Succession or Fired

We’ve all been there. We’ve heard bosses, supervisors and even friends fumble, stumble and ramble when attempting to bring bad or difficult news to someone. Whether it’s a team or an entire company, a [...]

On the Monday Morning Church Podcast, Neil Miller interview Fletch. From Fletch's experience of being without a Senior Pastor for twenty months, he describes ten steps for a successful Senior Pastor transition. There are [...]

Necessary Endings is a “necessary” read for every church leader, regardless of denominational stripe. While the author and internationally renowned Dr. Henry Cloud intended this volume to promote personal and professional growth, it could [...]

I recently took a new ministry position. As I made the decision to change ministries, I went back and forth since I would be leaving a place and people that I love! Note: If you [...]

We all love to deliver good news---a successful event, a budget overage, finishing a building project early and under budget, or a ministry initiative that exceeded expectations. But what do you do when you need [...]

The truth is that we are all interim pastors. There will come a day when you are no longer the pastor of your church. The key to a successful pastoral succession plan is to [...]

Understanding that termination is a difficult process to execute, we as human beings never want to engage in those conversations. But before even approaching the process of termination, I looked through Scripture and found countless [...]

I have lived through hurricanes. When I was much younger, growing up in Florida, there were several times when my family huddled together in our boarded-up home, lighting candles when the power went out and [...]

XPastor tries to help churches by providing some of the essentials for running a church---items like job descriptions, employment applications, review forms and policies. Below are Exit Interview Questions from Old North Church of Canfield, Ohio that they [...]

Nothing jolts a church quite like the resignation of its senior pastor. Shock, disbelief, confusion, disappointment. And that’s just the get-go of the attending reactions and emotions. While the inner circle of leadership may see [...]

Did you ever play Pickle as a kid? You know the game---the one where you run between two bases while the baseman tries to throw you out. There were always some kids that would never [...]

Jeff Jones succeeded Gene Getz---the founder of the Bible Fellowship Church movement---as the Senior Pastor of the Bible Fellowship Church in Dallas. Their transition was a smooth, well-planned process.  Below are some thoughts from [...]

One of the greatest challenges in the business world is the exit of the founder of a corporation. Consider the words of Professor Noam Wasserman of the Harvard Business School: "My research focuses on founder frustrations [...]

In the year 1990, when Nicholas Smith was 8 years old, Bethany Baptist Church of Lindenwold, New Jersey had 29 active members. In the year 2003, Bethany Baptist had 16,500 members, Nicholas was 23 years old [...]

Bob had all the marks of a hurting pastor. I sat across the coffee shop table and hurt with him. He had recently finished his first year in Judson Church and celebrated the congregation's [...]

For the past two months, I have been coaching several XPs who have been asked to resign their positions. Transition is never easy and usually makes the honor roll for experiencing pain and suffering [...]

Executive Pastors get excited about the opportunity to flex their catalyst muscles to launch ministries in the church. But most tend to lose enthusiasm when it comes time to do some pruning. Ministries are [...]

On a family trip out west, my family and I were traveling home for Christmas. After four hours of traveling, we heard a loud noise outside the car. We were traveling at seventy miles per [...]