Could It Be Time for a Pastoral Transition?

“All the time,” said John Piper, “I’ve been thinking about it for thirty years.”

What had Piper been thinking about for thirty years? A potential transition in pastoral ministry.

He said this around the time of his retirement from his long tenure at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota. “I thought about quitting a lot,” he added. But then Piper mentioned the way God didn’t give him a chance to move at the same time he wanted to move. “Here’s the beautiful thing that I look back on with such thankfulness: the Lord never let those ‘ready-to-move’ feelings come when there was an opportunity to move. The opportunities to move came when I didn’t want to move. He timed it perfect.”

If you’re reading this post about pastoral transitions, perhaps you’re only doing so “for a friend.” But my guess is that you’re a ministry leader who might be in one of these ready-to-move seasons right now, the kind of season Piper mentioned. (If, however, you’re a member of a church, and you want one of your pastors to move to another church, well, that’s a different situation entirely! And if you’re a pastor who wants some of his members to move churches, that’s also another post, one I won’t be writing.)

As the summer ends and fall arrives, I suspect you might not be alone, as the fall is a common time for pastors to begin thinking about transitions. In fact, I’ve recently been writing a draft of an article for another publication about the blessings of not transitioning away, the blessings of what I’m calling “the ministry of staying put at your church.”

But if these thoughts of transitions are rattling around in your heart, I thought I’d offer a few things to consider. Because before you go looking for the tips and tools you need to transition well from one church to another, it’s worth backing up to ask the question: are you sure it’s the right time?

For some pastors, a looming transition is obvious. This is your last semester or two in seminary, and you’re ready to work in the field. You’re being influenced by both “push” and “pull” factors, not just one or the other. You’re being pushed out of seminary and pulled into a new local church. When this is the case, it’s fairly straightforward. Let the transition begin.

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Some of you, however, feel like you’re on a rollercoaster. You feel anticipation and excitement as your church grows in size, but then a loop-de-loop and a double corkscrew induce fear and instability. How do you know when your time is done? If you were terminated, others decided the ride for you was over. But what about when the decision is yours?

Determining God’s will is often tricky. Gideon used a fleece, but I’m not sure this was to his credit. So we probably shouldn’t try something similar.

When I was a kid, my parents gave me a choice about a summer vacation. I couldn’t figure out what to do. My parents told me I could go with them on a short trip to visit my grandparents or I could stay home with a friend to attend a local basketball camp. I had no idea what God wanted me to do. One morning I distinctly remember staring at a small bowl of cereal and asking God this very question. As I twirled the last few Lucky Charms with my spoon, I asked God to make the cereal into the shape of the state—either Missouri (basketball) or Iowa (grandparents)—to indicate what I should do. I’m not encouraging you to go and do likewise. After all, when I was a child . . .

Kevin DeYoung wrote a whole book about how to discern the will of God. “‘The will of God’ is one of the most confusing phrases in the Christian vocabulary,” he writes. “Sometimes we speak of all things happening according to God’s will. Other times we talk about being obedient and doing the will of God. And still other times we talk about finding the will of God” (Just Do Something, 16).

Too often we feel as though we need to divine God’s will (say, with Lucky Charms). But DeYoung argues we should stop “thinking of God’s will like a corn maze, or a tightrope, or a bull’s-eye” (23). Instead, we need to realize God gave us brains and passions and mentors and friends and education and experiences and longings. As we listen to all of these—as well as when we adequately take into account our proclivity for sinful, mixed motives—somehow God shows himself faithful to lead us to where we should go.

In his book Before You Move, John Cionca explains thirty-five different categories to help pastors sense whether God is moving them to another ministry. He uses the metaphor of red and green traffic lights. The more red lights, the less likely God may be moving you, and the more green lights, the more likely he may be. So, if you get nineteen green lights and sixteen red lights, that makes things clearer, right? No, it’s not a simple math problem, and neither do each of the thirty-five categories carry equal weight.

Yet I do find it helpful how this approach forces one to think broadly about the situation. Often when a pastor wants to move, it might be that a few persistent annoyances have provoked his restless desire. It’s better to consider the whole picture.

I won’t list all of his thirty-five categories, but here are some I found especially useful.

Red Lights to Moving	Green Lights to Moving
Congregational Hunger	Congregational Apathy
Vibrancy and Growth	Stagnation and Decline
Good Giftedness Match	Poor Giftedness Match
Enthusiasm for the Task	Restlessness or Withdrawal
Good Opportunity for Impact	Limited Opportunity for Impact
Family Happy and Growing	Family Distressed and Stifled
Appropriate Compensation	Insufficient Compensation
Tenure Less than Six Years	Tenure More than Six Years
Compatibility with Staff	Poor Staff or Key Relationships
High Integrity and Credibility	Low Integrity and Credibility
Advisors Confirm Ministry	Advisors Suggest Major Change
Ideal Geographical Proximity to Extended Family	Less than Ideal Geographical Proximity to Extended Family

Again, these don’t provide a full-proof plan; they’re simply tools. If the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had used these categories, the score would have been a shutout: 0–35. These prophets were certainly in one of those ready-to-move seasons. Often, a prophet’s congregation didn’t want to fire him but to kill him.

In fact, when God explains to Isaiah that his job description involved preaching until the pews were not only empty but until they were burned to ashes, Isaiah’s “Here am I! Send me” quickly became “How long, O Lord?”

For Isaiah (and many other prophets), faithfulness meant staying put when all the lights appeared to be green. Why? Because the voice of God became to them like Gandalf thrusting down his staff and roaring, “You shall not pass!”

If, however, God is telling you it might be time for a transition, I would bring several other trusted friends and ministry leaders into that conversation. Ideally, if your situation allows such disclosure, do this with someone in leadership at your church rather than blindsiding them later. Not all situations allow such honesty, however. You might not feel free to discuss this with anyone local until the process progresses.

In the meantime, if you’d like more help thinking through a transition—help finding the right job in ministry with excellence, integrity, and respect for everyone involved—then you might find helpful my book on this topic, Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church.

* Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Dozens of Free Copies of My Audiobook: Don’t Just Send a Resume

I had no idea how difficult it would be to produce an audiobook. But then I tried.

It’s really, really difficult to read with excellence, even if you’re super familiar with the words because you wrote them!

I tried to narrate the audiobook for my “struggle” book that was recently published. After wasting a dozen hours of work and a thousand bucks, I abandoned the project and hired a pro. I hired David K. Martin to narrate the book for me. I hired David because he did such a great job on Don’t Just Send a Resume, my book to help pastors find the right job in a local church. Throughout the audiobook production process he’s been a consummate professional. For example, when I listened to an early, completed draft of the audiobook, I only found one error—one error in over six hours of audio! (By the way, David’s narration of my Struggle Against Porn book should be out later this summer.)

Just last week the audiobook of Don’t Just Send a Resume hit Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. But if you want a copy, you don’t have to buy one. I have a few dozen to give away. The only thing you have to do is send me a message (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email: benjamin@fanandflame.com) so I can give you the code to download it.

The portion of the book we used for the audiobook’s sample comes from a section that I draw the title from. I’ve included that section below if you want to listen and read.

Again, if you’d like a copy, please send me a message. And if you know a pastor or someone in full-time ministry who might like a free copy, please send him or her this way!

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Always Include a Short, Custom Cover Letter

It’s common to hear people talk of sending their resume to an employer. Never do this. Or I should say, never just send a resume.

Why? Because the cover letter, not the resume, is the leading edge of your job search. Merely sending a resume (at least in ministry) accomplishes little more than spamming a search committee. It’s lazy and rarely stands out from the stack. Sending a custom cover letter, however, shows you care. And pastors should care.

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Many job search guides in the business world will tell you the primary focus is on the resume. I’ve been told that for many huge companies (think: Procter & Gamble and IBM), resumes are usually read before cover letters. Additionally, a resume might remain in large resume “banks” for recall. In these situations, some of the standard advice about resumes (like including key word optimization for enhanced searchability) makes sense.

But in ministry, things are different. The vast majority of churches will open a hiring process, complete a hiring process, and then throw everything away or save it for a year, then throw it away. This makes the process far more personal. Furthermore, churches don’t have a full-time HR person who spends his or her day scanning resumes. So when a church conducts a search, it will likely read or at least skim your cover letter first. So make it count.

Having said that, much of your cover letter can be boilerplate, meaning you can use most (but not all) of the verbiage with little to no modification. It should include the following descriptions:

• this (briefly) is who I am;

• this (briefly) is where I worked;

• this is where I went to school;

• this is where you can listen to my sermons (or watch videos of me leading worship);

• this is what I’m passionate about and why you should hire me.

I won’t tell you exactly what to write, but stuff like this is expected and appropriate.

More than anything else, don’t make it generic. If everything in your cover letter could be sent to every church in America, then your cover letter will be underwhelming and most likely overlooked. Like a good sermon, letters have a particular audience in mind. Therefore, tailor at least one paragraph to demonstrate the following three things to the church.

First, demonstrate you actually read the job description. No job is exactly the same, even if they both share the title “youth pastor.” Someone, or likely several people, spent significant time wording the job description, and it will serve you well to show them you cared enough to read it closely. . .

What’s Your Focus in Transitions: Re-inventing or Re-identifying?

Recently, the young adult ministry at our church asked me to lead the devotional at one of their meetings. So I did. And having gone through a transition recently, and assuming that those in their 20s will go through many transitions in the next decade, I thought a devotional related to transitions would be relevant.

In the process, I reflected on my last decade. It was a decade of transitions.

From single to married.
From relying (heavily) on my parents, to being a parent.
From college student to full-time employee with a bona fide cubical and a commute.
From just a little money, to lots of money, and then to something less than ‘lots.’
And from Division 1 college athlete to, shall we say, old(ish) man.

Yikes. Or consider it by the numbers:

8 different houses.
5 churches in 4 denominations.
4 job changes.
4 cities.
3 changes of vocation (student to engineer to pastor).
3 (very) different areas of the country (Midwest, Southwest, East).
And from 0, to 1, to 2, to 3, to 4, and to 5 kids, with the 4th being a miscarriage.

I look at that list, and it explains my whiplash.

Transitions in the Bible

The Bible is full of transitions. We see this on the corporate level—from just 2 people in a garden to thriving cities; from one man (Abram) to a nation; from local, tribal rulers to powerful kings; from prosperity to desolation… and around that Ferris Wheel a dozen more times; and from the random altars used by the patriarchs, to the portable tabernacle, to the fixed temple, and then to the curtain torn in two.

We also see transitions on the individual level—Abraham leaves his family; David goes from shepherd to king; the disciples from fishermen to church leaders; and untold numbers of sinners to saints. Consider the upheaval in Moses’ life and his 3 major transitions: from being raised the son of a foreign king, to life as an obscure shepherd, and finally to leading the Hebrew people. Yikes.

What’s Your Focus in Transitions?

If you are normal, your life will be one of transitions, perhaps not of the magnitude of Moses’ or with the frequency of my last decade, but you will have them. And during your transitions, many good questions will arise: What am I passionate about? Who am I now? Who do I want to be later? What do I want to be known for? And so on.

Depending on how we answer these questions, you will move in either 1 of 2 very different directions.

On the one hand, we can ‘re-invent ourselves.’ The way this is most often carried out in our culture, re-inventing is a fairly godless endeavor. By ‘godless,’ I don’t mean that it is the sum of all evil. It is not. Not every re-invention is of the sort that Hannah Montana made.

By ‘godless,’ I simply mean that re-inventing one’s self is typically done without any consideration to God. God is not in the picture. People look inward: Who am I? And they look outward: I want to be like these people and not like those people. The assumption is that life’s outcomes are infinitely malleable, and if I try hard enough, then I can be whatever I want. But again, rarely is God in the picture.

For the Christian, there is another option—the better option. Christians should use transitions as an opportunity to re-identify who we are in Christ.

Transitions are a time to re-affirm that the defining reality of my life is not marital status, nor where I live, nor in children, nor income, nor vocation, nor looks, nor education, nor popularity; but rather, my identity is in this: Jesus Christ loves me and gave himself for me. This was the focus of the Apostle Paul. In Galatians 2:20 he wrote,

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Paul is saying that in the life he “now” lives—that is, just before, or during, or just after all of life’s transitions—he is resolved to live in the knowledge that God loves him. This is where he identifies, and re-identifies, over and over again.

I’m not very good at this, but I want to be better.

During my recent job transition, several aspects of my job changed as well. And it wasn’t until the transition occurred that I realized how much identity I derived from one particular aspect of my job: if I was doing it well, then I was good; and if it was going poorly, then I was bad.

This is wrong.

Because of the Gospel, Christians have an immovable source of identity: the love of God for them. Because of the Gospel, God feels towards me the same way he feels towards his own Son—delight.

It is significant to me that when Jesus transitioned from carpenter to full-time, itinerate ministry, God the Father publicly shouts his delight over his son. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

As my current time of transition ends, and I await the next one—which I’m praying is not anytime soon—I don’t want to re-invent myself; I want to re-identify deeper with the Gospel and God’s delight for me in Christ.

In your next transition, what will be your focus?

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