A Senior Pastor's Priorities

By Dan Reiland

Got enough time to do everything you feel needs to be done? If you are like most Senior Pastors, the answer is a resounding and emphatic "NO." Sermons to write, people to marry, meetings to attend, lessons to teach, people to connect with, problems to solve, budgets to approve, buildings to build, strategies to design...the list goes on. We merge all that with the weight of responsibility involved in leading well at home - attempting to, as a wise man once said to me, "Save energy for the people you love the most." There are days when the pressure mounts so high that pastors are ready for the funny farm. (Some pastors tell me their church is a funny farm!)

My desire in this article is to keep you out of the funny farm. To do that, I will outline the top five priorities of a Senior Pastor. This set of priorities comes from years of experience and observation of Senior Pastors who lead well, and those who don't. If you invest your time wisely in these areas your ministry will be more productive and hopefully you will increase the margin in your life that increases the quality of your life.

Before we jump in, I need to add a warning label to this topic of what a pastor should do. While it seems easy enough to write this list, I'm well aware of the grenades just waiting to go off if this isn't handled properly. Do not, I repeat, do not take this list and announce to your board, or worse, congregation: "From now on, this is the limit of what I will do. Everything else can be handled by someone who cares." OK, the last part doesn't represent what you would really say, but you might get close, so be wise. Unless, of course, you enjoy the U-Haul experience.

The transition from doing 27 things to doing 5 will take much time, and the growth of your church is a significant factor in the process. The next article of The Pastor's Coach will deal more with the actual transition to this more focused approach to leading a church. For now, let's hit the list.

1. Primary Leadership and Vision-Casting.

Pray and think.

It all begins here for you as the lead pastor. Your number one responsibility above all others is to invest time on your knees before God seeking His vision, guidance and blessing for your church. If you find yourself too busy to pray, you are too busy, and your church is on shaky ground.

Immediately connected with your responsibility to pray is your responsibility to think. I love asking Senior Pastors: "When do you think?" The most common response is: "Well, I think all the time." To which I say: "I don't think so." I'm not being mean, just honest. None of us think all the time. We are more often on autopilot, and in a hurry at that. Think time needs to be in your schedule or you are robbing yourself and your church of the quality of leadership that is needed.

Create a positive atmosphere and faith-deepening environment. 

Devote yourself to being the chief encourager and positive thinker in the church. This isn't a surface-level "hype" thing. But I am asking that you evaluate your leadership persona to make sure that you possess a positive, energy-filled, approach to life and you are purposeful about letting it spill over into the church.

A spiritual gift that is very common, (almost 100%) among Senior Pastors is faith. This sets the stage for your passion to challenge the church to deepen their faith and walk in obedience to God's Word. Your faith also prepares the way for you to be able to cast vision for your church.

Cast vision!

I have spent considerable time around successful Senior Pastors and there are two things I know for sure. First, they all have a vision, and second you couldn't stop them from talking about it if you wanted to. Don't be bashful about telling the vision over and over again. Let your people see and catch your dream to build a great church. Make sure they understand that they are a part of the dream coming true!

2. Principal Communicator of the Word of God.

 

Establish a biblical culture.

Paul said in I Corinthians 9:16, "Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" As the Senior Pastor, it is your charge to build a biblical church, one based on the truth in God's Word. Teach people to love the Word, study the Word, memorize the Word, and most importantly live by the Word.

Set your aim on transformation.

You and I both know churches that are based more on information than transformation. The scriptures carry authority on their own, but without a teacher to guide people in their understanding and challenge them to a daily application, we have missed the mark. Evaluate your communication skills not on how many people tell you that you preach well, but on how many people demonstrate a changed life.

3. Leadership Development.

 

Identify new leaders.

So much has been written and said on this topic of developing leaders, and yet so little is done. Look for potential leaders. Take a risk. Give people a chance. I agree that it's important to give relationships time to prove their stability as well as test for a servant's heart. But at some point you must take a chance on some new people, even if you're not sure.

Train new and existing leaders.

Pull potential leaders and existing leaders under your wing for training and guidance. Small group environments are best, but larger classes work well, too. Teach leadership and provide opportunities for people to discuss and practice what they are learning. If you would like help on how to develop leaders, John Maxwell has enough top quality material to keep you busy for years. If you are new at this, I recommend that you start with his book and materials on Developing the Leader Within You. After that, study all the material on The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

4. Stewardship Development.

 

Take ownership of the church finances.

It's interesting to observe the numerous approaches to handling money in the church. The extremes range from pastors who have nothing to do with the budget or finances in any way (the finance committee does it all) to others who are in complete control and even sign every check. Neither extreme is recommended - a balance is probably the wisest approach. That being said, I strongly believe that the senior leader must take responsibility for the finances in the church. This includes raising the money and being a good steward of it. I'm not suggesting that you as the Senior Pastor get involved in the minutiae of accounting, but you need to know the general patterns of giving and financial strength of the church.

Create an atmosphere of generous and worshipful giving.

You set the tone for generosity and worship as it relates to giving of finances. Your own personal beliefs and attitudes, even if you don't express them, have a huge impact on your congregation.

If you trust God with your finances, your people will pick up on it. If you are generous, your people will catch that spirit. If you are full of faith, believing that God will keep His promises to provide, your congregation will follow your lead.

5. Personal Evangelism.

 

Cultivate relationships with people who are spiritually unresolved.

I'm not going to preach at you, and let's not even start on who does and doesn't have the spiritual gift of evangelism. The bottom line is if you don't share your faith with people who are disconnected from God and not attending church it is highly unlikely that your church will embrace a culture of evangelism.

The days of knocking on doors may be over, but the days of cultivating relationships with people who are part of your everyday life like your neighbor and your kids' soccer coach will never be over. When is the last time you invited someone to church? When is the last time you shared the plan of salvation with someone? When is the last time you took the initiative to reach out and befriend someone outside your circle? Pastor, this is the core of what we do and why we do it. If you want to focus on the right things, start with evangelism. This is exactly where will pick up in the next The Pastor's Coach article.

You might be thinking, "Man I'd love to focus on those things, but I seem to spend my time on stuff like marrying, burying, and visitation." Changing what you do is not an overnight process. In fact, it takes years. That is one of the reasons many pastors give up and revert back to "preaching and visiting" and that is why most of the churches in America are under 200 in attendance. There is nothing wrong with a small church, but I believe God wants your church to grow. Use the five-point plan I've given you as a guideline and make it happen!

 

In the last edition of The Pastor's Coach, I outlined the top five leadership priorities of a Senior Pastor. We have acknowledged that it is a lengthy process to achieve this focused leadership, but if you stick with it, the results will be a blessing. You will not be able to drop all the things you do overnight, but the list of five priorities sets the right target to try to hit.

I recently spoke with a senior pastor who described the center of his target as "making people happy, putting out fires, and cramming for a sermon every Sunday." While I applaud his honesty, he really needs to change targets.

This article is dedicated to helping you make it through the transition from doing nineteen different things to focusing on the top five priorities. The following is a long-term strategy that will shorten your list of responsibilities and increase your effectiveness if you stick with it.

1.     Think long-term.

Do you remember the game show Name that Tune? Contestants would blurt out something like, "I can name that tune in three notes!" Speed was the name of the game. In our scenario, the name of the game is strategic patience. Strategic patience means that you are driving the church forward with diligence and passion, but realize that the business of life transformation cannot be rushed.

Reshaping the design of what you do and don't do will take time. How long? It's different for every church. Some young church plants make the shift almost immediately because they don't carry any baggage of "this is how we've always done it." Other churches may take years to make the shift. If the latter applies to you, stay encouraged. Look for progress. Long walks are completed by taking one step at a time.

    1. Invest yourself and your church fully into evangelism.

So we begin with evangelism. In the last edition of The Pastor's Coach, I tried to get you to focus on personal evangelism. Let's take the corporate view this time: Your ability to establish a culture of evangelism is crucial. Willow Creek's material on Contagious Christianity will serve you well if you need some help here. I also like the simplicity with which Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA emphasizes evangelism. He sums it all up in two words: invest and invite. Invest your life into the lives of those who don't know Christ and invite them to church. The faith building environment of the church takes over and many soon come to Christ. Invest and invite. He says it over and over again and it works.

Evangelism is the core of the Great Commission and also the chief agent for growth in your church. Growth is a vital factor that helps you reduce the list of things you do - heading to the top five. Remember, the smaller the church, the longer the list of things you do. The larger your church gets, the shorter the list, but the greater the weight of each of those items.

    1. Make a lifelong commitment to develop leaders.

You can't do it yourself. The greatest sports teams have strong benches. You need a deep leadership bench, too. It's not enough to have faithful workers--you need leaders. You can't afford not to develop leaders if you want to reach the potential God has for you. I don't know how large God plans for your church to be, but I do know that you can't get there without good leaders.

As I mentioned in Part 1, John Maxwell (INJOY) has tremendous material that will help you develop leaders. Don't try to figure it out yourself; stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before you with success as leaders.

    1. Cultivate a strong movement toward lay ministry.

I'd like to recommend a tremendous book to you by Sue Mallory titled The Equipping Church. I could write several pages and never do justice to what this new book will do for you. The connection of lay ministry to this transition strategy is that leaders will naturally delegate and hand off the work of the ministry to faithful lay ministers. If this is not a strong part of your culture, it will be difficult to make the transition to a focused list of leadership responsibilities. The strength of your church can truly be measured by the number of people serving in ministry.

Some churches still carry the attitude of "we pay you to do the work." That is sad, and very unbiblical. If that describes your church, I'm sorry. But take heart and don't give up. The next point on education will help you.

    1. Teach the congregation the biblical basis of your real responsibilities.

Take them to Acts 6:1-7 and Ephesians 4:11-12 and teach them over and over until they embrace the truth of these passages. Your job is not to do the ministry, but rather to equip others to do the work of ministry. (The larger your church gets, the more you focus on developing leaders who, in turn, equip others to do ministry.)

    1. Take people with you when you visit.

A very practical part of the process is to show others how to do the things in which you cannot invest large amounts of time. Home visitation would be at the top of the list. Personally, I don't recommend it at all-it's extremely unproductive-but I realize that visits may be a deeply ingrained part of your culture. To stop cold turkey wouldn't work. So the first step is to train others to visit and eventually begin a small group ministry that will take care of a large percentage of what has long been mislabeled as the pastoral requirements of the church. If labeled at all, they should be called personal, human or spiritual needs; anything but pastoral needs.

    1. Hire well and use your staff wisely.

Whether you are just about to hire your first staff member or if you have 25 pastors on staff, hiring well is integral to the process of focusing your leadership responsibilities. Hiring the right people and putting them in the right place is an art, and a difficult art at that, but it is one that you must throw yourself into with wholehearted commitment. If you choose poorly or use them incorrectly, your list of responsibilities actually gets longer, and you pay for it on top of it all!

Use your staff wisely. Let me offer just one example. If your church is under eight hundred in attendance, I would not have any full-time staff member doing only one thing. For instance, let's say you hired a youth minister. Perhaps you have five hundred in attendance, of which only sixty are teens. Why would you have a full-time staff member whose only responsibility was to lead sixty teens? I know all the arguments, but here's my point: If you have seventeen major things you need to do and you hire someone to do one thing, you still have sixteen things left that require attention. It doesn't make sense. I'm not recommending that you dump the junk on staff members (if it's truly junk, stop doing it altogether), but that you share the workload in a more equitable way.

I had a staff member who once said to me, "I don't do hospital visits." My response was, "Oh, really? Listen friend, you're going to the hospital one way or another-either as clergy or as a patient. What's your choice?"

In these last three items to come, I'm going to get a little more personal and hit a little closer to home. Ready?

    1. Learn to say no.

Fight the temptation to please people. It's a losing proposition. The more you do it, the worse it gets. Your job isn't to make people happy, but to lead them to maturity in Christ. Of course you want to enjoy the journey. I do too. But that isn't the goal. Here's my hunch-you are doing at least a few things that you know you don't need to do. You're facing either perceived or real political pressure or internal pressures. Learn to say no. Be tough; not mean, but tough. If you keep giving in to either external or internal pressures to do that which is not important, you will never narrow your leadership responsibilities to right things.

    1. Learn to let go.

I'm writing as a recovering control freak. Yup, that's me. I've learned and matured in the last many years, but it wasn't too long ago that God had to remind me that I wasn't the general manager of the universe. Hey, I have just enough ego to think I know what I'm doing! It's amazing how all those churches out there grow without me. Be honest now, can you relate?

You must learn to delegate and empower your staff and key leaders. Trust is the core issue. It's simple logic. If you don't let go, you can't shorten the list of things you have to do! Furthermore, if you don't let go, your staff and leaders will know you don't believe in them and they will not take initiative or perform at their best with what you do give them.

    1. Die to self.

Now I'm really gonna meddle. You may be one of the thousands of pastors who do what you do because you like the affirmation. Thousands of pastors "preach and visit" not because their congregation expects that alone, but because the praise is like a legal drug. Every Sunday morning, people line up and tell you how wonderful your sermon was - so much so that you believe it. And each time you run to the hospital in your Super Pastor outfit, you again feel like the hero who saved the day. It strokes your ego, but doesn't grow the church. The actual issues may be different for you, but you get the idea.

34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. Mark 8:34-35 (NIV)