Church Leadership

This note is about pastors. Is your pastor a rancher or a hired hand? You might say, “Wait, I thought the pastor was supposed to be a shepherd.” Here is the quick summary of my thoughts. In my own church, one of the things I learned at our membership class is that our pastor cannot be fired by a deacon board or other such entity in the church, while when I was a youth pastor/associate pastor, I answered to a board of elders who controlled the vision/goals/structure etc. of the church. One can quickly see where this is going. The Pastor who is the rancher, or chief shepherd if you prefer, sets the goals, vision etc. His only fear is that he will not hear God correctly and will have to answer for that to an almighty God. That is not to be taken lightly, however it is entirely different from the attitude of the hired hand pastor. He serves at the whim of the powers in the church and is realistically incapable of leading the church. That is because if he attempts to lead in such a way that the sheep don’t like, they have no trouble in firing him and searching for a new hired hand. Take a hard look at your own church. Maybe you are on that board that likes having just a hired hand instead of a land owning rancher for a pastor. To grow, a church needs strong leadership, and from experience I can tell you that the church rarely gets its leadership from its laity if the laity is not in submission to the pastor.