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- There are five main roles a senior pastor should focus on 🔎
There are five main roles a senior pastor should focus on 🔎
Do you know what they are?
Having clear boundaries around responsibilities and roles can lead to increased productivity, smoother operations, and an overall less burnout-inducing system.
As we touched on in a previous edition, no one is meant to do it all on their own. No one in the Bible was a prophet, priest, and king all at once.
Trying to be all three leads to a Moses/Jethro conversation about delegation.
To avoid that conversation, you can hone in on these five main roles and let everything else pass to the person best suited for the task.
The five main roles of a senior pastor and why they’re important
We’re not saying these come from the Ten Commandments—they do, however, come from years of experience helping churches and hearing directly from senior pastors about their experiences.
With that knowledge, we’ve identified the five main roles of a senior pastor:
Being God’s prophet—preaching God’s word to His people
Casting God’s vision based on His leading
Pastoring your staff while keeping your family as your first priority
Assembling leadership capital—spiritually evaluating your direct reports
Ensuring proper financial resources to execute God’s vision
Each one speaks to the same basic idea: the overall health of the church at its foundation. A healthy pastor supports a healthy church.
When a senior pastor keeps each of these elements in mind without straying too far into other people’s responsibilities—taking on more than they should—they’re more likely to maintain the pace they set and avoid burnout.
Why assembling leadership capital is crucial
The stronger the “executive team” is, the stronger the pastor, and the stronger the pastor, the stronger the church. Choosing who is at your left, right, and center is a critical part of being a senior pastor.
Getting the right people in the right seats takes more than a regular competence evaluation. It takes a spiritual evaluation to ensure alignment and accountability.
These are the people who will have your back, call you out if needed, and carry a torch for what God is telling you to do through your congregation.
Ensure you have a firm and clear understanding of where your potential direct-reports stand spiritually before welcoming them to the team.
Action Items:
Set up a system for spiritually evaluating potential direct reports
This could be a specific assessment with questions designed to reveal spiritual competence, an interview-styled evaluation, or whatever fits your team best.
Whichever you choose, be sure to practice consistency and care.
Put boundaries in place to avoid stepping outside of your five roles
This is where having aligned and spiritually competent direct reports pays off significantly. They can help you change course, delegate, and reassess as needed.
Be sure to outline your parameters and check tasks against your list to ensure they fall under one of your five roles.
Experiencing resistance? Give it to God
It’s not always easy to delegate tasks. Sometimes we feel we’re the only ones who can do certain actions when really, they’re only overencumbering us.
Check-in with God if you feel any resistance while trying to establish firmer role boundaries for the health of you and the church. Lean on the truth that no one—not even in the Bible—served as prophet, priest, and king all at the same time.
Through the power of Christ that strengthens you, you’re capable of finding the right balance and moving forward with clarity and peace.