William Thornton

The big three firing issues for pastors are, and I'm opining here sans data because it fits what I think: women, money, laziness. LifeWay has a series on the top five reasons but, trust me, they aren't as deep in the SBC local church hinterlands as I am. Here are some things not taught on-high by seminary gurus and sages. Your church has a cemetery and you are dumb enough to mess with it. My first two churches were rural and had attached cemeteries. They had people to handle it and policies, mostly unwritten, about who can be buried there and at what price, etc. The Lord graciously … [Read more...] about Stuff not taught in seminary that might get you fired

I'm fresh out of eyerolls for some of the things I see, hear, and read today. I'm deep into the attitude that as a pastor, my day is past in a lot of ways. Not that I couldn't serve a church again if the Lord so led but that so many things have moved into uncharted territory. Consider me to be an  an irascible curmudgeon in semi-retirement and an unreformable one at that. I have declared that I will pass on all wedding requests. Waaaaaaay to much drama and nonsense afoot on those. I'm keeping family weddings as an exception. Should there be some to come my way, I can easily do those. They … [Read more...] about Honest obits and designer funerals: How I know my day is past.

One staple of pastoral ministry is this business of tenure. Early on in my first pastorate a layman in my church commented on the pastor of another church, "They liked to never got him out...", a crude way of saying that the pastor, according to the church members he talked to, stayed too long. A pastor I know is going through some considerable difficulty. He has been at his church for around eight years, which is above the average. Is it time for his tenure to start wrapping up? I was once asked, "Haven't you been at that church long enough?", a question I answered in the negative but … [Read more...] about When you stay too long

It's budget time in many churches and the largest component of most church budgets is staff pay. The economy is humming along. Unemployment is very low. Many economic measures are up and consumers have confidence sufficient to be making major purchases of vehicles and the like. The LifeWay/Guidestone 2018 Compensation Study has been released and the overall average pay package for full-time senior pastors is $77,979 and the average for full-time clergy staff is $74,393. The full-time senior pastor of that average church with attendance between 100 and 150 in weekly worship is a bit lower at … [Read more...] about Probably not a good idea for the pastor to turn down a pay raise

I had a conversation this week with an individual who enthusiastically promoted their personal mission organization. Although I wasn't much interested, I listened politely but moved on to other subjects as soon as possible. Curious, I did some checking and found that there was indeed such an organization that recently registered as a corporation in my state but with no financial statements on file. Impressive. Whatever happened to the simple fact that believers were always on mission everywhere and that groups of believers, churches, gathered together to do God's work? What would a church … [Read more...] about IMB missions strategy and why I’m not much interested in boutique missions

I'm several years on the downhill side of retirement from being the pastor (OK, the 'senior,' 'lead,' 'head,' or 'big dawg,' pastor) of a Southern Baptist Church. I've thought about retirement in a concrete way for about 15 years now, starting about a decade before I pulled the trigger, resigned my church, and retired. My state convention (and probably all the others) has retirement planning seminars starting at age 50. I attended several. Hey, they were free and I learned a lot. These are some of the best things my state convention does. Since I am reading that the average age of … [Read more...] about When should the pastor retire?