"Three Thoughts on Associate Pastors"
Associate pastors rarely enter an established church with the goal of tearing it to pieces. Usually they are new seminary graduates who are looking for a little real life experience before launching into a leadership position of their own.
However, what begins as a desire to help and learn is often infected by a predictable list of temptations. Over and over again, in churches all across America, the same problems surface. In fact, the problems associate pastors bring to the table are so common, many lead pastors don’t want to hire them at all.
So, I’m going to make a list of three of those temptations below. If you are a church member, some of these will help you be shrewd enough to avoid feeding trouble. If you are an associate pastor, you might need to take a big, deep breath and admit where some of these have lodged inside you. If you don’t, you are likely to leave a disaster in your wake.
1. “Spend the first year at this new church just learning, before moving in to make any big changes.”
This advice is given to many associate pastors, and it’s half true. Absolutely, the AP needs to get to know the new people group deeply -- good advice for any human entering into any new community.
But there is also a dangerous assumption here -- look at the second half of the statement. This implies that the AP has a right or calling to redirect the church after he understands it.
Most associate pastors are hired to fulfill a certain job description. Usually their tasks involve building unity in the body or helping the inner network of a church to run smoothly. However, I have never seen a single job description for an associate pastor that says, “Get to know this church really well, then find ways to redirect it from the inside to fit your personal goals for a congregation.”
Let’s be honest about why a man would be tempted to do this. Most associate pastors are in a high-testosterone groove. They are 25-30, in that bright young stage of wanting to make a mark on the world. And because they have just finished years of technical training, and because they are still reading new books with new ideas that promise to “fix what’s wrong” with evangelicalism, they honestly believe that if someone just gave them the chance, they could make this church thing work.
They aren’t yet experienced enough to realize that the brilliant answer they have now will be tweaked by another brilliant answer that will come in fifteen years. And then that answer will be tweaked by a new one. They don’t realize yet that there are always going to be trends in theology that swing back and forth to correct what came before, and that even though their innovation feels radical and powerful, it sits in a bigger context.
Sometimes they are also tempted to forget that the whole machine they have entered (which now supports their vocation), has worked hard to get where it is. The risks they want to take affect many people who have contributed their struggles and sacrifices, and the difficulties others have overcome now allow them to serve. Gratitude and respect are appropriate here. Any suggested changes need to be offered with a humility that recognizes the foundation provided has not come cheaply.
(BTW: I can't tell you how many AP's I've known who have charged into existing churches with bravado, torn up jack, then launched a new church -- only to find that leading was far harder than they realized, once they got the chance to do it.)
The single most important thing an associate pastor can do for the church that hired him is this (shocker): do the job he was hired to do. Tend the small groups. Tend integration. Tend deep mechanics. Help the lead pastor.
If he cannot respect and embrace the sort of labor he once agreed to do, he needs to resign. Immediately. Even if he has three little kids and really likes having a regular salary.
Those inner jobs are essential, see. They are needed just as much as vision casting. And while he might feel like his big horizon answer can fix everything, the best way he can help in that particular body is to complete what he has been asked to do. If he does not, the machine will begin to tear apart.
2. “This small group of people within the church understands the real truth, so we need to break off and have freedom to chase the vision ‘God has given us.’”
When this temptation hits, it’s wise to go back and consider the context of how those relationships formed to begin with. They formed because a board and a lead pastor invited the associate pastor into a position of trust.
And by the way... a little look behind the curtain. This is how this dynamic almost always begins:
A nerdy or fringe family has never “really felt like it connected.” An associate pastor hears mumbles about this, and he starts asking questions in private.
Family says something like “we just don’t feel comfortable here,” which gives the AP an excuse to suggest the private plan he has nursed in his head for months. After casting that vision, he sighs and says that "the only problem is that the larger church / lead pastor won’t_________, so he can’t ________."
Of course, the family feels honored by this trust. An “inner circle” has been created in which members feel excited and included. The nerdy/fringe family also feels empathy for this bright young pastor who is being kept (by cruel, dense leaders) from doing what would make them truly happy.
Boom. A bond is formed.
These inner groups will begin to gravitate toward one another more and more. Conversation will begin to move from, “Wouldn’t it be nice if this church,” to more independent plans. At some point, after this idea has been nursed from many angles, after strategic sorrows have been expressed, the group will begin to feel like its private preference for community is also equivalent to a divine calling. At that point, the little group will do one of two things:
A. Make a numbered list of demands that function as a sort of ultimatum for the lead pastor. (This list would have read, “I don’t feel like I have enough friends” six months ago, but by now the associate pastor has hinted and nudged until these people share his vision for a “real church.”) By giving this list to the lead pastor, the small group feels it has given the church a chance to do the "right thing" — even though they have been privately undermining him for months, and now are operating at a reactive level.
B. Decide to go ahead and break off the main church to start a new church 20 minutes away. Even in the secular business world, this would be considered unethical, a violation of a non-compete clause. But inevitably, the associate pastor will step out to make a bold claim that “God told him to do this,” and whatever consequences hit the fan, he will ignore.
Often the associate pastor will have targeted individual families in the body with money enough to fuel a launch by this point. (Associate pastors know their next salary will require this.) And here the tearing begins. Small groups are torn apart. Committees are divided. The community turns into “us and them.”
3. “I’ll wear the lead pastor down internally until he quits. Then the church will let me lead.”
Gosh. I’ve seen this so many times, and it usually happens in three ways: by discouraging the other staff, by complaining to the leadership board, and by personal criticism and defiance.
A. The AP has lunch with a worship pastor or a children’s minister. “Have you noticed how...” and then a team within a team is formed. Slowly both staff members begin to resent and mistrust the lead pastor.
B. A weak board member is targeted. More time is spent with that person, and the AP strategically drops “complaints he is hearing from the body” along with remedies that he believes will fix it. What is happening beneath the surface here, however, isn’t about fixing problems. It’s mainly about the AP stepping outside of his role, trying to prove that he is capable of better directional insight than the main pastor.
C. The AP will begin to defy and criticize the lead pastor. He will wait for him after sermons to pick them apart. He will sit in a defiant posture during staff meetings. He will ignore specific tasks that he is given by the lead pastor, investing instead in visionary work that competes with the leadership of the lead pastor.
When the church begins to malfunction because of all this, the AP is in a relatively safe position. He realizes that the lead pastor will ultimately be blamed for any problems. He knows that it would cause turmoil for the pastor to fire him. By this point, even if the whole church breaks apart, the AP believes busting the thing up will do it some good.
Hopefully, you will never experience a situation like this. But I have seen it so often, so many places, that I think there might be a value in putting words on it.
There are ethical, good ways of dealing with leadership problems in churches. The vast majority of lead pastors that I know are open to hearty conversations about strategy and implementation. They are also likely to know of substantial inner barriers that the AP doesn’t know about, so that a solid conversation here can be far more productive than renegade attempts to hijack a body.
The maneuvers described above are never appropriate. If you are a lonely or unhappy church member, and if an AP begins to attempt conversations like these with you, I hope that you will lovingly redirect him. Maybe ask him what his job description is, and ask him how well he is fulfilling it. Then go talk with the lead pastor about what the AP attempted to do. (This isn't tattling. The lead pastor is responsible for his staff, and he need to know things like this. Managing them - listening to them and wrestling with them - is part of his job description.)
If you are a board member who is approached by an AP who is wily and persuasive, take a moment to think about how connecting deeply here might lead to internal complications down the road. Be kind but shrewd. And take all conversations the staff have with you back to the lead pastor. He can’t do his job if he doesn’t know what is happening beneath the surface.
If you are an AP, have the humility and the honor to do your job well. You chose to do these tasks. You applied for this job because you said at some point that this role was important to you.
If your experience in your present church has grown a passion in you for leading your own body, go for it. But do that in a manner that is good for everyone involved.
Yes, starting over somewhere new might be scary and hard. But if God is really calling you to be a leader, He's going to provide for you, just like he provided for the people who started the church that is currently paying you.
If your experience in your present church has grown a passion in you for leading your own body, go for it. But do that in a manner that is good for everyone involved.
Yes, starting over somewhere new might be scary and hard. But if God is really calling you to be a leader, He's going to provide for you, just like he provided for the people who started the church that is currently paying you. And if you are really as insightful and powerful as you feel right now, you're going to be just fine.
Because it’s okay to have a different ministry strategy. Different personalities and different ages have different passions, different ways of working out the gospel. It’s not okay to destroy a large group of people for the sake of your own bravado.
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P.S. I only addressed male lead and AP pastors here, because that is my tradition. Hopefully there will be bits of this that might prove helpful to other situations, I just can't speak into them directly with my lack of exposure to those methods.