How To Become a Senior Pastor

Let’s imagine that a huge grassroots revival is coming around the world. People are flooding into the Kingdom. Who will help these people? How will the new pastors be identified and established? There are different ways a person can become a senior pastor. They are all good in certain settings, and they all come with challenges.

1. You can take over an existing church.
2. You can lead a team to plant a church.
3. You can train a local leader in a new area.
4. You can start a Discovery Group as a Person of Peace.

ONE: When the Vineyard movement was about 20 years old, there were many senior pastors who had been in the movement about 20 years. They grew up with it. They were / are awesome. Now some of these pastors are passing over their successful and large churches over to younger leaders. Only a gifted few can possibly handle such a role, and even then, hopefully these gifted few are being mentored and have faithful friends walking alongside them. Passing over the leadership of a large church is an interesting and risky challenge. These challenges are possibly more visible when you look at denominations that have been around for hundreds of years and observe how they have evolved their leadership selection / preparation process.

TWO: Another interesting and risky challenge is to try to plant a mature church. One popular strategy is to form a team of gifted people, and send them out to start a church. They will need to become embedded in the new community, earning trust from the locals. They will need to learn to work and live together, to follow the designated leader, just as the leader must learn to earn the position among this group. This strategy feels safe because the initial group starts out with a trusted team. The costs are high and no one knows what will happen when the storms hit.

THREE: Another strategy I have seen work with some success is when a church planting team goes out with the intention of raising up a local leader. In this case a team is sometimes invited to a new community. They share the gospel, and have some meetings. Over a period of time they identify a leader. Often this leader comes from a different church background. Sometimes they were backslidden and glad to get right with God again. The church planter trains the new leader in the nuances of their denomination and understanding of how to live out the faith. The new pastor calls whenever there are questions. The planting team often helps provide a building for the new group, or other props like chairs or a projector. A variation of this strategy is the adoption, when a  church leader wants to come under the covering of another church.

FOUR: A fourth possibility is when a church planter learns to identify People of Peace. The planter helps this group develop a Discovery Bible Study. Or maybe the church planter becomes the Person of Peace, gathering unsaved friends and relatives to do a Discovery Bible Study together. One challenge for the existing church is to keep trusting and sending out young, immature leaders, with young, immature groups, and watching God bring them to maturity. This feels scary and risky. We want to jump in and help, but if we over-prune or help the young leaders too much, this can be unhelpful. I struggle with this. Often I want to help too much, and often I talk too much. This is not a quick way to plant huge, successful churches. It takes many years for a mango tree to fully mature. But it is easy, and not expensive. Almost anyone can give it a try. Let the young leaders have the fun of successfully braving dangerous storms, and then laugh with them as they recount their stories.

What is your experience with establishing new senior church pastors?

Did anything come to mind that I missed in this brief assessment?