One of the most common questions I receive is whether or not a long-term pastor can stay on the church staff he pastored after he leaves his position as lead pastor?

While there are a range of overarching issues that can lead to painful or failed pastoral transitions, we can usually locate them in at least one of the following categories.

Every church needs to develop and maintain two types of succession planning documents, one for a crisis transition and one for a planned transition.

Among the most challenging aspects of developing a succession plan is the consideration of whether the next leader will come from inside the organization or out.

“A person may have all the traits of a leader, but if he or she doesn’t personally see to the development of new leaders, the organization won’t be sustainable.”

Church leaders should carefully assess the long term viability and giftedness of their founding pastor to determine whether he believes, and they agree, that he can thrive in an environment that is less entrepreneurial than a first generation plant.

A healthy leadership team will take pains to keep a clear sense of how their founding pastor is doing and how his long term sense of calling may be evolving.

In my opinion, of these four critical areas, the pulpit ministry has the greatest impact on transition, because, whether intentional or not, the way a founding pastor manages the pulpit ministry will most heavily impact his successor.

Many of the experts in the field of pastoral succession merge the category of founding pastor with that of a legacy or long-term pastor. While I understand why, it’s my conviction that while both long term pastors and founding pastors have a unique place in the life of a church, there will only ever be one founding pastor.

The fact that over one-third of pastors affected by significant church conflict subsequently leave their church suggests that churches lack reliable research and tools for managing pastoral transition.