The Church Renewal Podcast
The Church Renewal Podcast
Will My Church Need a Transitional Pastor? Part 2
This is part 2 of our 4-part mini-series “Will my church need a transitional Pastor?” In today’s episode, Matt and I will look at some caution signs to be aware of that might surprise you: Being a “commuter” church; A church with financial challenges, and; Differing ideas about what to look for in the next lead pastor. As you listen , think about your church; are we describing your church? If so, and if you would like to talk to us more about the process of doing your own internal deep-dive, we want to help you. After you finish this episode send us an e-mail so we can talk with you.
Is your church making a difference in its own neighborhood? This episode of our mini-series "Will my Church Need a Transitional Pastor?" tackles the often-overlooked issue of commuter churches and their impact on community engagement. We examine what it means for a church when most congregants live more than 10 minutes away from its premises and the unique challenges this poses. Highlighting the significance of local outreach, we discuss why it's vital for a church to be actively involved in its immediate surroundings and not just focus on members' personal neighborhoods. Our conversation stresses the importance of assessing whether a church's absence would be felt in its community, emphasizing the call to share the gospel with those nearby.
We also dive into the crucial process of identifying specific needs when searching for a new pastor during a transitional period. With the help of a transitional pastor, congregations can navigate this challenging time with clarity and unity. We explore how their expertise and objectivity enable them to guide a church through understanding the traits needed in their next leader, and how even financial difficulties can be addressed through revitalization efforts. Lastly, we provide ways to engage with Flourish Coaching and our podcast, encouraging listeners to connect, share, and participate in the ongoing conversation about church renewal.
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Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. I'm Jeremy, I'm Matt. This is part two of our four-part mini-series called Will my Church Need a Transitional Pastor? Today, Matt and I will look at some caution signs to be aware of. That might surprise you, being a commuter church, a church with financial challenges and differing ideas about what to look for in the next lead pastor. As you listen, think about your church. Are we describing your church? If so, and if you would like to talk to us more about the process of doing your own internal deep dive, we want to help you. After you finish this episode, send us an email so we can talk with you. Hey Matt, hey Jeremy, how are you? I'm good. We are continuing on and we're talking more about what types of churches should consider using a transitional pastor. So we've talked about some of the questions. We're going to go through some more here. First question for you what is a commuter church? A commuter?
Speaker 2:church is a church that tends to have as current congregants those who drive from outside the direct community where the church facility is to worship there. So if somebody lives more than 10 minutes away from the church and that's the majority of the congregants live more than 10 minutes away from the church or what people that are in the community where the church facility is say this is our community, then it's a commuter church and so it draws from outside the direct neighborhood where the church is.
Speaker 1:So would the, just geographically speaking, would the diameter of that circle be bigger for a church in a suburban area of town versus a urban area of town, just in terms of miles?
Speaker 2:Like in terms of how much space would be considered whether it's a commuter church or not. Yeah, there's two ways to answer that. One is you know, we're recording this in the Baltimore Washington area of the world and here people measure things by minutes, right, not by distance, that's correct. So I think that that's one way to think about it. Is church in my community? Well, is it the same distance away as the grocery store is for you? Okay, that tells you whether it's in the same community or not, okay. Okay, in a place that's that is by minutes, right, is it as close as the gym is it is? Is it as close as the school is? Those are the kinds of things, not necessarily job People commute for jobs, and here's the reason why that's important. That was my next question.
Speaker 2:Why is it important? So the fact that a church is a commuter church, which we hear a lot like, well, we're a church that draws from a large region. That's what we've always been and it's what we imagine ourselves to be. The fact that that's what a church is is not the same as saying that that's what a church ought to be. When we're looking in church health assessment phase of a church, we're trying to understand what's the biblical health of a church.
Speaker 2:And when we look at what's a biblically healthy church, a biblically healthy church is a biblically healthy church is concerned about its neighbors, because Jesus is concerned about your neighbors. But who is my neighbor? Matt? So Jesus is concerned about two kinds of neighbors. When it comes to a local congregation, so Jesus is concerned about Jer's neighbors and my neighbors. Like the neighbors where I actually live, like the people I share property lines with.
Speaker 2:What I like to say is that where those kinds of personal neighbors you have are where you live, work and play, where you shop and go to the gym, to where your kids do activities, right, that's your personal neighbors. But church also has neighbors and its neighbors are the people that you can walk to in 15 minutes from that church and Jesus is certainly concerned about those neighbors, and a church ought to be concerned about those neighbors, which is why we help churches think carefully about their zip code, because Jesus is concerned about their zip code and they really ought to be. It's why Jesus put them there about their zip code, and they really ought to be.
Speaker 1:It's why Jesus put them there. So, theoretically, if a church is a community church, what are the red flags? They should be looking at and saying, hey, this is a sign that we are not as engaged or tied into the community that Jesus has planted us in.
Speaker 2:I'll give you the line. I answered a couple of those. One line I'll give you is the thing that was said about the church that I joined in 2008 in West Seattle Washington, I met a neighbor and the neighbor said oh, oh, you're the new pastor of that church. That church has been sleeping for a while. Ouch, we ask a church in our church health assessment. A question that we ask is hey, you congregate.
Speaker 2:This is in a congregational survey with the neighborhood and, mr Church, if it was gone? Um, and that's a question that every church should ask itself, because if you're there, you ought to be there for the sake of the neighbors in that neighborhood. That's the way you ought to think about it. Those are your neighbors, whether you're owning it or not, and so we're trying to help churches just really wrestle with that topic, and that's the danger of being a commuter. Church is oh, I'm concerned about the personal neighbors I have. Well, that's great. I'm glad that you're concerned about your personal neighbors that are 45 minutes away. That really pleases Jesus, that you're really trying to love them. I'm glad that you're concerned about the people that you work with that are half an hour away, the other direction. That's actually wonderful, but the people in that neighborhood need the gospel and if your church is physically in that neighborhood, you ought to be concerned about that neighborhood and bringing the gospel to it.
Speaker 1:It's hard to share the gospel with people who wouldn't share a barbecue with you, and it's hard to have people come over for a barbecue if they have to hop two buses to get there. Exactly, yeah, absolutely, I gotcha Okay.
Speaker 2:It's also different—so I'm in a tradition, I'm ordained to the Presbyterian Church in America and we'll commonly have people and I think this is across traditions in some ways, but it's certainly, I find, it true in our tradition where the people will be happy to drive 45 minutes to go to some church that preaches Reformed theology. It could be a Reformed Baptist church, it could be a Presbyterian church, but they'll go that distance to hear their particular brand of theology. And I'm not necessarily opposed to that, I think it's okay. It's just that that person's neighbor is not really a candidate to be a visitor to the church that they go to.
Speaker 2:That's where it becomes a problem, because your neighbor, who could care less about the theology of your church? They're just trying to explore whether Jesus and Christianity might be a good answer to the challenges that they feel. The realism about your neighbor, who's not pre-convinced of the theology of the church or the practice or whatever thing you want to pick about your church that attracts you to it? Right, could be the worship, it could be the pastor, right, but your neighbor has none of those affiliations yet. But the way that they look at whether they're going to come visit your church or not is well, can I get there pretty quick? That's why we're pretty passionate about churches reaching their neighborhoods.
Speaker 1:And secondly to that question, I think is a question of how weird is this place going to be when I walk in, and one of the ways that they answer that question is do I know anyone who's there? How weird are they?
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, and if I know this neighbor who's going to take me there, if I know them and I trust them and they're going to be there when I walk in the door. That's a big deal to visitors.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is Okay, so separate question altogether. What are some of the reasons that a church would have different ideas about the type of lead pastor they would be looking for, as they're going through a process and this is going to lead into another question. So this is all.
Speaker 2:you, yeah so there's commonly divergence about ideas about what's needed in a lead pastor. I was talking to a church last week as I was discussing what the church needs in the next pastor. The church has gone through a really rocky patch and I just sort of I thought that it might be a disruptive idea, but I said it anyways because I thought it was what the church needed. I'm like you know what you might need a new next pastor, you might need more of a guy that's more of a healer type who comes along and binds up the wounded and loves the hurting, and I said that's really different than the last pastor that you had, but it might be what your church needs. Next, somebody who's a more than competent preacher, because they had a very, very good preacher before. Like you could probably do fine with a more than competent preacher.
Speaker 2:I don't want to slouch in there, I said, but you might need somebody who can really come alongside people and love them well and listen to their stories and bind up the wounded. That's really different, though, than people were thinking about when we started the conversation, and so, for the person who had a lot of affiliation with the previous preacher, they don't feel particularly hurt, you know, by what's gone on or whatever. There's kind of like no, we just need like we need a really, really good preacher. That's what's most important here, and there are other people that are just a walking wounded. The responsibility of church leaders is to help their congregants understand what are the needs of our church, and our next lead pastor and that's the big word for us is what does the church need? Not as the church wants, what do people desire, but what does the church need, and that takes time and space to actually reflect well enough to figure out the answer to that question.
Speaker 1:It seems pretty obvious that in that kind of situation, where you have either different factions or different parties in a church that are looking for different qualities or have a different list of qualifications that they're looking to meet, that it's fertile ground for receiving guidance. How does a transitional pastor being in that position, how is a transitional pastor uniquely gifted or positioned to help in that situation? What does he have in his toolbox that your average seminary grad or ordained guy or homegrown fellow maybe not have in the same way?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So a couple of things. One is the transitional pastor.
Speaker 2:By the time we're talking about the traits of the next pastor, he's already been there for at least six months. He's already been there building trust. He's talked to a lot of people, he's met a lot of people, he's spent time with elders, he's heard people's stories, he's worked through a lot of process already. So there's been a lot of opportunity for him to gain a great deal of knowledge about the history and the present of the church and even to lead them towards, you know, what's the future direction for our church. And so he's gained a lot of knowledge. And the reason he was able to do that was he had experiences that preceded all of this and he got trained to do it and he's being coached how to do it and he's using an existing process to do it. And so he's got all of that that he's bringing to bear in that moment to try and help that church wrestle with it.
Speaker 2:In that moment of trying to figure out the traits of the next pastor, we also equip that transitional pastor with a methodology of how to get to the answer to that question right, and some of it flows out of what has come before in the two earlier phases church health assessment and envisioning and part of it is just how do you go about answering that question? That isn't the traditional way but involves leadership and staff if there's any and then also the congregation, and trying to actually discover through this process that we've followed together is there some unity already around this? And that's what we found is that when you follow this process, it has a way of bringing unity around it because people have really wrestled with the issues and it's more apparent to them what they need because they've done the work and it's more obvious to them.
Speaker 1:And it's more obvious to them how much of that is influenced by the objectivity of having someone who's not been there on the inside or isn't coming with an agenda, like I'm going to be with you for the next seven years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the objectivity is helpful, having existing process is helpful, fresh eyes is helpful and not having a horse in the race, right. So none of our transitional pastors are candidates to be the next pastor. That's the the inviolable rule in the this kind of work, and so what that means is that the transitional pastor, that flourish would provide to a church, they, they, their best interest is the health and vitality of your church going forward, so they want to help you answer that question what do we need in our next pastor? For your sakes, not for theirs, not for their future positioning for a job or what they think is irrelevant, it's what the church needs, and them trying to help you wrestle that down to the ground so you can own it together.
Speaker 1:I like that. So we've covered community church. We've covered a church that has different ideas about what they're looking for in their next pastor. Third bucket I want to dip into here is you have a checkbox. If a church is experiencing financial difficulty, they're a good candidate to consider a transitional pastor Square that form. We've already talked about the cost. How is it that, being in financial trouble with the cost related to having a transitional pastor, how do those two things mesh to make a good fit for stepping into a process like this? Fit for stepping into?
Speaker 2:a process like this. Yeah, so if a church is in financial struggle, one of the things that you can know about the church is that their ministry has been floundering. One of my mentors is now with the Lord, said that resources follow ministry. We commonly think that resources precede the ability to do ministry, but the inverse is actually the case. When you're reaching new people with the gospel, when people can see why we're doing what we're doing around this church and why these staff are here, that we've got, and that we can see the Lord's bearing fruit through us and we're excited about it and, yes, the Lord calls us to sacrificial living, including sacrificial giving then ministry is being done and so resources follow from it. When resources are scarce, that tells us some things than ministries being done and so resources follow from it. When resources are scarce, it tells us some things. It tells us maybe there was an unfortunate split in the church, maybe there was some sort of scandal, or it's just dwindled down over time. I was with a church last time. That's just dwindled down over time and resources can get scarce then because there hasn't been a lot of ministry that's been going on. The ministry capacity of the church has been decreasing over time instead of increasing.
Speaker 2:So what should you do in any of those circumstances? Pause, stop, don't try and keep doing. What's the definition of insanity right? Doing the same thing over again, hoping for a different result? No, it's actually a good opportunity to stop and pause and reflect and say where are we, where have we been and where are we, and who are we and where are we going, so that, as we would pursue thoughtful ministry, resources would follow from that.
Speaker 2:Remember, too, some churches look at it and they're like boy, I don't know if we can afford a pastor going forward, can we afford to do this? Remember, there's a lot of ways that we can do this in terms of the transition process. We can do it completely external, so the church for something that costs way less than having a pastor there. We can also have somebody there part-time. There are a lot of churches that are attracted to the idea of having a transitional pastor who's there three long weekends a month and that ends up working out with some work that fourth week that they're there. It works out to be something that's like a two-thirds time job, but you can still do a really effective job.
Speaker 2:I did a part-time work in a church in Maryland over almost two years and a lot of that time I was there twice a month for two five-day stints. We got a lot of good work done in that little bit of time that I was on the ground a month for two five-day stints. We got a lot of good work done in that little bit of time that I was on the ground because we had a good process. So I think that this can be done at varying degrees of affordability if the church is struggling with finances, but best if you're struggling with finances to get on a good ministry foundation before you try and look for a new pastor.
Speaker 1:It's also best to make sure that you're spending the limited finances in the right place.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we'll leave it there for now. We're going to continue going through the boxes you should be looking for to see if your church checks a box, if this is transitional pastor bingo, how many numbers do I need to have on the board before I call bingo?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, as you probably heard already from us, we're working our way through the FAQs that are on our website about transitional pastoring, and one of the answers to the questions that are on there and we'll link to this FAQ in all these episodes but one of the answers is I don't know is how many of these boxes do you need to have checked off in order to need a transitional pastor? And my answer is one. You only need one, because any one of these tells you that your church has a manifest sign of unhealthiness, and it's much better to get healthy in a transition than assume that if we just get a new pastor, everything will be better.
Speaker 1:Is there a door price for having like 17? Sorry, we don't give out any door prices, all right? Well, maybe that'll change sometime in the future, who knows? I want to thank you, matt, for this, and I want to thank you, listener, for coming by. We're going to pick this up again in the next episode. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that, this day dawned, Jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:You can find us at flourishcoachingorg and you can reach us by email at info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook, twitter and YouTube and we would love it if you would like subscribe, rate or review the podcast wherever you're listening. Please share this podcast with anyone you think it'll help and if we get a client because of a recommendation you make, we'll send you a small gift just to say thanks, and a special thanks to Bay Ridge Christian Church in Annapolis, maryland, for the use of their building to record today's episode. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was produced by me, jeremy Seferati, in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you.