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We want every church to outlast its current Senior Pastors.

Pastoral Succession is the healthy handover of leadership from outgoing leaders to incoming leaders, with the aim of setting up the church in the best possible way for the next season.

A healthy Pastoral Succession takes prayer, planning, and preparing for both the church and the Senior Pastors. If you’re a current church leader considering handing on leadership, or someone who is exploring whether you’re called to step into leadership of a church, there is help available from the Succession team, who can share wisdom, experience and resources to help you plan and prepare for the way forward.

Successful succession is key to the ongoing health and presence of Vineyard churches around our nations.

I’m exploring Pastoral Succession as someone who is…

…a leader of a church considering Pastoral Succession
…considering stepping into leadership through Pastoral Succession

Leaders considering pastoral succession

for your church

Why you should be planning to hand over leadership of your church before you think you should be…

             “There’s no success until you have successful succession”
             – Pete Greig, 24-7 prayer

Making a long-term succession plan has positive outcomes for both the outgoing and incoming leaders. We know that you never completely retire from Kingdom ministry, but very few want to keep working beyond their mid 60s at the pace needed to lead a healthy thriving church.

If you are a Senior Pastor in the Vineyard thinking about retiring in the next five to ten years and you haven’t already begun to plan your pastoral succession, get in touch today to start having some of the key conversations that put you and your church in the best possible position for successful succession. 

Hear some of John and Debby’s story of transitioning the leadership of Trent Vineyard.

Succession assistance for

Senior Pastors

If you’re just beginning to think about Pastoral Succession, the Succession team can offer you a road map of what to consider and how to consider it, and the help of people who have gone through Pastoral Succession from both the outgoing and incoming perspectives. 

Even if you’re at the very early stages, we’d love to chat with you about where you’re at and what information and support we can offer you.

If you’ve got prospective new leader(s) in mind, the Succession team have resources to support the discerning, preparing and handover process. If you don’t have new leader(s) in mind, don’t worry! Our aim is to connect you with leaders who are currently discerning their own leadership journey and who the Lord may be preparing to send your way.

Lastly, as Senior Pastors move on from church leadership, we want to connect them with groups who will offer support and community in this significant change of season.

Whatever stage you’re in on the succession journey, get in touch with the team today!

Stepping into leadership through

Pastoral Succession

Is God calling you into leading a church through Pastoral Succession?

As leaders of established Vineyard Churches look toward retirement or to move on to a new season, the church needs new leaders to rise up and step into leadership.

The Pastoral Succession team want to support these churches and the incoming leaders to help set everyone up for success.

So if you’re even just beginning to discern whether Pastoral Succession might be where Jesus is leading you towards, one day in your future, we’d love to chat and give you some information to be praying over!

Watch Jim’s story of leadership through Pastoral Succession.

What are we looking for in a

Successor?

Why is succession important?

Because we don’t want our churches to retire with their founding pastors! We need both church planters and succession leaders to keep extending the Kingdom of God through Vineyard Churches.

What are we looking for in a successor?

You might be a leader already, maybe serving in an Assistant Pastor role somewhere, or you might never have had an opportunity to serve in leadership yet. You might feel like you know exactly what a Senior Pastor does, or have no idea, but have an inkling that the Lord is calling you to it. Or you might have felt that God speak to you about Senior Leadership but church planting has never felt quite right. Pastoral Succession might be for you.

If you’re excited about joining in with the story of a church and taking it on to what the Lord has for it, receiving the baton and running with the Lord for the next portion of the race, and if you have a passion to serve and lead a community, Pastoral Succession might well be what the Lord has in mind for you. 

What’s the process like?

Pastoral Successors need to go through a handover process (ideally a long one!) to come alongside the existing Senior Pastors, get to know the church family – its culture, its values, and learn the nuances of leading that specific group of people. 

That means that Pastoral Successors need to be able to learn under existing leadership, they need to be sensitive to the Lord’s leading, and sensitive to the needs of their specific church community before, during, and after the change in leadership. They then need to be able to discern and cast vision for a church community that they have inherited, rather than planted themselves. 

A Pastoral Successor often needs patience and gentleness, and a desire to see a community nurtured, as well as inspired and brought into a new season of life. 

Lastly, you don’t need to be ready for a Succession right away! It’s great to be able to plan ahead, so if you’re thinking this might be for you a few years down the line, we’d love to connect now, even just to chat about the possibility.

What does Pastoral Succession look like for an

incoming leader?

As every leader and every church is different, Pastoral Succession looks different for every church and every incoming leader. In situations where the existing leaders and the church have had good time to plan, there should hopefully be a well-planned handover. In other situations, things may have needed to go more quickly. Some churches have larger staff teams, others have smaller ones, and in each case the journey for the incoming leader will look different. And if you’re looking to take on the leadership of the church you currently serve in, your journey will look a bit different than if your succession is into leadership of a church you weren’t part of before.

Whatever the church’s situation and whatever the incoming leader’s journey looks like, the Pastoral Succession team will work with you to give you resources and support through the handover to help you, the outgoing pastors, and the whole church to journey through the change. Use the “Get in Touch” form below to request the full “Pastoral Succession” booklet, which has a more detailed step-by-step guide to the process.

Pastoral Succession

FAQs

“I feel like the Lord might be speaking to me about Pastoral Succession, but I don’t know where or when, what do I do?”
Don’t worry! Get in touch with us anyway. We’re in touch with potential Pastoral Successors who don’t yet have a church to lead, and we’re in touch with existing churches exploring Pastoral Succession who don’t yet have new leaders!

We aim to prayerfully put potential succession matches together in order to help you discern whether the Lord is connecting you to a Vineyard church that He planned for you to lead from long ago.

And, even if you’re not quite ready to rush into a succession process – we’d still love to know that God’s been speaking to you about it, and see if we can offer you some helpful information and prompting questions to be praying over and discerning along your journey.

What happens when I get in touch?
One of the Succession team will be in touch to send you the full “Pastoral Succession” booklet, and to arrange a time to chat with you!
They’ll be interested in hearing how you got to where you are today, how has God been speaking to you about pastoral succession, and what ministry experience have you had so far.

They’ll look to answer any questions you have about what Succession can look like, and help discern what the next steps could be for you on your succession journey. We’d love to chat and connect without any sense of pressure!

Lastly, if Succession sounds like it might be for you, we’ll also encourage you to speak to your Senior Pastor about it (if you’re currently in a Vineyard church) and ask them to pray with and discern with you.

Get in touch

    To find out more, fill in this form, and we will send you a copy of the Pastoral Succession booklet, and arrange a conversation with a member of the Pastoral Succession team.

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