[Blog] Succession is Coming

Succession and transition are coming; you might as well plan for it. This message isn’t just for people in their fifties and sixties. It’s also for people in their twenties, thirties and forties. 100 percent of you are going to transition at some time . . . that’s a fact. You are either going to walk out or be carried out, but one day you will no longer be the Pastor. So, if it’s true that every Pastor is an interim, don’t you think you should have a plan to do it well? In fact, I’d like to suggest that if you don’t have a plan, you aren’t going to do it well at all. Here’s the message that I want my story to send:

• We don’t own our churches . . . we are stewards.
• We don’t own our ministry. We don’t own our staff. We don’t own the people. All of it belongs to God.
• He’s given us grace for the assignment, and one day, the grace is going to be lifted off the assignment. When that happens, we need to go find where the grace is. God isn’t just going to call you away from something; He’s going to call you to something.

At EXPAND, we have spent many years serving Pastors and churches and have identified four common ways that Pastors transition: catastrophic, circumstantial, classical, and co-existing. Catastrophic succession occurs in the event of a sudden and totally unplanned departure such as an accident, death, incapacitation, or other misfortune. Circumstantial succession occurs when there are inappropriate activities leading to dismissal or resignation. Classical succession happens in the event of a planned, phased, and eventually announced succession plan with a definite successor. In this case, the outgoing Pastor often leaves the church and doesn’t attend there. Co-existing succession happens in the event of a planned transition in which the preceding Pastor is repositioned within the church and the succeeding Pastor is the new Lead Pastor. The preceding Pastor becomes amenable to the succeeding Pastor and serves at his or her pleasure.

So, which of these four common succession scenarios will occur in your organization? If you leave it to chance, it will most likely be catastrophic.