After planting a church and nurturing it for 34 years, Pastor John Larson and his wife Ruth Ann “passed the baton” of leadership this past year. NL Moore & Associates was privileged to walk with John, Ruth Ann and the church through this significant journey. During the next several weeks, John will be sharing his succession story here. We believe his experience and insights will help and inspire others. Enjoy!
During the early days of contemplating retiring from my long-tenured ministry, I talked with several people who were ahead of me on the succession timeline. I got some great advice from many of them. There was one insight I will never forget: “As soon as you announce your retirement, you lose control of the process.” I didn’t quite understand that until I got into my own process and discovered he was absolutely right! Painfully right! It isn’t bad, but it’s not what I expected.
So, long before the “cat was let out of the bag,” I began working on my attitude and mapping out a secret strategy for my departure. I spent some time pondering questions like, “How can I love this congregation better in the months that I have left?” “Where do I need to give support or attention to individual staff members so they are ready for my departure?” “What issues do I need to address that only I can clean up so that the next leader doesn’t trip over them?”
After years of living with this congregation, I wanted to depart on good terms, so I started to paint a mental picture of what it would look like to leave my church family in a healthy state. I wanted to do what I could to preserve the loving relationships that had been established over the years and to keep them intact on my way out and after. I wanted to encourage them to love each other. I wanted to set them up for success in the transition. And I wanted to prepare myself for their absence in my daily life.
I also spent some serious time focused on what was needed in order to leave with the staff in good shape. My goal was to build into the team so that they were equipped, empowered and passionate about carrying out their ministry without me. I did my best to communicate the mission as clearly as I could, to help them focus, and to take care of as many housekeeping issues as possible so that the next leader could hit the ground running.
Lastly, I worked on cleaning up my “messes” so that the next pastor didn’t have to deal with them. There are some things that are better dealt with by a long-tenured pastor as it will take a new pastor a good bit of time to build up the relational “chips” needed to make certain changes. I wanted to do my part to leave a healthy ministry so the next pastor could build on the foundation we had laid over the years and didn’t feel the need to start all over.
As I was counseled, there was a lot that I lost control of, but by God’s grace, I was able to control some others. Each senior pastor is going to develop their own list of questions, needs and wants as they look toward the uncharted waters of succession and before the “cat is out of the bag.” For me, my list caused me to adjust my priorities, to refocus my energy and to intentionally take them on one by one.
Where do you start your transition? As Steven Covey put it so simply, “Begin with the end in mind.”