Podcast Episode #451
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Every single day, 1,000 Boomers are hitting retirement age. This includes Boomer pastors. Today we discuss the consequences of this reality and also highlight why many are choosing Interim Pastor University to prepare for their next stage of ministry.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- More churches are starting to plan for pastoral succession because they’ve seen how other churches have failed with it.
- Thankfully, more churches are starting to raise up pastoral successors from within.
- The interim pastor role has changed over the past few years. It’s no longer primarily just pulpit supply.
- There is no set retirement age for pastors, but too many hang on too long.
The five consequences we discuss are:
- There will be more pastoral vacancies than qualified candidates.
- More churches are giving thought to pastoral succession.
- More and more pastors are getting additional training for interim and bi-vocational positions.
- There is a mixed view on pastors staying at their current churches past retirement age.
- Some Boomer pastors will lead their churches toward mergers and acquisitions.
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Feedback
If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of Becoming a Welcoming Church.
I was born in September of 1946 therefore I am a first year of the Baby Boomers. I retired in 2011 because of health reasons. I was about 5 okay tional pastor and have been filling in at different places from time to time. In my heart of hearts I would be pastoring today but because of health reasons I can’t. More and more we will see pastors retiring and churches looking for new pastors to take their place.
Dr. Rainer, you wrote on this topic in 2014. At that time I had been in my present church for 20 years and was already concerned for the next pastor to follow me and the church’s transition to new leadership. In that blog, you recommended “Next: Pastoral Succession that Works” and I purchased a few copies for our leadership. We were finally able to call our first associate pastor last year and hope to call another before my retirement in the next 4-5 years. We pray that God will use them to lead the church forward without much more than a “blip on the radar” as I transition to the next assignment.
Thanks for you insights!
That’s great, Chuck. Thanks for sharing.
Be careful about bringing on two associate pastors who might both be considering the lead pastor position when you retire. We did that prior to my retirement and it was like have two bulls in the same pasture. We ended up losing both of them before my retirement.
Thank you for your podcasts. It is hard to believe that you are heading towards 500. Keep it up!
I have helped a number of sister churches as they have gone through pastoral successions. While my experience is obviously limited, I have noticed four common mistakes:
(1) Churches rarely ask the question: “Why would the pastor we need want to come here?” It turns out that there are many things that churches can do to attract, retrain, and nourish their pastors besides simply paying them better – yet essentially none of the churches that I spoke to even asked this question. They were entirely focused on what they wanted rather than what they had to offer.
(2) Churches frequently focus far too much on data points and experience (e.g. 10 years experience; pastored a church of more than X members, etc …) rather than on the quality of the person they are seeking. This results in them needlessly screening out really good candidates.
(3) More than half of the churches I spoke with unreasonably wanted a pastor who was younger. When I dug into this issue, I discovered that members of the respective search committees wanted to retire when they were 60 or 62 so they saw candidates in their 50s as “nearing retirement” when, in fact, many pastors will be quite productive into their early 70s. Indeed, in terms of wisdom and spiritual maturity – a church calling a 55 year old pastor might gain the most productive 15 to 20 years of his ministry.
(4) Regretfully, very few churches have a meaningful continuing education program for their pastors. I became a pastor later in life, after serving as an officer in the Marine Corps, as a Regional Director for a large non-profit organization, and also in the corporate world. Pretty much every successful organization makes a priority of developing their leaders – except for the Church. This bleeds over into pastoral searches because the search team frequently wants their candidate to be a finished product. But pastors are generalists – and none of us are really good at everything. It would be wise for a church who finds a gifted individual who loves God, loves God’s word, and loves God’s people to not rule him out because he has yet to develop, for example, as a counselor. Instead, they should consider calling such an individual and giving him the support to gain these skills over the first three years of his ministry in that particular church (You can apply this principle to other areas of ministry).
Best wishes,
David
I am 57 and have been at my current church for 14 years. I serve in a denominational setting so I do not have any formal input into succession. I am concerned that should it be time to transition that my age is an issue in seeking another place of ministry. As was previously mentioned,, church boards in our setting tend to not look for pastor’s who could retire in 5-7 years. Preparing a board for succession when we are a small church battling the age curve is not an easy task. Suggestions?
Thom, I had a church tell me, some years ago, that they had received 300 resumes. I know many will be retiring in the next 5-10 years. But how can there be more pastoral vacancies than there are qualified candidates when one thinks of new seminary grads, men looking to leave their church, ordained pastors currently without a call and older retiree pastors? I don’t understand your conclusion. Explain.
Dr. Rainer- I have been a pastor & denominational servant (HMB/SBC) for 44 years. When my primary job was not pastoring I served in interims. I have never approached an interim as just pulpit supply & I am amazed that anyone would. I have always sought to address issues that a regular pastor might have trouble addressing. Frankly, I have looked at the curriculum for several of the interim & intentional interim training & it is disappointing & unnecessary for most of the pastors I know.
The United Methodist Church has a mandatory retirement age of 72 for clergy.
Mandatory retirement at 72 is a bad policy.
That would eliminate some of our nation’s finest and most prominent Baptist preachers right now.
Some men are more able and driven past 70 than their lazy and slothful counterparts at 45-50 who have used the church as a hiding place to be lazy and expect hard-working people in the congregation to support them with one month vacation, 2 weeks for revivals, 2 weeks for seminars, to come and go as they please, to take off for med appointments, school functions, etc., whenever they desire when, in fact, virtually few people in the congregations have that privilege.
What churches need today are divinely-called, motivated, driven people, not lazy bums who claim to be “called to God’s service” aka “I’m special; you owe me a luxurious and lazy living.”