias towards action. They are movement oriented and wake up every day thinking about moving things towards the vision.

6. They Deliver

They’ve already demonstrated the ability to deliver. They’ve built something from concept to completion; they’re not a novice. They’ve already done, what you want them to do. They know how to execute decisions and implement strategies.

7. Culture

They don’t just know the mission, vision and values of the church but they live them out in their own lives. It’s not that they can simply repeat these things, but they deeply understand them, leading by making decisions through the lens of the core and unique identity of the church.

Interested in learning more about the role of a Campus Pastor? Check out this post: What is a Campus Pastor? Also you can take a look at a sample job description for a Campus Pastor here.

Photo Credit: kevin dooley via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

Page 1 of 212 »