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 which got my attention.
How long is too long? Tough to say. Differs with the particular situation.
Here are a few people who have tried to approach an answer to the question:
10 Signs the Pastor or Church Employee Has Been There Too Long; this is Joe McKeever, one of the best people I’ve read on such subjects. Note number ten: they’re willing to destroy the church in order to hold on to their position. We’ve seen that one. All ten of McKeever’s signs ring true to me.
7 Ways God May Tell A Pastor To Leave a Church; This makes the error of, seems to me, assuming the pastor is golden and the church trash. Every situation is mixed though some may be heavily weighted by an especially toxic church or flawed pastor.
9 Reasons Some Pastors Stay Too Long; Chuch Lawless of SEBTS has this. I don’t dispute any of these although there’s no checklist that determines if the pastor has stayed too long.
There are many more. The phrase “just hanging on” is troublesome in this context.
We’re deep into subjective stuff here, brethren and sistren. There is no bishop to move us around. The surest way to know it’s time to leave is if the church fires you.
I’m drawn to little things here.
- the pastor who has been around for a long time and seems to always include something in his sermon, the text or subject doesn’t matter, about events decades ago. The value of hearing the pastor’s ‘how we left family, loaded our U-Haul, and went to seminary years ago’ loses value after the first few tellings.
- repeating the same sermons, illustrations, or personal anecdotes
Most church people who are attuned to things and attend regularly know it when they see it.
Manifestly, denominational workers, entity heads, DOMs, and other non-church employees stay too long. I know that when I see it.
Any thoughts?
Good material.
I retired after 19 years at a wonderful church. I knew it was time to leave when, in spite of the fact that they loved me and I loved them, my words were like Charlie Brown listening to the teacher say “Blah, Blah, Blah Blah…” It’s funny but now that the new pastor is there, many of the areas I thot needed to be changed are being changed.
Another year would have been too long.
Your comment puts me in mind of something my daughter said when she went to college. She heard a message by someone – I think it was a chapel speaker – and told me about some of the interesting things he’d been saying, as if it was the first time she’d ever heard them.
I had been preaching those themes repeatedly for a while!.
Somehow, it took a different voice to get through to her.
I am convinced that is true. I remember preaching through Esther and then the ladies just bragging about all the bible truth in a Ladies Bible study about Esther that said the same thing.
I am old enough to just be glad when God gets through to people.
Great article, William! I pastored in Springer for 18 years. My children grew up there and as far the Church was concerned I could have stayed 20 more years. But, I believe that I stayed too long.
After about 10 or 12 years we all went into kind of what I would call complacency mode. We would occasionally have someone saved or a young man surrender to preach, but we were in no way living up to our potential.
I think it’s always important to remember that the pastor isn’t the key ingredient, Jesus is. The church belongs to Jesus. Preachers are transient. We are on our way out from the time that we get there. And we should be preparing ourselves and the churches we serve for that eventuality.
We need to all remember that the ministry isn’t about us.
This is a helpful post. I know a pastor who needs to retire. He has been at his church for more than 20 years. The church has been declining for several years. He knows that he needs to retire, and the church members talk about the problem openly. He can’t retire, though, because he is 63 years old. At that age you don’t qualify for Medicare, and you can’t afford to pay for personal medical insurance. He is stuck, and the church members don’t have the heart to force him out (thankfully). My guess is that they’ll just struggle along as they are for two more years.
And those are the churches where we need to find ways to encourage that gentleman and the church to take on one of your 30-something men who have never pastored, and mentor/transition across the next 3 or 4 years. Someone who is at MABTS (may not be the closest seminary) that doesn’t have the connections to help him be a staff guy at a famous church or who doesn’t have another connection and just needs to preach.
We need to find a way to work through ideas like that and prevent chaotic transitions.
Needless to say, things like MediCare and Social Security figure into clergy and church decisions. When you hit these ages is no mystery to either church or pastor and plans should be made accordingly. Seems to me that there is a dearth of discussion between the pastor and his church on retirement.
I’d work with the 63 year old pastor to make a plan suitable for both pastor and church
Did some of my church members pay you to write this?
Nobody pays me nothin’ for anything.
Doug, your suggestion is a good one. However, lots of church would not be able to afford that solution. The smoothest transition I ever saw was at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY. Bob Russell had grown that church from 100 to 10,000. When he turned 55, he met with the elders of the church and told them he planned to retire in 10 years. He recommended that they hire an associate pastor for preaching. Bob Russell said the first year he would preach 90% of the time and the associate 10%. The ratio would change annually until he was preaching 10% and the associate 90%. The elders approved that plan, and the church called Dave Stone as their preaching associate. Bob Russell also told the elders that when he turned 65, he planned to take his wife traveling around the world. He said, “You won’t see my face for one year.” The plan unfolded just as he planned. Dave Stone took over as the senior pastor, and the church has grown to 25,000, last I knew. Smoothest transition ever!
One pastor of my youth was beloved but looking back, it was fairly toxic. He had 5 years of sermons and every five years, he would start over. My Dad is a voracious note taker and knew when he started over. He was our pastor for 15 years, yes 3 cycles. He also stuck around after he retired and sat in the back of the church and criticized the new pastor. Eventually he accepted a long time interim pastorate elsewhere but for a while, it was not good.
It’s usualky never good for the former pastor to stick around, in my opinion.
My Grandmothers church said that for yrs. they would get someone in, let him stay for 2 yrs or so and then vote him out on one of his off weeks -they usually preached weeks 1,3 and 5 of the month.
They would then laugh about it on the back end. They finally got this person in around 81-83 and let him stay til about 5-6 yrs ago. He was always in some trouble and hooked on prescripts. Beating his wife and son and laughing in the pulpit in a self righteous way about how he wAs to rule over them -you honestly cannot believe how black and blue they would come to church
Thankfully, he is gone and out of the ministry.
Yes, it was an SBC Church is West KY