If you are a staff pastor do you agree with everything your lead pastor does and decides?
Well, I hope not and I hope not for a couple of reasons.
1. Because you lose yourself as a pastor and as an individual. If you are a yes-man to your pastor.
2. If you’re a yes man to your pastor then he loses your insight. He loses your perspective. He loses the value you bring to the table as an individual and as a pastor on that staff.
So, I hope you’re not a yes-man and I hope you don’t agree with everything that your pastor decides. But, the challenge is how do you manage all of your opinions.
If you’re like me you have lots of opinions. You have lots of things that you think and you have an opinion about everything.
Well, maybe you’re not as bad as I am.
How do you balance your opinions, your thoughts, and your decisions with being supportive?
Have you ever thought, “If I were in his position, this is what I would do”?
How do you balance that with being supportive and on board with your pastor’s decisions?
Well, I want to show you exactly how I have learned to have an opinion as a staff pastor, even share that opinion, while at the same time building trust, loyalty, and a strong relationship with your pastor in whatever decision he makes.
Even when you don’t agree with the decision.
Introduction
When I was coming up into ministry, I had the opportunity to help lead a young adult group. The Middle School Pastor I was serving at the time decided to transition into starting a young adults program. We were in a college town with a lot of colleges in the area, but our church didn’t have a young adult program. The Middle School Pastor, Dave, wanted to start a program serving the college and young adult community and transitioned into that area. I caught a heart for his vision and decided to go transition with him.
After a year, the group was going well. Dave was laying some great vision for the program, we were getting onto different college campuses and into different gatherings and college students and young adults were latching onto our community.
Over time it became apparent there was a significant difference in how Dave and I were impacting the group. I was single and didn’t have a wife or kids, while Dave had a wife and a newborn daughter. I was just a young guy hanging out playing basketball, meeting people for coffee, and laser-focused on building the ministry.
My availability to everyone increased my overall influence. Those in our community knew they could call me or text me and I was available.
Grab coffee, I’m in!
Play ball, I’m in!
Go to a movie, I’m in!
Have a deep conversation about the meaning of life, I’m in!!!
I was available at the drop of a hat.
This made me valuable to the community, but also valuable to Dave. He and I were very collaborative as we led this group and he valued my opinion a lot. In fact, looking back he valued it far more than I deserved at that stage in my pastoral leadership.
I appreciated that because there were times when Dave would have an idea that I didn’t fully agree with him about. We would talk it through and we’d both have our own perspective on it. In the end, he would decide to go in a different direction than what I thought he should.
Now, he had a few more years of ministry under his belt and was much more gifted and talented than me. Me, I was just shooting from the hip most of the time, but thought I was hitting on all cylinders.
I felt I could see the problem more clearly, understood the issues better, and knew the right path forward. After all, I was spending most of my time neck-deep with the community while he was at home with his family. How could he possibly know better than me?
Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong, and grew to understand that while working with Dave.
Dave was in the position of being a spiritual leader, building a ministry, and guiding the lives of a young adult community.
I was serving him and stepping into gaps he wasn’t able to, and really shouldn’t have been in. It was right for him to be with his family instead of hanging out at someone’s house watching movies until midnight.
There were times when he and I just didn’t hit on the same note. But, at the end of the day, he was the Young Adult Pastor. I wasn’t.
I was assisting him.
I was on his team helping him build this ministry. I wasn’t the young adult pastor, he was.
Many times we would not see eye to eye in the decision-making process, but when we broke discussion and a decision was made, I understood one thing: my job was to support whatever decision he had made. That was my job, that was my responsibility, that was my role.
It would have been poor leadership and ungodly for me to use my role and my relational capital with those in the group to somehow sway their opinion to agree with me. That wouldn’t have been God-honoring to Dave, to our ministry, or to the young adults that we served.
My job was to follow his direction and his decisions no matter how I felt.
What It Looks Like To Be On Board
There’s a great quote that I love from Colin Powell where he says, “When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.”
My role with Dave taught me this valuable lesson and I have cherished it throughout my ministry. That doesn’t mean I have always been successful in executing it. I have made some serious mistakes along the way, and my volume of opinions has only increased.
But, when serving a Lead Pastor, I take the posture that their decision is to be honored and I support it wholeheartedly. Even when their decision turned out to be wrong and they should have listened to me. I didn’t gloat, or go to them with an I-told-you-so attitude. No, there was no need to kick them when they were down. My role was to support them when they were right and when they were wrong.
Scripture is clear that a house divided cannot stand. If you are a staff pastor, maybe you do know everything. Maybe you know more than your Lead Pastor. Great. Your role is not to prove how smart you are or how right you are. Your job is to be supportive, to be an agent of unification among the body, and to move forward in whatever direction God has called you to.
Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in propping yourself up and creating disunity among your church community. When you do that, you are placing yourself in opposition to what God wants to do in your community, and you become a hindrance to the Holy Spirit.
Instead, give your Lead Pastor the gift of security, allowing them to know they don’t have to worry about you undermining what they have decided. Give them the gift of not worrying about you creating divisions. In turn, you will be giving the gift of confidence as well. A leader with a loyal team around him can move freely without having to look over his shoulder.
A confident Lead Pastor is a gift to his team because he isn’t second-guessing, he isn’t looking for popular opinion to guide him, and he isn’t deaf to the voice of God.
Now that we have the right mindset, let’s discuss the three guidelines you can follow to support your Lead Pastor even when you don’t agree.
How to be on Board When We Aren’t Sold
Voice Your Opinion
The last thing your pastor needs in his decision-making circle is a ‘yes-man’. Too often when the discussion is being had, staff pastors clam up. Whether it is intimidation, timidity, lack of confidence, or an apathetic attitude, many staff pastors just listen to the information being given and simply agree with what the Lead Pastor wants to do.
I believe that if you sit back during the discussion, then you forfeit your right to have an opinion about the decision afterward.
The time to speak up is before the decision is made. If you see something that maybe others aren’t seeing, speak up. If the decision is going to have a negative impact on you or your ministry, speak up.
We can’t slip into this ‘yes man’ mentality where we are blindly agreeable in the discussion, but then afterward when things go south we are there shaking our heads saying, “I knew from the beginning this wasn’t going to work.”
That’s not doing anyone any favors. You are being a ‘yes man’ on the front end and creating division on the back end.
If your Lead Pastor is opening the door and asking your opinion about a decision being made, share it. Even if you simply have some thoughts on it, share them. Even if you don’t think the pastor is going to like what you have to say, share anyway. You may be providing insight that he isn’t getting anywhere else.
It is important to be tactful in how you say things, particularly if you know it isn’t what your Lead Pastor wants to hear. Don’t be mean or cut them down.
Question Behind Doors
The second way to be supportive of your Lead Pastor when you aren’t on board with his decision is to bring up questions behind closed doors.
If you have been a staff pastor for any amount of time you know that there are times when your Lead Pastor simply goes rogue. He goes outside of the normal decision-making process and takes a trip off into left field making a decision all on his own.
Now, let’s be clear, as the Lead Pastor, he has every right to do that. Sometimes, Lead Pastors have to do that because they feel God moving them in a specific direction and a decision needs to be made.
It can leave the staff members in a bit of bewilderment recognizing the right thing to do is to support the decision, but not having any real clarity on why the decision was even made.
When you pastor makes a rogue decision, we have to remember that it is irrelevant if it is right or not. As staff pastors, our job is to be supportive.
Sometimes a Lead Pastor will invite feedback in a staff meeting after a decision has been made, and as I mentioned before, that is when you tactfully bring up questions and concerns.
When no feedback is requested but you feel there are some serious issues, a major flaw in the decision, or you simply need a greater understanding of the decision, the time to address those questions is behind closed doors with your pastor personally. Not in front of the staff and certainly not in front of congregants.
Bringing up questions about your pastor’s decision may be 100% right, but when done in front of others it becomes 100% wrong.
Ask to have a word with your pastor, schedule a meeting, or simply pull him aside in a discreet way at an opportune moment to share your thoughts. Any of those are acceptable, but putting your pastor on blast in front of others is not going to go well for you.
Allow me to be clear here. This isn’t about stroking your Lead Pastor’s ego, allowing him to save face, or protecting his persona. This is about guarding your heart and exercising discipline for yourself. It is about handling situations properly and not allowing yourself to be pulled down into an unhealthy behavior pattern.
If you allow yourself to build a habit of questioning authority in front of others in your ministry, it will carry with you everywhere you serve. It will sabotage you because you are allowing yourself to handle things in an unhealthy way.
Always share concerns behind closed doors and give your pastor the gift of privacy. The hope is that your pastor receive that and will engage in a conversation with you.
Either way, you can rest in confidence that you handled the situation in a proper way. You respectfully shared your concerns in a God-honoring and Pastor-respecting way. Whatever they do after that is not your responsibility.
Seek To Understand, Not to Criticize
One truth I always remind myself is that anyone can be a critic. Anyone has the capacity to criticize something they see, hear, or experience.
This is predominant in our culture today, particularly on social media. We have people who make a living on being critical and tearing other people down. This makes it easy for us to give ourselves permission to be critical as well. This, however, is not fitting for a leader, a follower of Jesus, or a pastor at any level.
It is easy to be critical, and when you follow a Lead Pastor, there will always be room for you to be critical, even if you have the greatest pastor in the world. He is human like you are, and he will make mistakes. Just like you do. The difference is that sitting in his seat makes him a greater target for criticism than the seat you sit in.
This is why your natural posture must be to seek out an understanding of things before attempting to be critical of them. Seek to understand why the decision was made, what the thought process behind the decision was, and what the ultimate goals are.
Choose to ask questions and engage in dialogue rather than criticizing. Questions and dialogue strengthen relationships, trust, and loyalty. Criticism creates defensive barriers and wounds that hinder unity on a team.
I wish I could say I have always gotten this right, but I know that I haven’t. I understand how easy it is to be critical of a decision. I know how easy it is to leave a staff meeting and make my way directly to the worship pastor’s office to engage in a conversation of “What in the world is he thinking?”
Those are never productive conversations because they are rooted in a critical spirit, not in a desire to understand. Do not be a staff pastor that engages in that sort of behavior and certainly don’t be the one that introduces it into a staff culture. It will become a cancer that rips your staff apart over time.
Sometimes, you will seek to understand by asking all the questions, engaging in dialogue, and being tactful and respectful, but still not get it. The decision will look no more clearer to you and you won’t have any greater understanding than you did before.
That’s okay. Just resign yourself to being supportive without fully understanding. I have learned over and over that I can be supportive even when I don’t understand. I have also learned being supportive is the God-honoring posture to take.
Decisions have a way of proving themselves over time. If the decision is a bad decision, I don’t have to be the one to point it out. I can just let it play out and prove itself to be a bad decision. Pastor will come to that realization himself.
Personally, there have been countless times when I thought things were a bad decision or they were going to play out differently than they did but didn’t say anything. In the end, I ended up being wrong and the decision worked out ok. By not saying something, I saved myself from looking like a fool and preserved my pastor’s trust in me.
Decisions have a way of proving themselves over time. If the decision is a bad decision, I don’t have to be the one to point it out. I can just let it play out and prove itself to be a bad decision. Pastor will come to that realization himself.
Personally, there have been countless times when I thought things were a bad decision or they were going to play out differently than they did but didn’t say anything. In the end, I ended up being wrong and the decision worked out ok. By not saying something, I saved myself from looking like a fool and preserved my pastor’s trust in me.
Conclusion
In the end, your pastor values your perspective, your insight, and your voice at the table. You want to preserve that as much as you can. You don’t want to allow yourself to become a ‘yes man’, but you also don’t want to become the negative nelly who is being critical of everything in all the wrong ways.
You won’t agree with everything your pastor says. Except that reality and decide how you are going to handle it when that happens. Make the decision you are going to voice your opinion when it is asked for, you will only question behind closed doors, and you will see to understand rather than criticize. If you follow those three guidelines you will build a strong relationship with your Lead Pastor full of trust and loyalty. Over time he will want your perspective more and more and you will be a trusted voice in his world. For a Lead Pastor, that is often hard to come by.
When you follow those three guidelines you also breed unity in your staff and congregation by standing by your pastor and following him with trust and support. This is what builds healthy ministry teams and healthy churches.
