Burnout and Transition
Note: All the names of individuals and churches in this story have been changed to protect their identity.
Fellowship Presbyterian Church (FPC) of Dallas
FPC was a church plant and bore a heavy ministry imprimatur from its mother church, which had hand selected its founding pastor, Gary Matthews, who was then given the charge of starting the church from scratch using guidelines passed along from the mother church.
After a few months, Matthews had formed a core group to implement the organizational model passed on by the mother church. Sam Jackson, a ruling elder who was a part of the project from the beginning, said,
“FPC had the DNA of the whole mother church planting model, and Gary was very much of that school as well.”
Over the next thirteen years, the church grew from the core group to a congregation of almost 200.
However, unbeknownst to the leadership, the founding pastor was going through a painful burnout. As Sam put it,
“Looking back now, knowing something about Maslach's burnout inventory, our pastor had been dealing with it for a while and covering it up . . .. Let me make that real clear: it wasn't a scandalous fall; it was that he had nothing left to give.” [1]
Once the session became aware of the problem, things degenerated quickly, and Gary withdrew from all of his ministry responsibilities. The session proceeded to put him on a leave of absence, which turned into a sabbatical, which ultimately resulted in his resignation. According to Jackson, Gary never preached another sermon at the church. As Sam reflected on the situation, he realized that Gary wanted out.
“In some ways, given where he was at the time, he just wanted somebody else to pull the proverbial pin.”
Though the process of burnout had been going on for some time, when it finally erupted, it came as a complete surprise to the leadership. They were now left without any semblance of a plan for what to do next, let alone deal with the transition from the founding pastor to the first successor pastor.
“The meta-question of moving from the founder to the second pastor really wasn't a question we wrestled with, it was just more of the mechanics of ‘how do we find the next guy?’”
The pastor who would later succeed him, Barry Carter, remarked,
“Gary was tired, and I think the congregation was tired of him. They both knew it was a bad marriage.”
At first, the task for developing a plan to replace the founding pastor fell completely to Jackson, who wanted to ask for help from the departing founding pastor but knew he couldn’t offer any assistance because of his emotional state. As a result, Sam pressed forward on his own and quickly oversaw the formation of a pulpit search committee. He worked on this search committee as well.
However, learning how to approach the transition was proving difficult. Sam and the other elders struggled to see how a new pastor could blend in with their highly structured organizational culture and how they could be certain that he would be a good fit. In the absence of any internal guidance, Sam did some research, got help from the administrative committee of the denomination, and talked to people he knew. He added,
“Looking back now, partly because we we're moving from the founder to another pastor, we just felt kind of a little bit adrift and lost at that point.”
Unfortunately, the emotional pressure of losing the founding pastor and figuring out the transition while juggling needs in his own family took a toll on Sam as he too experienced his own breakdown.
“I served on the pulpit search team up until I hit a point myself where I couldn't continue.”
Eventually a solid candidate for the position emerged in the person of Barry Carter, but Barry himself had become aware of the difficult circumstances involved in the late days of Gary’s tenure and felt like it was critical to ask a lot of questions about the circumstances surrounding his departure, the culture of the church, and the degree of woundedness in the congregation. He added,
“We talked a lot about what the desire of the church was going forward and we had a lot of conversations about cultural fit.”
What ended up tipping the balance toward Barry accepting the call was a critical insight related to the end of the founding pastor’s term.
“When he left, he showed a lot of humility. He did not leave scorched earth. He didn’t do underhanded things that a lot of pastors do when they leave. He just did it well. He left with kindness and humility. He didn’t blow anything up or set fire to things.”
Sam affirmed this as he recounted the severing of Gary’s pastoral call at presbytery.
“When we formally severed the pastoral relationship with Gary at presbytery, I had a number of guys tell me that it was the most beautiful and caring severing of a pastoral relationship they'd ever seen. I mean, we got there and wept together. We love him still, you know, we loved him then, and we love him now.”
Sam knew that even though it was the right decision for Gary to move out of ministry, Gary carried a tremendous burden of guilt for having let down the church he founded.
Stories such as this are not uncommon. Often, founding pastors know internally that the time has come for them to depart but they fear the prospect so much that they allow it to build anxiety within themselves.
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.
[1] https://www.mindgarden.com/117-maslach-burnout-inventory, accessed on April 24, 2020.
