The Church Renewal Podcast
The Church Renewal Podcast
Why Your Church Shouldn't Navigate Pastor Transitions Alone
Navigating a pastoral transition represents one of the most pivotal moments in a church's life. When Grace Point Church in Pennsylvania faced this challenge, they discovered that the path forward wasn't something they needed to forge alone.
Steve, former elder board chairman and search committee leader, shares the vulnerable journey of realizing that despite having experienced leaders with corporate hiring backgrounds, pastoral transitions require a fundamentally different approach. "That realization that this is a task too big for us, that we had to just trust the Lord was going to deliver and that the Lord was preparing for us" became the cornerstone of their process.
The conversation reveals how a structured, biblically-grounded approach transformed potential anxiety and division into unity and confidence. Steve candidly discusses the initial reluctance some felt about seeking outside help, and how that perspective shifted dramatically once they committed to the process. "Don't try to do it alone. That route is a minefield," he cautions other churches facing similar transitions.
Perhaps most surprisingly, Grace Point discovered that their professional, thoughtful approach attracted pastoral candidates they initially thought were "beyond what we had envisioned we would be able to bring." The careful attention to church health assessment, congregational preparation, and systematic evaluation created an environment where both the church and potential pastors could clearly discern God's leading.
Whether you're a church leader currently navigating transition or simply want to prepare wisely for the future, this conversation offers practical insights on stewarding these pivotal seasons with wisdom, prayer, and outside perspective. Connect with us at flourishcoaching.org to learn more about how our team can support your church through leadership transitions and beyond.
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Welcome to Season 3.5 of the Church Renewal Podcast from Florist Coaching. Why is this 3.5? Because we weren't quite done with Season 3.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I'm Jeremy. I'm Matt.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us. When we wrapped on Season 3, there were some conversations that we left on the table which we're giving you now in this mini-season. Today we're bringing you a conversation Jeremy had with Steve, a church leader in Pennsylvania. Steve shared some of the particulars of his story.
Speaker 2:Would you just introduce who you are, your name, your title, your position in the church?
Speaker 3:Sure, so I'm Steve Burke. I'm a former elder at Grace Point Church. I spent six years on the elder board, was the chairman of the elder board. Soon after uh, finishing my second term as an elder, I was asked to be the chairman of the pastor search committee. Uh, as we went to pursue a new senior pastor at grace point what year was that? Uh, that was last year, that was 2023, that that started. So matt, what was?
Speaker 2:the matt. You just heard me go into host voice. That's all right. That's all right, Steve. What was the? When did you and your church know that you were going to be needing to make a transition in your leadership?
Speaker 3:Well, our senior pastor let us know that, because of family reasons, he was going to be no longer serving in that capacity, and so we knew that it was time to find the next lead pastor.
Speaker 3:And you know, for any church that's, you know, that's a really big deal, because it's not just the people in the church that are currently there and their spiritual growth they're impacted by that, but that community that you live in and you just start to really get the feeling of man.
Speaker 3:You know the decision that's made and who the Lord leads here is key, and I wanted to make sure that you steward the time well, doing it the right way. We were fortunate that we hadn't had to go out and look for a senior pastor, for you know a number of years, and so it was just a good opportunity to look for a senior pastor, for you know a number of years, and so it was just a good opportunity to look for help. And I think that one of the big key pieces for us was, you know, we wanted to do this right. We knew that it was a major decision. We wanted to do it in a way that honored the Lord and that was thoughtful, prayerful and I was just carefully done, and so finding somebody that had experience, that had been through the process, that knew the pitfalls and knew how to guide you and how to use the Lord's word to focus you on the right things through the process was really key.
Speaker 2:How long had your pastor been serving before he needed to go?
Speaker 3:So he had been there six years. I started serving on the elder board a month before he started, and I finished my two three-year terms one month prior to him deciding that he needed to move on, so nobody on the leadership at the current time had been through a pastor transition on that. It was about six years, though, that he was there.
Speaker 2:What was the health of your church at that time?
Speaker 3:You know, over those six years we actually one of the key things when our former pastor came in was a focus on health. We really believed that there was room for growth and health improvement and we had made some major strides. But we also knew that transition times are a great opportunity to look at who you are, look at where you're at as a church and to try to prepare to set the next pastor up well with as healthy a church as possible, and that's one thing that Blourish. We're just essential in being able to help us to find our blind spots, be able to be prayerfully but very direct on how he delivered that information to us on here's where you're at guys, here's where you know. He came out and did his assessments, came out, talked to people, talked to the elders, talked to staff and really got a good sense of where we were doing well and where we could grow, where we could get healthier, and so that was one of the first things we did with Matt. That was actually the only initial commitment with him, and after that process it was just really clear to me that the Lord was working in Matt and he was simply going to do what the Lord asked him to do.
Speaker 3:You know, delivering information on hey, here's how you could grow, here's how you could get better, isn't always well received, and being able to take a step back and see where you can learn and grow was really only nine scriptures, pointing you to a specific process that helps to keep your congregation and your leadership praying and working towards the same goals making sure you keep first things first about, you know, preaching the Lord's word and keeping that center to the messages and all the things around what you're looking for in a pastor.
Speaker 3:That whole process that he took us through was really key and it really set us up for success because it took away the uncertainties around how should I do this, how should I do that? And I think some of us had a tendency to think, because of our jobs that we have in the secular world, that we maybe knew how to hire people or knew how to go through this process. I mean, there's several of us on the search committee that have done extensive work in the secular world in that regard. But what was also very clear is just how different this is. There are some overlaps, but primarily there's a prayerful process that helps keep you together as a congregation and helps you to trust each other and the Lord, that he's working and really it comes back to the idea and the understanding that the Lord is the one that's going to bring the next pastor to the church and you're being ready to receive that pastor and you're working through a process to recognize who that is.
Speaker 2:What parts of it? Maybe not any, but I mean I want to give opportunity here just to explore this a little bit. But were any parts of it? As you were getting into the Church of Health assessment or as you were getting the feedback or as you were going through it as a leadership or as a church, did any parts of that become painful, scary, uncomfortable?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think before we had the training with Matt, there was a lot of uncertainty about what is the right way to do this. You know how much help do you get. How much do you try to do on your own? When do you get the information out for your pastor? How long is too long to wait? What should we be doing in the waiting time? You know how do we wait.
Speaker 3:Well, and that was probably the scariest part, is just wanting to make sure that the gravity of bringing a pastor into a congregation, when you think long term on the implications of that, when that sits on your shoulders, if you try to put too much of it on yourself or on your team, it's weighty. And so, you know, Matt's process really liberated us from that because it makes it clear that this is the Lord's work and it's in His timing. Honestly, once we did the training and the layout of how to go about the process, the right way was really key to help us just be comfortable and confident, honestly, that the Lord was going to do His work and we just needed to follow and do what we could to improve the health. You know, continue to improve the health of the church and prepare our congregation for our next pastor.
Speaker 2:What, throughout this process, I don't know, surprised you or surprised your leadership the most?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, whenever you're looking to get help, there's a wide range of thoughts around that. I personally, historically, have felt man, why can't we just do this on our own? You know we don't need help. We've got such and such number of people in our church it's a big church, right. But that realization that you know, I think there's a wide range there, people that had been in the church for many decades, that understood transitions from the past and understood just how important it was to do it well and just how costly it can be when it isn't done the right way, the conflict that can be created when people disagree on how something should go. So I'd say there was a little bit of uncertainty, you know, is this the right way to go? Is this the right help to get?
Speaker 3:But as we went through the process and the confidence that we had in what we were doing and how we were going about it, it came back to letting the Lord lead us through the process and trusting that this was a task too big for us, that we had to just trust the Lord was going to deliver and that the Lord was preparing for us. We could have really started bickering amongst ourselves if we were not on the same page on where we were heading, and that's where the training that Matt did up front really were those meetings where we went through an in-depth look at what the process looks like. And one thing I would say to people is follow the Flourish process. It's a tried andish process. It's a tried and true process. It's laid out the way it is for a reason, and we did that Once. We decided to go with Matt and Flourish. That was one thing we talked a lot about. Let's follow the process the way it's laid out and designed to be, and that turned out to be one of the best decisions we've made.
Speaker 2:As you guys were going through the process and having some of those questions pop up, you know, within the session. How did you work through to get to that point of unison of thought there that this was the way to go forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know when you, when you get a bunch of applicants in, you know making a decision on who you're going to continue to move through the process with and how you're going to do that. If you didn't have a systematic approach to that, it could get very chaotic and it could be very difficult to navigate the interactions there as a committee, as a search committee, around that. The process that Matt put us through and the sequential approach to that. That lays it out really clearly for you as to what steps should be before the next step and what you can be doing to prepare now for when you're a couple steps down the road. You know there's still tough conversations that have to be had when you're making your final decisions, and we had those.
Speaker 3:But we also knew that we had resources and we stuck to the principles that we don't have to do this alone. We took a prayerful approach, which was very key, which really really set the tone for how people interacted with each other on the committee, but also the resources we had outside of just our committee, with Flourish, being able to call Matt up, being able to call the chairman of our elder board up, being able to talk to our district superintendent and really using the resources that we had all of them. Towards the end of our process there was key steps that, if we'd gone a different way with our candidates, could have turned out a lot differently and could have caused some division in the church ultimately. But being able to, as the chairman of the search committee, lean into Matt's advice and to be able to share that with the committee really helped us to be unified, hmm.
Speaker 3:I'm assuming that you're married, steve Yep Yep, I'm married and I have three teenagers that keep me busy and turn my hair gray.
Speaker 2:As you and your wife were talking through the process. What was the most surprising result after the fact?
Speaker 3:You know, I think the biggest piece, what's kind of interesting is when we first got our resumes for the applications for becoming a pastor, some of the applicants looked like they were I don't know how else to say it but they're out of our league.
Speaker 3:They were pastors that were beyond what we had envisioned that we would be able to bring to a grace point, and we ended up with the pastor that was at the top of that list and the materials that were put together, the professionalism on how our pastor search packet was compiled, how clear it laid out who we are. These pastors knew who we were before we even talked to them, because the information was so well put together and it was so professionally done that they could visualize what we were as a congregation. They could read about what we believed in, what we valued and our history, and so I think that really helped us as well, because the candidates that applied they wanted to be a pastor at Grace Point Church. That's great when you have candidates that are prayerfully considering your position based on really understanding it. You're a long ways down the road.
Speaker 2:Having gone through this yourself, have you talked to any other churches that have gone through the same, either with Flourish or on their own, or with the organization?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. The experience has been beyond what I had even hoped, honestly, and so I know I've talked to a few people since then, and even within our congregation, within our district, there's been a handful of churches that are looking for pastors and made themselves available to talk with them if needed. You know, I think the, whenever I've been discussing it, it's just so important for people to know don't do it alone, don't try to do it by yourself. That route is a minefield. I mean it's, it's it's a problem.
Speaker 3:If you know, bringing in wise counsel is not only biblical, but it's also a recipe for for uh letting the Lord work through your congregation and doing it in a unified way that you know will generate the results the Lord wants, you know, at the end of the day. And so, um, I think uh, uh not feeling like you're you're being weak or that you're being uh lazy by getting help. It's not the case. It's it's wisdom, it's it's it's being able to uh trust other brothers and sisters, it's uh allowing people to use their gifts and to show you, as a congregation, the right way to navigate both the process of bringing in a new pastor and also how to spend the time and how to spend it wisely and prayerfully to set your next pastor up for a successful ministry and prepare your hearts. It's a big deal Transitioning out a pastor. We all know how connected we get to a pastor. Transitioning well the hearts of your congregation and engaging them well into the process is very important.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you answered the question I was going to is very important. Well, I think you answered the question I was gonna. My question was gonna be what would you say to the church or the, the session or the pastor that's looking at this place? They're not sure what to do and maybe they've heard of a flourish, but they're not really sure that, uh, that's the way they'd want to go.
Speaker 3:You know a couple things that I'll say about. Flourish is Matt's a pastor, you know, and being a pastor and being also someone who understands the process from both sides, from both the congregational aspect of it, and also knows the feelings that pastors are going through when they're prayerfully considering these transitions, having that insight into that process, so that you do it in a way that is sensitive to all involved and in the right way, honestly really can help you from making mistakes that you don't even know you're making, all the way from the professionalism of what gets put out there for your church on what's going to get posted for the pastor packet, to the professionalism of the process and all of it undergirded with the gospel, undergirded with it's all based on what the Bible tells us to do and we know the Bible. But sometimes just being pulled back to the right scriptures in the Bible to put on as your foundation for this process was key for us and that was a part of our training too excellent, steve.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Um, okay, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have some fun with that you know what you've.
Speaker 3:It's been a blessing getting to to spend some time with you, and and so I I really appreciate that. Thank you, appreciate the opportunity that I've gotten to spend with you so thank you.
Speaker 2:I've been very encouraged, so thank you very much. Um good, and I think this is about to close out on this, so I'm gonna say goodbye. Thank you much. I will be in touch with you next week. Sounds good. We can pick up from there.
Speaker 3:Have a great night. See you, jeremy, see you, steve. Bye.
Speaker 1:Take care. Thanks 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's only one fully sufficient reason that, this day dawned, jesus is still gathering his people and he's 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. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. For more information, go to our website, flourishcoachingorg, or send an email to info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook X and YouTube.
Speaker 1:We appreciate when you like, subscribe, rate or review our show whenever you're listening. It can be hard for churches to ask for help, so when our clients tell us who referred them, we'll send a small gift to say thanks. A huge thank you to all our guests for making the time to share their stories with us. We are really blessed to have all these friends and partners. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Seferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you.