Should I stay at my church, or should I go?
Considering vocational opportunities, especially for pastors.
Some time ago, I was talking to an older and wiser pastor friend about how to evaluate job opportunities. We were discussing pastoral ambition and how to humbly think through motives, experience, circumstances, and a host of other factors. The conversation was practical and helpful, and I think many pastors (as well as non-church employees) might benefit from the wisdom I received that day.
If you do a bit of online research, you are likely to get a range of answers to the question “How long does the average senior pastor stay at a church?” I’ve seen the average as low as two years and as high as six. Since some senior pastors stay with the same church for two or three decades (and sometimes even more), then many pastors must come and go within six to twelve months. No matter how you slice it, it is rare to see vocational senior pastors stay with the same church into the double-digit years.
Sometimes pastors are fired, and this can happen for good or bad reasons (or even a mixture of both). This post is not focused on that sort of departure. Nor is this post interested in discerning the mysterious will of God. God’s providential will is only revealed in the rear view mirror, and even there we cannot definitively know what to make of it. So too, God’s providence (or His mysterious will) is often contrary to His revealed will (I sin many times every day!). Therefore, I think it’s more helpful to think about what God has already revealed (in Scripture) as well as what we already know (of our circumstances, skills, opportunities, and the like).
With that in mind, I want to offer (what I think is) wise counsel to pastors who are considering whether they should stay or go on their own initiative. Let me also say up front that I believe it is generally preferable that a senior pastor would stay long-term with a church. So many of the benefits, the advances, and the joys of pastoral leadership and shepherding accrue over time. And yet, there are many good reasons a pastor might leave his post sooner rather than later.
Here are three categories that should each and collectively influence that decision. And I think the order also reflects a right understanding of how to prioritize them.
First, The Welfare of Your Family
As husbands and fathers, we must prioritize the well-being of our families. This means we must think through the possible gains and losses of leaving or staying in our present pastoral situation.
If I stay, will I be able to financially support my family?
Will my finances suffer if I leave?
If I stay, will my wife and/or kids continue struggling to build real friendships?
Will my wife and/or kids suffer the loss of their closest friends if I leave?
If I leave, will I create an unbearable sense of instability for my wife and/or my kids?
If I stay, will my family have to endure unbearable instability of some sort?
If I leave, will my wife and/or kids really miss the mountains, the ocean, the trees, the parks, the walking trails, or some other geographical feature of our current location?
If I stay, am I preventing my wife and/or kids from being in closer proximity to our extended family?
Would we be moving away from family if I leave?
These are just some of the question to think through when you are considering the welfare of your family and the possible effects of staying or leaving. Sometimes, the present situation is a detriment to your wife and/or kids, and a departure to most anywhere for any reason would be great. Other times, the church you lead, the relationships you’ve built, and the stability that has formed are quite a stack of blessings that you don’t want to leave behind.
Overall, the question here is “How will my decision to stay or leave affect my family’s welfare?”
Second, The Health of Your Current Church
After having considered the welfare of your family, next you’ll want to think through the health of your current church. And there are two main ways to think about this - one positive and the other negative. Generally speaking, you’ll want to evaluate whether it is likely that your current church will continue in its present trajectory. This can be good enough to leave or bad enough to leave, but it can also give you sufficient reason to stay and keep on doing good work.
Positive - Healthy enough to continue
The question you want to ask here is, “Is your current church doing so well that they will be able to process your departure?”
If the answer is yes, then you might feel more freedom to leave. The church will likely continue in a good direction, and the absence of your pastoral leadership (while painful) is not (so far as you can tell) going to derail the present health and vitality.
If the answer is no, then you might feel more of an obligation to stay. The church seems likely to take a real hit to its stability, its health, and/or its witness in the community. The absence of your pastoral leadership would (so far as you can tell) likely derail the present strides toward faithfulness and fruitfulness.
Negative - Disordered and unhealthy enough to continue
The question here is quite the opposite - “Is your current church so unhealthy that your continued leadership there will not likely result in any progress?”
If the answer is yes, then you might feel more freedom to leave. The church will likely continue in a bad direction (so far as you can tell) even if you stay. Your pastoral leadership has (for whatever reason) not been able to turn the church toward health and faithfulness. You’ve given a solid effort to lovingly lead, but the dynamics, the people, or your own inadequacies or failures are obstinately preventing progress.
If the answer is no, then you might feel more of an obligation to stay. The church is still unhealthy and disordered, but it has been showing signs of responding well to your leadership. It is plausible to imagine that your continued pastoral labors might lead to some real advances toward a better witness for Christ, a more faithful effort to make disciples, and a more vibrant display of Christian love in the community.
A couple of caveats
When you’re thinking through the present health (or lack thereof) of your church, you are dabbling in the realm of educated speculation. The first caveat we ought to keep in mind here is that we simply do not know what the Lord might do. It may be that your pastoral endurance through the midst of hardship is bearing fruit that you cannot see. So too, it may be that your pastoral departure will be just the sort of crisis that will provoke all sorts of spiritual growth and unity among the church you leave behind.
One other caveat here is that no one man can or should bear the weight of full responsibility for the perseverance or demise of a given church. Whether you stay or go, Christ is the Lord of His people. It is ultimately up to Him to keep the lampstand burning or to extinguish it. Therefore, no pastor should feel that he must stay or go. This is a question in the realm of prudence, and while it is quite important, it is not going to change anyone’s eternal destination.
Third, The Opportunity Elsewhere
After considering the welfare of your family and the state of your present church, you’ll want to evaluate the significance and suitability of the other opportunity. Here again, we are dealing with what we know, what we can observe, and what we understand to be the priorities and instructions we find in Scripture. And what we are looking for here is your perceived usefulness and compatibility with an opportunity you have elsewhere.
So many factors might enter our consideration on this point. However, the main focus we want to have here is on your skills, personality, experience, and ambition. This, of course, is what we want to see aligned well with a potential opportunity.
Are you better suited for a larger city, a smaller town, or a rural community in the middle of nowhere?
Are you more inclined to thrive in a fast-paced environment with lots of staff to manage? Or will you do better with a slower routine and little to no staff management responsibilities?
Are your strengths more useful to help a dying church become self-sufficient again, to help a disordered church become rightly ordered, or to gather a new church for the purpose of establishing a gospel witness where there presently is none?
Are you less experienced and in need of a stable group of leaders to come alongside you for a while? Or are you more experienced and capable of raising up leaders in a church where there is a present vacuum?
The bottom line here is to evaluate whether the new opportunity so significant or so well suited to you that it is compelling. If so, then it might be God-honoring to pursue it rather than to stay in your present role.
Conclusion
Pastors seem to often use vague and “spiritual” language when they talk about why they chose to leave one church to go to another. “I believe the Lord called me.” “God opened the door for me to go.” “The Lord put is on my heart to take this new opportunity.” I’m not interested in arguing about the validity of such statements, but I am interested in being more reasonable and honest about how to make these decisions.
The pastoral vocation is distinct from other vocations in many ways, and it is not wrong to understand that God is truly at work in sending His undershepherds to one post or another. However, those pastors who stay or leave would help their churches to think far more biblically and rightly about pastoral leadership if they would communicate an understandable rationale for their decision to do so. And in order to do that, pastors must wisely think through their options beforehand.
I hope that this summary of wise counsel is useful to others. It was and continues to be useful for me.
May God help all of us who enjoy the privilege and bear the burden of vocational pastoral responsibility to shepherd those people God has placed in our care through the difficult transition of senior pastoral leadership.