What Makes a Founding Pastor Unique?
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.
Ted Powers, the church planting coordinator for the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), explains why he thinks this is the case:
“For one reason, the church has become very attached to the planter and identifies more strongly with him than in a church where they may have had multiple pastors over the years. There is more of a sense that he is the church vs. we are the church. We were here before him, and we’ll be here after him.’”[1]
So, what is it about founding pastors that makes them so unique?
Founding Pastors are Original Culture Makers
I contend that founding pastors are culture makers, whereas those that follow them are culture shapers. A founding pastor will lay the first foundations of a church’s sense of what it is, and all the pastors that follow will only be adding to or adapting to that first structure in the life of the church.
One first successor pastor I research noted her struggle in coming to understand this issue.
As time went by, it became apparent that the most daunting issues of the transition had much less to do with my being a woman than with my not being my predecessor. Forty-two years is a long time, and people had become accustomed to having things done a certain way. Whatever I suggested felt revolutionary to some, even if it was nothing more major than moving the church mailbox.[2]
Illustratively, the same may be said of the original sanctuary in a church facility. Even if it was built generations before and a whole new complex of flashy buildings have grown up around it, maybe even a whole new sanctuary, people still speak in hallowed terms about the old structure. They tell stories about how it came into being, reminiscing about events that occurred there.
Similarly, the ministry of a founding pastor leaves a first imprint on the life of a church that is esteemed by the generations that follow, especially by those with personal memories of his having preached the church’s first sermon, conducted its first baptism, led its first communion service, performed its first wedding, and conducted the first funeral. All these evocative firsts become deeply embedded in the psyche of the congregation alongside practical firsts such as the founding pastor’s preaching methodology, shepherding approach, leadership style, and more.
Since the Lord calls his people to remember their origins, first successor pastors need to try to understand these origins if they wish to have longer term success.
Founding Pastors Are Original Values Synergizers
Another reason for ascribing a unique place to a founding pastor is that the core values of the founding pastor closely resonate with the core values of the people who first join. Either an existing core group with deeply embedded core values unites with a planting pastor closely adhering to that same list or, more commonly, the synergy is developed via a planting pastor forming a core group whose core values closely align to his own. Such consonance creates an extraordinary level of synergy that will likely never be repeated in that particular congregation.
This is one of the chief reasons why the transition from the founding pastor to the first successor pastor is more complicated than any other. It’s also what makes the bonds between a founding pastor and their core group intense, not unlike the bonds between children and their biological parents. One expert on step-families noted that
“The bond between the parent and child is one of life’s strongest—stronger, one might argue, than the bond between the parent and new mate.”[3]
As a result, when any of the core values of the original pastorate are violated, the consequences can be painful and intense.
Founding Pastors Are Original System Immunizers
When the core values of a founding pastor and original core group are embraced by all the parties, the founding pastor can rapidly inculcate them into the ministries of the church. Doing this, according to Bridges and Bridges, is like immunizing the congregation against ideas or systems that go against the fundamental commitments in the organization.
"Every organizational system has its own natural 'immune system' whose task it is to resist unfamiliar, and so unrecognizable, signals."[4]
As a result, the cultural values of the founding pastor and core group are deeply embedded in the music ministry, children’s ministry, youth ministry, pulpit ministry, and more. Once this immunizing process begins, the core cultural values become like white blood cells to keep any perceived threats to the system at bay.
One example of this inoculation might be inflexibility regarding the musical style of a church plant. If the musical style is ensemble-based and a group tries to enter the congregation and insist on a choir-based approach, the core leadership group is either going to insist that if the newcomers wish to assimilate they will have to relinquish their efforts or conversely that they try to find another church that aligns better with their views. There is often little room for compromise when foundational church practices are in view.
Founding Pastors Are Original Ministry Hubs
One final reason for the uniqueness of the founding pastor is that he is often the only paid staff member, and as a result, he becomes the center-point and only hands-on staff worker in major ministry areas. In some cases, the church may not yet have a session, so he is the de-facto decision maker and chief-strategizer. When it comes to resolving difficulties, he is the major problem-solver. As far as pastoral care is concerned, he is the primary shepherd. When it comes to the equipping ministries of the church, he does the preaching, worship planning, and teaching. So, all of the ministries of the church are attached to and dependent on him in some way and eventually this attachment becomes part of the culture of the church.
This dynamic resembles that of a small business entrepreneur who has to have his hands on everything, something that one founding pastor I interviewed observed in his own father’s entrepreneurial efforts and which bled into his own way of doing ministry in the early days of his first church plant.
Cautions about the Ministries of Founding Pastors
Because of the strict financial limitations facing most church plants, such an unhealthy system is a common scenario, and practically speaking, it works well until the church grows beyond the founding pastor’s ability to manage all the ministry decisions being made. In seasons like this, the weaknesses in the model begin to show as the founding pastor may continue to insert himself into decision making processes better left to others, leading to major conflict or a deeper entrenchment of the founding pastor’s idiosyncratic ministry approach.
It is at this critically important moment early in the life of the church, when there is such high energy and synergy, and when a founding pastor is planting seeds for long-term sustainability, that he may be, unwittingly, also sowing weeds that will make the inevitable transition away from his leadership difficult.
To be clear, it is the rare church planter and core group who approves of this counterproductive mindset. Far more commonly, they are simply trying to survive, pouring their blood, sweat and tears into establishing a church which is a source of spiritual encouragement and blessing. But over time, the synergy surrounding their core cultural values can turn overly deferential and morph into an ecclesial fiefdom in which people become reticent to question the venerated founder, which then tends to reinforce the dependence on the founder even more as the church widens its membership base.
That said, those who are key leaders around a founding pastor are well advised to begin, at the earliest moment possible, to think about the inevitability of transition and to begin to assess how they and their founding pastor can build structures within the ministries of their church which will help it to remain sustainable past the transition that will eventually come to pass.
Inevitably, as one founding pastor interviewed in my research finally realized, he needed to actively and willingly hand over control of many ministries that he had previously managed, a process that often seems foreign to an in-process church plant.
“Some sessions have a controlling view of the ministries in the congregation, some pastors have a controlling view...I had struggled with this myself, but now my view is just the opposite...our real role is servanthood and equipping.”
For many founding pastors, reaching this point is very difficult because of what Vanderbloemen and Bird referred to as “Founders Syndrome,” a complex leadership mindset that prevents them from being able to differentiate their own best interests from those of their congregation. [5]
Church sessions and lay leaders would do well to orient their founding pastors to the danger of this syndrome early in their ministry tenure and to schedule opportunities for the founding pastor and the church leadership as a whole to debrief their ability to differentiate between their own best interests as pastors and those of the congregation they serve.
Along these lines it may be helpful for church leaders and the founding pastor to frame a loose timeline within a founding pastor’s tenure in order to target an ideal season for transition. Understanding that most pastors are not entrenched until about three years have passed and that long term-pastorates commence after about seven years, I would recommend that the ideal transition zone for an entrepreneurial style church planter would be somewhere in the five to seven-year window.[6]
[1] Ted Powers, RE: Dissertation Research, “Email to Chris Polski” (September 29, 2017).
[2] Schnase, Transitions, 16.
[3] Moseley and Moseley, Making Your Second Marriage a First-Class Success, 117.
[4] Bridges and Bridges, Managing Transitions, 50.
[5] This concept was developed by researchers William Vanderbloemen and Warren Bird as they researched pastoral succession. However, much of their research, was developed in looking at the world of business.
[6] This timeline need not be overly rigid but often it helps to have a goal in mind in order to prompt the kinds of conversations between founding pastors and their leadership teams that are envisioned in this dissertation. Additionally, I might caveat this suggestion for founding pastors who demonstrate strong managerial gifts and who may be able to continue to thrive beyond the initial season of church-planting, though this is not very common.
