Expect future church leaders to come from within their church

As a regional minister for 14 years I assisted a number of churches in their pastoral searches. When I began we continued to use a model that had worked reasonably well for many years, but by the time I retired it was obvious that model was not as effective in some churches as it once was. In the old model I would take a number of profiles of potential candidates that seemed to match the needs of the church to the pastor search committee. As the years went by it became obvious that the number of profiles generated through our denomination was getting smaller and smaller. Many of our smaller churches began seeking bivocational leadership, and those individuals were virtually absent in our official system.

Finding bivocational ministers is a challenge for smaller churches and the denominational people who assist them. As I shared with many churches, the bivocational pastor you seek is going to be someone near your church geographically. Someone is not likely to move from New Jersey to Indiana to serve a bivocational church.

One very healthy, smaller church was struggling to find a bivocational pastor when a lay leader approached me. He said he felt led to serve in that position although he lacked any kind of ministerial training or education. He was a local farmer with a college degree, but he was also a respected person in the church and community. I recognized that he would come into that position with something someone new would not have: instant respect and a knowledge of the area. He did become the pastor of that church and continues to serve it very well. He went through our Region's Church Leadership Institute to get some basic ministerial and theological training. His success inspired me to suggest to other churches to look within their congregation for their pastoral leadership. This has worked out well for many of them.

Mega-churches do the same thing. A few years before the senior pastor retires the church often names his successor. When the retirement does come, the person has been preparing for the position for a period of time, he or she has already bought into the vision and ministry of the church and is familiar with the members and the community. A new person would spend years learning these things.

As the number of seminary students continue to decline I believe more churches will begin to look within their congregations for future pastors and ministerial staff. We have many pastors nearing (or past) retirement age, several denominations have an emphasis on starting new churches, more and more churches are seeking bivocational leadership, and all of these factors are going to make it more challenging for churches to find qualified people to lead them. It may well be that God is raising up someone from within your church to fill that pastoral role.

Personally, I think this can be a good thing for many reasons.

• The person has existing relationships in the church.
• The person is already a trusted and respected leader in the church.
• The person is familiar with the area and its needs.
• The person has a track record with the church so they know exactly what they are getting with him or her.
• The person has bought into the mission and vision of the church or he or she would not be there.

If you are in a church that will likely be looking for new pastoral leadership soon I would encourage you to begin now looking at who within your congregation might be called to that position. This might be a good time to begin giving this person additional ministry opportunities to see how he or she responds and to learn from the experience. The church might want to invest in ministerial education for the individual.  There are ministry assessment centers the church might want to use to see if the individual has the personality and passion to serve in ministry. There is nothing wrong with planning ahead for your future pastoral needs.