This article is written by Toby Foster, Retired Founding Pastor of Kingdom Vineyard, St Andrews.
Very few of us, especially busy pastors, take seriously enough Wimber’s constant advice that we are to “work ourselves out of a job”. If we did, Pastoral Succession might be likened to a dental operation to replace a failing crown on an injured tooth.
As it is, in most cases; perhaps especially when replacing the “Founding Pastor”, it tends to be more like an organ transplant. And that goes both for the Successor, who has a tendency to feel out of place and out of his depth, and for the receiving Body which will feel tender, and will take a bit of getting used to working with the transplanted “organ”.
These facts shouldn’t really surprise us. After all, St Paul teaches us (1 Cor 12) that the church is a body; each part dependent on all the others. And if the Senior Pastor is not an essential organ, then why is she drawing a salary? So stretching the analogy just slightly, I find the concept of an organ transplant extremely helpful as we consider Pastoral Succession.
In the medical world, successful transplants rely on several factors, and so it surely is in the world of Church, when we come to replacing a Senior Pastor. (For simplicity, I speak in the singular, but in the Vineyard we recognise the vital importance in most cases of this actually meaning a married couple.)
First among these, without which vast quantities of immune-suppressing drugs will be needed, is a good DNA Match. I’m not sure quite what those anti-immune drugs would be in this analogy, but unless you can come up with some (and do get in touch if you can), then the DNA Match is absolutely essential. I think we all know of church Successions where the match-up hasn’t been quite right, and the outcome is never good.
For instance, sharing a common language is no indication of a common culture, and this divide often proves much wider that it looked in theory. Ask any Englishman attempting to church-plant in Scotland! Likewise, sharing a theology, even sharing Vineyard theology, is not the same as sharing Values. Come to that, in my view, paying lip-service to Vineyard Values is no guarantee that church and successor really match up. What a minister looks like on paper is all too often very different from the reality of the person. And if the body rejects the organ, then not to put too fine a point on it, both will die.
Secondly, a healthy transplant organ, is essential. Just as there is no point replacing one worn-out heart with another, or with a diseased one, there is little mileage in passing on a church from a retiree to another old-timer. And vitally, there is none at all in passing it on to a pastor with severe character flaws. These may be well hidden, and are especially likely to be masked by extreme gifting, talent, or a record of past success.
Thirdly, we need a healthy body to receive it. Just as there is no point wasting a good organ on a body which is dying already of some other disease, so with a church. Sometimes we need to put sentimentality aside and just let them go, but often they can be cured prior to surgery. The point is, we can’t do the transplant when the body is severely unhealthy in other ways. The shock will kill it. Many of us have been advised or required to lose weight before comparatively minor surgery, and to be brutally frank, some churches need to shed a few pounds of dead-weight before a sensible Successor would take them on. So church-health must be carefully assessed.
Fourth, a skilled surgical team, is essential. This is where those who have gone through the process before can be of help, and in particular where the Succession Team aims to operate. This is a relatively new part of the VCUKI culture and machinery, but those involved all have personal, successful(!) Succession experience, and the team will only grow from this point on, in both experience and numbers. I wish it had been in existence when we passed on Kingdom Vineyard. We muddled through alright, but others don’t. It is quite possible to have all the right ingredients and still botch the operation. The literature all points out that Succession is more of an art than a science, but if we can help you to get the “science” bit right, it’ll certainly help.
Lastly, I think (with apologies to medics reading this for any glaring omissions,) we also need a safe, sterile environment. Clearly there is crossover here with the church-health point. But I think there are possible sources of infection even in a healthy church. In our own succession story, I had to have what might have been a very difficult conversation with someone who might have expected to succeed me. Bathing the process in prayer, I actually found, when I finally grasped the nettle, that he had already wrestled with the issue and concluded that it couldn’t be him.
We are all constantly working on our personal stuff, even (I might say especially) in the healthiest of churches, and personalities may have to be managed with skill and grace. I also suspect that times of upheaval in the movement; be that local, national or international, may not be the best time to appoint new leaders. It’s going to be hard enough for the new guy, without circumstances where he has to “take a position” on some divisive or hurtful issue in the wider body. Succession-time in a church’s life is a point of vulnerability, when people are inevitably sensitive, so as the old-timers used to say: “EGR. Extra Grace Required!”
As I was writing this piece I stumbled across a highly relevant verse in Acts 14:23, where Paul and Barnabas appoint new elders in the churches they had planted. They did so “praying with fastings”. If we want a sterile environment in which to operate, surely prayer and fasting is the surest the way to get one.
As I said before, Pastoral Succession is more of an art than a science, and every church is as different as is every Pastor. There is no One-Size-Fits-All. But with care, prayer and good advice, AND TIME it can be safely negotiated, and the Succession Team are here to help.
