Several years ago, I moved into the role of lead pastor when we planted 7 City Church near downtown Fort Worth. I had served as an executive pastor, associate pastor, youth pastor, and non-profit leader prior to assuming this new opportunity, and with this transition came a series of shifts that I had to make in my leadership. If you aspire to a higher level of leadership, or you sense God moving you into an executive or lead pastor role, here are seven shifts you’ll be faced with in the process.
1. The Shift from Serving a Vision to Creating a Vision
When you serve on the staff of a local church, you are ultimately responsible for serving the vision of the lead pastor. You might be responsible for dreaming and executing in a specific ministry department—such as youth, children, worship, or small groups—but all of your dreams must support the vision of the house, which is determined by the lead pastor. While many people dream of making this shift, I’ve discovered that leaders often struggle to articulate a clear vision after moving into a senior role.
2. The Shift from Being on Staff to Leading a Staff
Leading a staff is very different than serving on a staff. Yes, it’s nice to have a team to help you execute the vision, and yes, it’s fun to do ministry with people devoted to moving the church toward a better future. But staffing is not always easy or fun. In the lead role, you have to learn how to hire staff, coach staff, review staff, and make difficult staffing decisions. There will be times when you have to correct staff, deal with conflict, address performance issues, and navigate transitions. And you get to manage the increasing costs of team building, such as salaries, raises, and healthcare benefits.
3. The Shift from Spending Money to Raising Money
It’s nice to have a budget to do ministry. When you’re on staff at a church, sometimes you’re given a budget that you can spend on the ministry areas that have been entrusted to your care. As long as you stay in budget, all is well. When you move into the lead pastor role, your focus immediately shifts. Yes, you’ll spend money on ministry, but first you have to raise it, and not just for your department. Now you get to raise money for staff, buildings, multiple ministries, missions, expansion efforts…everything. You’ll have to learn how to cast compelling vision, conduct donor gatherings, meet one-on-one with donors, preach on stewardship and generosity, and develop a generosity culture. Without this focus, you’ll be frustrated by the lack of forward progress with the vision God has entrusted to you.
4. The Shift from Occasional Communication to Weekly Communication
When you’re a staff pastor, you may have the opportunity to preach on occasion—perhaps a few times per year (maybe more if you’re a teaching pastor). But when you become a lead pastor, it won’t be uncommon to preach 40+ times per year (even more if you have a Sunday night service, midweek service, or limited resources to cover you when you need a break). And in the age of technology where people can access the finest preaching at the click of a button, the pressure to be good every single week is a heavy weight to carry. Even if you’re a staff pastor who leads a department that requires weekly teaching, the lead role places a heavier demand on your preparation and a greater expectation from your audience. You’re having to communicate in a manner that reaches a broad spectrum of people, from young to old, highly educated to uneducated, and from a wide variety of backgrounds.
5. The Shift from Focused Ministry to Executive Responsibility
I realize this might be controversial, so let me clarify what I mean. When you’re a staff pastor, your primary focus is the area of ministry you’ve been hired to lead. You minister to kids, youth, men, or women, and you design ministry programming for a specific audience. You’re focused on reaching the lost, discipling people, developing leaders, and mobilizing people for ministry. These are absolutely critical, regardless of your ministry role. But when you assume lead pastor responsibilities, you not only do ministry (as noted above), but you also assume an executive component of leadership. You work with a board of directors, budgets, bylaws, and building campaigns. You hire staff, create strategic plans, and make the most difficult decisions in the church. Essentially you do everything a CEO does, except you also get to deliver an original, God-inspired, company-wide speech every week.
6. The Shift from Working “In” to Working “On”
It’s very natural to work “IN” ministry. This is the part of ministry most of us envisioned early on—preaching, counseling, planning services, conducting outreaches…basically the people side and the public side of ministry. But when you shift into a lead pastor role, you have to discipline yourself to also work “ON” ministry. Working on ministry requires you to focus on vision, mission, values, culture, and strategy—basically the 30,000-foot aspects of leadership. Working on ministry requires you to carve out time to reflect, think, dream, and tackle the barriers to growth. You have to ask hard questions, evaluate ministry health, and put various aspects of the ministry under the microscope. If all you do is work in ministry, you’ll wake up one day to discover that what you are doing day-to-day is irrelevant, ineffective, or outdated. You’ll no longer be reaching and discipling people the way you once did—times changed but you didn’t. Working on helps you produce a better in. While every staff pastor should carve out time to work on their respective areas of ministry, this necessity in the lead role is amplified and has a ripple effect on the rest of the church.
7. The Shift from Doing to Delegating
Delegation is a part of leadership no matter what role you hold on staff—or at least it should be. If you’re not delegating, I guarantee you’re hitting a lid created by the restraints of time. Delegating not only frees time and space in your calendar, but it also helps you develop emerging leaders. When you assume a senior pastoral role, the need to delegate sharply increases. Phone calls, text messages, emails, requests for meetings, and a barrage of decisions to be made will land on your desk. If you don’t quickly delegate tasks, responsibilities, and decision-making authority, you’ll sink. Growth will screech to a halt and you’ll burn the candle at both ends until you’re emotionally wasted. Your job is not to do, but to equip and empower others to do. The apostle Paul said to “equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (Ephesians 4:12). Do you spend more time equipping or doing?
Most of these shifts create extra weight. It’s the heaviness of leadership. It’s emotional. One minute you’re a counselor, and the next you’re doing a wedding or a funeral. One morning you’re hearing from God for a fresh sermon, and that afternoon you’re meeting with a donor to cast vision, a staff member to address a performance issue, followed by a board meeting that night to make a decision on a major building campaign. But that’s what you signed up for—whether you realized it at the moment or not.
Whatever role God has called you to, He obviously believes you have the capacity to do it. He is with you. You can make the necessary shifts so you can lead more effectively. As you do, embrace the comforting words of 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
