Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. I'm Jeremy, I'm Matt. Up until now in Season 3, we've focused our attention on the church that's in the process of finding a new lead pastor. But there's a whole other side to a discussion about the transitional pastor that we haven't explored, namely the transitional pastor himself. In the same way that there are very real costs and very real difficulties that churches experience, the transitional pastor's life and family are also deeply impacted. In this deep dive mini-series we're calling the Humanity, we're going to look at three points of impact that the transitional pastor faces. These are the personal impact to the pastor, the impact on the wife of the pastor and the impact to the children and family of the pastor.

Speaker 1: 0:48

We are going to be looking, we're going to do a short sort of mini-series here in the middle of this season that we're calling the Humanity. Why are we calling it the Humanity? Because church is going through the period of transition from one lead pastor to the next. There's a lot going on and we've been talking about the transitional pastor himself, but we haven't really looked at what the cost is to this person from the human side, from the relational side, and we're going to take the next couple episodes and look at what the human factor is, both to the TP and to the TP's family. I'm using TP. We've started using it. This is transitional pastor. So, Matt, you've worked with several hundred churches so far. You've worked with a number probably more than a dozen transitional pastors about how many guys? How deep has that bench been over the years for you?

Speaker 2: 1:52

so this is newer part of our ministry, these processes that we use church health assessment, envisioning a pastor church they've been around for uh well flourish, been around uh nine years and those processes developed over time. Transitional placing transitional pastors and those processes have developed over time. Placing transitional pastors in churches has just been over the last three years or so that we've been doing that. Okay, so we probably have I probably recruited, I don't know 15 guys to do this at this point, and so that's not huge. It's also not small. As far as I know, we're the only organization in the PCA that's placing transitional pastors in churches.

Speaker 1: 2:24

So what motivates and what satisfies these guys?

Speaker 2: 2:29

Yeah, I think what motivates them is they like being involved in this really critical period in the life of a church. They enjoy it. There are pastors.

Speaker 2: 2:37

I have a friend who is one of my heroes. I got to see him a couple of weeks ago. He and I went through seminary together. We did ministry together in the same church. We even split a large house at one time while we were in seminary because it was cheaper than each of us having apartments, and we did ministry in the house. Great times, wonderful friends, and he's my hero. He got out of the seminary, got a job and he's one of those guys that's in it and he'll probably do one pastorate for his entire ministry, and he's my hero. He is also not suitable for this work. This work is for the twitchy. It's for people that get bored easily because you do not make those long, sustaining, very satisfying pastoral relationships that you do when you stay in one place a long time, and so it's got to be somebody who can get in, get acclimated, gain trust and help people get moving so that he can get out, and so it's a bit for the fast moving, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1: 3:37

That sounds different than just your entrepreneurial kind of guy.

Speaker 2: 3:40

Yes, for sure, and for us at least, it's somebody who is willing to follow a process that's already been defined for them, and that's also not everybody that is definitely not everybody.

Speaker 2: 3:51

There's a guy that I tried to recruit to work with us and he looked at it and we talked it through and whatever, and he's like I'm not sure this is for me. I'm like that's awesome Because there are guys that are. Because there are guys that are and this is a compliment, not a criticism they're more cowboy or they are very intuitive and they would just want to get in and kind of get a feel for how to go about this and they go about it and that's what they want to do. They don't want to have a defined process. That's fine. Really good work is done that way. It's just not the way that Flourish does it.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Well, you're already talking about it, so let's go there. Where do these guys come from and what are you looking for in a good transitional pastor candidate?

Speaker 2: 4:33

Yeah, so good, transitional pastor candidates have extensive pastoral experience, so I don't look at anybody. So like three years, what's that Three?

Speaker 1: 4:40

years or so no. No, a little more than that.

Speaker 2: 4:44

Yeah. So I usually look for at least 15 years experience and usually, ideally, that's in two or three situations. They could have been an assistant at a church, an associate at a church, then a senior. They could have been an associate then a senior. But I'm looking for somebody that has a diversity of experience. If all your experience has been in one church, that's just not as helpful to me, frankly, because you don't have a variety of experience, because you're going to go to a brand new church and have to pick up on it really quick, and people that have had a variety of experience are more equipped to do that.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Age is a critical factor. Our viewers may or may not. Our listeners may or may not ever have seen a picture of me. I was asked last week, I think was it one of my children or a relative? I can't remember who it was, but they asked me when did you start going gray? And it was definitely. We were looking through some pictures and you can see the point at which, when I was in seminary, where I had a few gray hairs but my hair was mostly basically black, but I'm completely gray, and so I think one of the things, frankly, that helps is people that have gray hair, because when you walk into a church and you've got gray hair there is. Even if an American society isn't as age-graded as, say, some Asian cultures or most Asian cultures, having gray hair is of an advantage. Sometimes having less hair is of an advantage, like my friend Jeremy here.

Speaker 1: 6:15

I was going to say Steve Martin was prepared for this by the age of like 23.

Speaker 2: 6:18

By 23,. Yeah, exactly, he had a guy that I went through college with who was already salt and pepper in college. So I think I'm looking for people that are the minimum age that I would say somebody's probably got the requisite experience and kind of the cachet or the gravitas to do this is late 40s.

Speaker 1: 6:36

Married single, Any distinction.

Speaker 2: 6:41

I would be open to a pastor that's been single to do this.

Speaker 2: 6:45

I think always being a single pastor represents challenges in pastoral ministry and I would expect that it would do that in this setting as well. I don't have anybody that I've recruited that's single, but I'm not opposed to it. I should also say, because we're flexible in our arrangement with churches in terms of our contracts, a good portion of the guys that I've recruited, their wife does not move with them to the place where they're doing the ministry. If they're full-time, pick up sticks, move. There are guys who move with their wives, but there are other guys that do Geographic Bachelor or because they're away long weekends. Their wife stays in their forever home and the guy's the one that commutes and sometimes the wife goes with them and sometimes she doesn't. So we try and offer that flexibility by recruiting guys geographically so that they're within three or four hours of a lot of places that might need a transitional pastor, so they don't have to pick up sticks and completely move for two years as a whole household, which is disruptive and difficult.

Speaker 1: 7:42

So talk to me about some of those things. What are some of the hardships that a transitional pastor is going to face?

Speaker 2: 7:48

Yeah. So I don't know three or four, probably One is. It's a lot. It's a very taxing kind of ministry. I enjoyed it when I did it. I recently was able to return to a place where I was a transitional pastor and I just smiled when I did it. I recently was able to return to a place where I was a transitional pastor and I just smiled.

Speaker 2: 8:13

It's an exhilarating experience, but it also can be very tiring and daunting and even exhausting because of the volume of data and the speed at which you need to keep things moving with a brand new group of people you've never worked with. So it's an entirely different thing to try and do envisioning with people that you've known for four or five months than it is to do it with people that you've known for four or five years, sure, and so the speed at which you have to be prepared to move things along is pretty high. The workload is pretty high. I tell guys to expect 50 or 55 hours of work a week because you're preaching and you're leading and it's all happening. What's going to feel fairly quickly? And so I think that it is.

Speaker 2: 8:50

I have a guy that's a quite fit 68-year-old who's killing it, doing it right now for us, but I think that there are pastors who prefer a slower pace and not as much workload. It's just the way that God made them and so what their capacity is, it is not very much for those folks. I should say that when we try and recruit somebody, one of the things I ask them to do and I even help with defray the cost of it is to go to a training, because I want them to see really clearly what it is that we're going to be asking them to do and before they opt in Because they may think that this is. I have people approach me with deal regularly. Hey, I think I'd really enjoy this, this would be really fun. And then they go to the training. They're like, oh okay, this is probably.

Speaker 1: 9:36

This is not what I expected.

Speaker 2: 9:38

It's not what I expected. This is probably the hardest thing that I've ever done, and that's more the way to think about it. It's probably the hardest thing you've ever done.

Speaker 1: 9:45

What is the spiritual cost to a TP?

Speaker 2: 9:50

I think that part of the spiritual cost is boy. If you want to learn dependency, this is the place to do it right.

Speaker 1: 9:57

Melody. Lack of adequacy.

Speaker 2: 9:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife tends to remind me that, and helpfully. Why does God give Paul the apostle the thorn in the flesh? Paul was incredibly gifted. Let's say he's probably one of the three, four, five most consequential people that have ever walked the earth. And yet he was the equivalent of double PhD. He was brilliant and wonderful and incredibly gifted and effective. And God had to convince him that he was weak. God needed him weak. And this is.

Speaker 2: 10:33

It's a piece I'm going to write sometime in the next year or so, but a couple of years ago the theme for me spiritually for a year was I think we always think, boy, I wish I was stronger, I wish I was spiritually stronger, I wish I was stronger in this or that or you know I could, uh, in overcoming this sin or this habit or whatever. And a couple of years ago it probably through my wife's wonderful influence and and that text in Romans, no Corinthians about God trying to convince Paul that the key was weakness is that I came to realize that my problem was not that I wasn't strong enough, my problem was that I wasn't weak enough, because weak people pray and they depend because they've got no other hope. So what's it cost spiritually. It'll cost you picking up your cross and following Jesus in this setting, which will probably present new challenges that you've not faced before. That's the other cost, I think, is that you will have to lean into your own growing and learning.

Speaker 2: 11:37

My friends call me the book guy. The notes for these shows will have books in most all of them, and that's what I expect of our transitional pastors is that they're learning and growing and they're continuing to grow as needed in this situation, because I ask in my coaching of our transitional pastors what are you reading, what are you doing?

Speaker 2: 11:53

to try and get more equipped, for what this church needs in this moment Is that it costs you because you need to keep learning and growing.

Speaker 1: 12:03

What is the um? What's the relational cost for the tp? Yeah, so I think this is probably married. Yeah, it's probably married and certainly the way that I did.

Speaker 2: 12:13

It was geographic bachelor, so I think it's costly in that way. If you're you know, if you're able to have your wife move with you and pick up sticks and move to a place full time, it's glorious, it's wonderful. I think it is the ideal. But being that it's the ideal, it is not the always. So I think there's definitely relational costs.

Speaker 2: 12:29

My wife and I look at the two years that I was a transitional pastor and we're just like. We looked at it very soberly at the start and said this is going to be costly and when we got to the end we looked at each other and said that was costly and I don't think it made our relationship suffer either with my wife or the kids that I still had at home, but it was definitely challenging. I think it's costly relationally for the transitional pastor, for the people that you end up having to have hard conversations with. These are the people that hired you and brought you in, but they're also the people that are a part of the reason why the church is where it's at and why it necessitated having you come in, and there is almost always some degree of crucial conversations. That's the book we can link to this episode that need to happen and need to be done well, but many times there are elders who need to have a conversation with them to have them step down.

Speaker 2: 13:36

There are volunteer ministry leaders who need to stop doing what they're doing. There are changes that volunteer ministry leaders who need to stop doing what they're doing. There are changes that need to be made and those are really difficult conversations. The church where I was a transitional pastor, almost the entire staff turned over either before or during the time that I was there and necessarily it turned over and so that's difficult. It's difficult to sit with people in your office and say you know, here's the job and here's you and I'm not sure these match all that well.

Speaker 1: 14:08

It's difficult to have that and not have that viewed either by others or even by you as a failure. I mean, I recognize that there's because you're driving to a particular destination. You can see the success, yeah, but the difficulty of going through that process it's very hard Will likely feel like a failure to most people.

Speaker 2: 14:28

Yeah, because I think we'd rather you know, I would much rather that people change. That is always the design. You can always come to somebody and say, hey, this needs to be different, let's see if we can work towards it being different and check back in this 30, 60, 90 days. But if people can't change or it's not within, they thought the job was within their gifts and with their passions. And you know, one of my friends says people need to be pegged for a job passionate, equipped and gifted. And they thought they were I'm thinking of a particular staff member and they thought they were passionate, equipped and gifted for what the job was and what the job description said. But over time they realized, oh man, there's only like a quarter of me that fits this job. And that's the reason that we're ending up in this conflict situation and it's the better part of wisdom to move on. And yes, those are difficult conversations to have and you have to get used to having them.

Speaker 1: 15:27

So the transitional pastor is typically stepping into what's the equivalent of an ICU or an ER at a church. Yes, yep, what can the TP do? Or what does the TP do to keep himself from being burnt out? And what does flourish do to equip and power and support the TP during this time?

Speaker 2: 15:48

Yeah. So saying that you should expect 50 or 55 hours of work is also to say that's all you should expect of yourself and all that flourishing and I expect of you as the one that leads this. And so I tell guys, we build into the expectations. So we have an expectation section in our contracts that are approved both by the elder board and by the transitional pastor and in that is expectation for hours and a full day sabbatical rest every week. And when you're within driving distance, my encouragement is leave, Go back to your real home, not your temporary home, and go, be off. Put your phone on, do not disturb. Put your automatic email responder on. Publish.

Speaker 2: 16:38

The transitional pastor is not available on Thursdays, Right, and don't book meetings in it. Don't cheat on yourself, Right, that's the day that is your Sabbath. Take it, you need it. We also are in our contracts, you know, a week off every three months, which is less than most pastors, most lead pastors, actually get In our setting in the PCA. Most lead pastors get four weeks of vacation and two weeks of study leave, but transitional pastors, they've got to take that time off to recoup and to rejuvenate.

Speaker 2: 17:08

The other thing is, as I coach guys, I really encourage them in your 50 or 55 hours that you're doing over six days, if that's nine hours average a day. And Pete Scazzaro influenced me in this way and I like this influence and I've tried to live it myself. Three blocks of time in a day for pastors morning, afternoon and evening Only work two of them. Put your nine hours in two of them. Don't work all three, Because if you work all three especially if you're later, 40s or older I can't.

Speaker 2: 17:41

I used to be able to work 16 hour days here. I can't work 16 hour days anymore. Say a hard amen to that. I'd like to. I'd like to be able to. I might fight against my creaturely limitations against it, but I can't work 16 hour days anymore. And so you need to be reasonable with yourself and say you know nine hours, six days a week is plenty. It also forces you to be selective and to focus on. My main job is to get this church through the processes right. I may add things to it. I certainly did. In my transitional pastorate we restructured the ministry of the church. That was not strictly within the confines of what it is that they had called me to do, but it was necessary. In the work that was there. We needed to restructure, actually, both the elder board and the ministry structure of the church, and so we did, and that was to the benefit of everybody.

Speaker 1: 18:36

Have you watched a TP burnout? Hell yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:41

Oh yeah, it's very sad. One of the things when we were getting into this, one of my goals was to do all that I could to make sure that that didn't happen. There's a sister organization not a sister organization, but acquaintances another organization that places transitional pastors and I once asked one of their executives. I said you know how much do these guys do? You know, you recruit a guy. There's costs involved in that training him, coaching him, supporting him, placing him so there's a lot of for an organizational head. There's a good amount of cost involved in recruiting a transitional pastor and actually getting them on the field somewhere. Okay, and their internal statistics were their guys were doing on average something like 1.2 transitional pastorates, which meant that they had a lot of one and dones.

Speaker 2: 19:38

And I'm really, really trying to avoid that for two reasons. One is it's brutal on the guy. You've recruited him to not be a weekly preaching pastor anymore in a local church, so he's already undergone a job change. And if because he doesn't have the requisite experience or gifting, or you made a bad placement, or the training wasn't sufficient, or you didn't do enough work ahead of time with the church, or you didn't give him enough support or coaching, encouragement along the way, and he's a one and done, it may have served that one church well.

Speaker 2: 20:14

I pray that it does but it's devastating for the guy and, frankly, it's devastating to me because I consider that a failure. If a guy does a one and done, that's a failure on my part, also as a ministry head, because I didn't give the guy the space where he could keep doing this. We both thought this is what God wants you to do with this phase of your life. And if we get to the end of one and it's a failure on my part that he can't do another one, that's brutal. That's the kind of stuff that for me, sticks with me and I'm trying to avoid that the best that I can.

Speaker 1: 20:49

That guy has to go home to his wife, yeah, to his family, to whatever his next thing is. Job is yeah, and rebuild, recover, renew, redeem.

Speaker 2: 21:04

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Heal.

Speaker 2: 21:06

So I'm trying to avoid that the best I can by being there for guys, by providing coaching and support, being alongside of them as they go through it have you read Andrew Murray's Absolute Surrender?

Speaker 1: 21:18

I don't think so. I would recommend it to every pastor. I don't think it's life changing, but I think he does a really good job in that very short book of really teasing out and sitting with the dependency that we're called to as followers of Christ. Okay, so last question we'll end the plane here. If I'm listening and you haven't scared me off and I'm thinking you know a transitional pastor is something I might be able to do in my fifth inning, what advice would you give me?

Speaker 2: 22:01

Yeah, I think, reach out, let's have a conversation. You can hit us up at info at flourishcoachingorg and that'll put you in a spot where our executive administrator will get you into an appointment slot with me and I'll give you that opportunity. And so the first thing that it would be is a conversation for me to try and understand why this might be something that God's leading you towards. And if that conversation goes well and you're still interested after we talk, then the next step would be to go to a training, because the training will familiarize you with what this would be as an overall process and what's involved in it, and would give us more fertile ground to talk, to have a conversation and go. Okay, now what do you think? Do you think you're suited for this? Do you think you want to do this?

Speaker 2: 22:41

I've got like this I just talked to within the last couple of weeks. We were colleagues in a press jury a couple of decades ago and he heard about what we're doing. He reached out to me and said hey, I want to talk about this. I'm in the fifth inning with my last kids going off to college in the fall. My wife and I are thinking about I'm in a productive industry right now I don't need to go anywhere, but I'm thinking about what do I want to do when I grow up? And he's the right kind of person that I want to be talking to, and you might be listener, you might be the right kind of person that I want to talk to, and so, anyways, reach out for a conversation.

Speaker 1: 23:11

If you're listening and you're wearing clothes, this could be you. If you're not, I don't want to know about it. Matt, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, I think this is a really important topic. That's why I want to spend the time talking not just about the teepee, but we'll look in a couple episodes at the same sort of questions for his wife and then for his family, because I think that I know, that you know, because you've experienced the reality of the burden the teepee carries.

Speaker 2: 23:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:43

You know it not just as the executive director of Flourish, but you know it as someone who has years in time in the game yeah, skin in the game and because of the conversation we've had, I've heard your heart not just for the churches but also for the TPs and I think it's really worthwhile to spend the time highlighting that and also saying thank you to the guys who are willing to step up to this role.

Speaker 2: 24:10

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 24:12

Thank you very much, man. Thank you guys for coming along. Thank you 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 is only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned Jesus is still gathering his people and 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.

Speaker 1: 24:45

If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at flourishcoachingorg or you can email info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also follow us on Facebook, twitter or YouTube. It would make our day if you would like or subscribe. Wherever you're listening, please rate and review this podcast with your team, your friends and anyone that this may help. A special thanks to Bay Ridge Christian Church for the use of their space to record today's episode. All music for this podcast 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 encouraging and equipping your church.