You Can Transition to a New Church—Without
Leaving Your Old One
Behind every great church, large or small, is at least one
pastor who has been there long enough to outlast the bad times and build on the
good times.
It is the most common thread for great churches. Pastors
who stick around.
But pastoral longevity has its dark side too. The
tendency to become stale.
Every time I talk about the value of long-term pastorates, people remind me of horror stories about churches
that withered into ineffectiveness because a pastor stayed too long.
That’s a reality that can’t be ignored, so today’s
post is about that dark side—and how to overcome it.
First, the cause: Why
do long-term ministries sometimes become stale and dead?
Because the pastor stops learning, growing and adapting.
They rest on yesterday’s successes (real or imagined). They get tired and/or
they grow lazy. They lose their passion, their heart and their effectiveness.
Or they get tired of fighting stubborn members and settle into survival
mode.
Now the solution: Long-term
pastors who stay fresh and lead churches into health and effectiveness year
after year, decade after decade, are always learning, always adapting and
always growing. They outlast the bad times, learn from the failures and build
on successes.
Actually, a pastor staying too long is almost never the
real problem. If something is going well, a lifetime isn’t long enough.
But if it’s not going well, a year can feel like a
decade.
On its own, staying long is no guarantee of success or of
staleness. The challenge in keeping a long-term ministry valid is staying
fresh. If you do that, you’ll never overstay your welcome.
The best way I know to keep fresh in a ministry over the
long haul is something called Transition Without Relocation.
What Is Transition Without Relocation?
Simply put, Transition Without Relocation is the ability to
stay fresh, learn, adapt, grow and try new things while staying in the same
church over a long period of time.
The pastor transitions (internally), but doesn’t relocate
(externally).
Too many pastors do the opposite. Relocation Without
Transition. They stay at a church for a few years until they run out of ideas,
energy and/or support. Then they pack up and relocate to a new church. But they
don’t make an internal transition. They take the old, tired, stale ideas that
failed in the first church and impose them on a new place because they’re
convinced the problem wasn’t with them (it’s never us, right
pastors?). The problem is always the stubborn, godless, prayerless, visionless
church they left behind in a huff of righteous indignation. Or the denomination
that didn’t fund them well enough.
The pastor might experience a short honeymoon at the new
church—this one looks promising!—until … the same problems happen again. Why?
Because the pastor hasn’t changed anything but their geography.
How to Transition Without Relocation
So how do we keep fresh in the same church for years, even
decades? In the 22 years I’ve served my current church, I’ve made a lot of
mistakes. So I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But our church is
fresher, younger, healthier and more forward-looking today than it has ever
been.
Here are a few principles I’ve learned along the way. I’m
grateful to my church and my pastoral mentors for sticking with me long enough
to help me learn them. With a lot more to go.
1. Never Stop Learning
A pastor who stops learning, stops leading. And a pastor
who stops leading, stops pastoring.
The best pastors I know have an unbridled curiosity. For
God’s Word. For leadership. For human nature in all its glorious
quirkiness.
Show me a pastor who’s always wanting to learn more and
I’ll call that a good place to start.
2. Reduce the Essentials to the Bare Minimum
Staying fresh in ministry doesn’t mean playing games with
essential theology. But the essentials are far fewer than most of us think.
Fighting over nonessential theology may be exciting for a
while. And you may even gather a few fellow-travelers. But in the long term,
majoring on the minors will cap your ministry at the faithful, cranky few,
while making everyone else so weary they’ll move on. Or they’ll make you move
on.
Trim away the nonessentials. They’re a heavy burden to
carry for the long haul.
Once you find that bare minimum …
3. Be Willing to Change Everything Else
As an example, I’ve changed the way I preach five
times in the 22 years I’ve been at my current church. I expect to change it
again before too long.
Because what worked then doesn’t work now. And what works
now won’t work later. Plus, I’m always learning (see point #1) how to communicate
better.
When I hear all the arguments about what style of preaching
is the best (exegetical, topical, verse-by-verse, “as the Spirit leads,”
three-point, less than 30 minutes, etc.), I want to scream, “As long as the
message is biblically based, the best method is the one that works!”
The same goes for liturgy, music styles, small groups,
pews, chairs, casual dress, suits and ties … you name it.
“Because we’ve always done it this way” is a bad reason to
keep doing anything. But it’s a great way to get stale—fast.
4. Equip Others to Do Ministry
I’m convinced one of the main reasons so many pastors
ignore the Pastoral Prime Directive of equipping
the saints and making disciples is that we’re insecure.
We’re worried that someone might do our job better
than us.
But a good, healthy, effective, confident pastor wants to
be surrounded by people who do things better than they do.
No pastorate can last long under the burden of doing
everything yourself. Discipleship isn’t just a command, it’s a blessing—to
the disciple, the pastor and the church.
5. Keep a Regular Sabbath
A tired pastor is an ineffective pastor.
And a pastor who won’t take a Sabbath because they think
the church can’t make it without them is both insecure and arrogant. A deadly
combination that will cut a pastorate short as quickly as anything will.
Pastors, this may be hard on some of our egos, but you need
a Sabbath more than your church needs you. And, paradoxically, you need a Sabbath because your church needs you.
6. Don’t Let Your Experience Stifle Your
Adaptability
I’ve spent over 30 years in pastoral ministry gaining a
wealth of experience. And now it matters less than it ever has.
No, experience is not and will never be useless. It’s of
great value. But with the current pace of change, adaptability matters more.
But too often, we allow our experiences to dig ruts in our
minds, hearts and spirits. So many of my peers in ministry seem to spend all
their time complaining about the sad state of the church “these days” and
pining for the way things used to be—but probably never were. Their previous
experiences are stifling the creative spark of the Spirit, who always wants to
do a new thing in a new generation.
Thankfully, experience and adaptability are not mutually
exclusive. If we keep our years of pastoral experience infused
with a healthy curiosity and adaptability to changing circumstances, we will
have a powerful combination.
Here’s one of the best ways to start shaking off those
cobwebs …
7. Do Reverse Mentoring
There are young people in your church who are called to
ministry—at least lay leadership, if not full-time clergy. But we sometimes
miss it, because the ministry they’re called to doesn’t look like the ministry
we’re used to.
So, instead of spurring them on to follow God where he’s
leading them, many of us stifle their creativity by forcing them into our old
molds while calling it discipleship. Or mentoring.
What we need is some reverse mentoring. Old coots
like me need to take the time not just to impart our wisdom and experience
to the next generation, but to listen, too. Let’s turn that teaching into
dialog. We might like what we hear.
I haven’t come up with a great, new ministry idea in
decades. But our church is filled with great ideas, because I’ve learned to
listen. Then, after listening, I’ve learned to …
8. Say Yes a Lot—Even to Ideas That Didn’t Work
Before
I love saying yes to crazy ideas. Even to
ideas that failed before.
After all, the flip-side of “what worked then won’t work
now” is “what didn’t work then, might work
now.”
Pastors who keep a foot on the brakes don’t inspire anyone.
Pastors with a listening ear and a hand on the steering wheel can nudge good
ideas to become great ones.
That’s where innovative churches come from. And that’s how
we keep ourselves and our churches fresh for a long time to come.
So what do you think? Do you have any other
ideas about how to stay fresh for the long term?
Karl Vaters is the author of The Grasshopper Myth: Big
Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking That Divides Us. He’s been in
pastoral ministry for over 30 years and has been the lead pastor of Cornerstone
Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley, California for over 20 years. He’s
also the founder of NewSmallChurch.com, a blog that encourages, connects and
equips innovative Small Church pastors More from Karl
Vaters or visit Karl at http://NewSmallChurch.com
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