Getting the Executive Pastor/Senior Pastor Relationship Right (Part 3)
The senior pastor owns vision. The ministry staff own execution. But who owns the space in between?
The gap between vision and execution—the strategy, the alignment, the ability to pull things—is where churches get stuck. And the Executive Pastor is the person whose job it is to close it.
You may call this role something different in your church, but the best way may to be think about the integrator. Some people think the XP role is the “associate,” or “the person who does the stuff the pastor doesn’t want to do.” It is so much more than that.
A great executive pastor might be the rarest, most valuable person on your team. So in this episode, Jimmy and I dive into what only the executive pastor can do.
- Heart for Theology, Head for Organizational Leadership
- 3 Roles an XP Can’t Delegate
- Leading a High Impact Team
The XP’s success isn’t measured by how busy they are. It’s measured by how free the senior pastor is to stay in their lane. [episode 458] #unstuckchurch Share on X A great executive pastor has a heart for theology and a head for organizational leadership. [episode 458] #unstuckchurch Share on X A great XP drives a culture that is genuinely healthy and really performs. [episode 458] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean, managing director here at The Unstuck Group, and this is the final part of our three-week series on the relationship between the lead pastor and the executive pastor. So here’s a quick recap of the last two weeks. In week one, we talked about why this relationship is so hard to get right, the different kinds of wirings in those two roles, the communication barriers and the trust that needs to exist. In week two, we got specific about the lead pastor’s real job description and then the four things that only they can do. So if you’re listening closely, you heard us make the case for removing a whole lot of stuff off of the senior pastor’s plate. And today is the episode where we’re gonna answer the really obvious next question: handed off to who?
So this week is all about the executive pastor, and you may be calling this role something different in your church right now, but the best way to think about this is the integrator. Some people think the XP role is the associate or the person who does all the stuff the senior pastor doesn’t wanna do. I think it’s so much more than that. And by the end of today, my hope is that you’ll see why a great executive pastor might be the rarest, most valuable person on your team.
Before I bring Jimmy back in, I wanna say thanks again to this series podcast sponsor, PlainJoe Studios. Our most recent Unstuck Church report said that the average church is actually growing by 14% year over year and that means there are a lot of churches right now paying attention to their worship spaces. At PlainJoe Studio, they have a creative team that comes alongside churches to create beautiful, engaging spaces that connect with their community. Their team includes architectural, design and brand experts who can help transform worship spaces into attractive, engaging hubs for the community. If that’s an area that your church needs some help in, reach out to PlainJoe today at plainjoe.net.
All right, Jimmy McLoud is back with me one more time. He’s the lead pastor at First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio and a consultant on our Unstuck Team. Jimmy, you made it all the way to the finale, week three. Welcome back.
Jimmy:
It’s good to be back, Sean. Thanks. I’ve been really looking forward to this episode as a former XP and as a lead pastor who knows the value of a good one. And I’m actually working with three different churches right now that are in completely different places, but all in the same conversation. One is trying to figure out whether to promote from within or hire an XP. The other is kind of dealing with the fallout of having had the wrong XP. And the third is not ready for an XP yet, and they’re trying to figure out how to get this stuff done without one. So I think this episode is, man, really meaningful for me real time right now. And I know for a lot of our churches as well.
Sean:
Yeah, that’s good. I mean, that’s part of why we decided to go this direction with the series is there are so many churches wrestling with these two roles. I think a part of it is a byproduct of growth. There are a lot of churches that are growing, senior pastors, lead pastors feel more stretched in terms of their role. And they’re looking at who can pick up some of those things that, you know, I just feel overwhelmed by the number of things on my plate. So this has been a really timely, really important conversation.
So here’s the tension that I wanna start with today, and it actually starts with the name of the role, which I think trips up a lot of churches. The phrase executive pastor makes people picture an operations person most of the time. The person who keeps the building running and tracks the finances. And I think that’s part of the job, but thinking about it in that way only, massively undersells what the role actually requires. And sometimes when you hire for the limited version of this role, that’s what you get. You get the limited version of it.
So here’s the core purpose of the role straight from how we coach churches on it. The executive pastor exists to free up the senior pastor to focus on the four things only they can do: vision, teaching, culture and leadership. That’s the whole job in one sentence. The XP success isn’t measured by how busy they are. It’s measured by how free the senior pastor is to stay in their lane, which is a strange kind of job when you think about it. It’s a bit like being the closer in baseball. You know, you finish the game, somebody else gets the win.
And I think that’s the first tension here that we feel because there’s a gap in most churches that nobody really owns. The senior pastor owns the vision. The ministry staff tend to own the execution, but there’s space between vision and execution, the strategy, the alignment, the ability to pull things together, that gap is where churches get stuck a lot of times. And the XP is the person whose job it is to live in that gap and then close it. If nobody owns that role, you can have a compelling vision and you can have a really hardworking staff, but things are gonna feel off. You know, imagine it, like you’re trying to build a new building, having a brilliant architect and a really talented construction crew, but there’s no general contractor in the middle. With nobody to provide direction, the work isn’t gonna get done.
So Jimmy, right now you’re living on the senior pastor side of this, used to be on the XP side. Where do you feel the gap personally?
Jimmy:
You know, I feel it all the time, and I’m really fortunate right now that we have a great XP, but that gap, man, between vision and execution, that’s where I think most church conflict lives, even when nobody names it that way. You have a senior pastor on one side who’s frustrated the vision is not moving. And then the staff are frustrated because they don’t have clear direction. And everybody’s looking at each other wondering why things feel stuck. And you have that general contractor who’s missing and, you know, nobody’s identified it or called it out. That’s what Patrick Lencioni is talking about in The Advantage when he makes the point that organizational clarity has to be translated at every level or it evaporates. The senior pastor can cast the most compelling vision in the world, but if nobody owns the translation of that vision into actual team behavior and ministry decisions, it just hangs in the air and that’s the XP’s lane. That’s what they exist to do.
When I was an XP, I used to think of my job as being the last line of defense between a great vision and the entropy that will naturally wanna pull everything apart. Your staff are good people, and they’re working hard, but without somebody integrating everything, you get ministry drift, you get siloed departments.
Sean:
Right.
Jimmy:
The mission gets diluted. You know, the XP is that integration layer that you really can’t live without once you reach a certain point in your organizational life.
Sean:
Yeah. We talk about it in the book this way. You know, a great XP has a heart for theology and a head for organizational leadership. So practically, they can sit in a staff devotional and they can really genuinely shepherd people. And then they can walk into a budget meeting right afterwards and make a hard financial decision. Most people lean kind of heavily one way or the other. There are deeply pastoral people that absolutely hate spreadsheets, and your sharp operational people who’d rather not do any of the soul care part. And I think the XP has to be competent in both of those things. On top of that, they have to be strategically gifted. You know, they’re not just reacting to this week’s problem. They’re thinking out ahead, constantly reworking how the staff, the finances, the facilities and the ministries all line up so none of it becomes a lid.
They’re an activator. They see what the organization needs and they just go. They don’t wait to be told, which by the way, is exactly why the trust that we talked about in week one matters so much. You’re handing this person the keys and saying, “All right, drive.” So you better be willing to actually let them drive. Jimmy, anything you’d add on the tension side here before we move on?
Jimmy:
Yeah, Sean, you talk about needing an XP who is a little bit competent in a number of things. And I like to think I’m confident in a few things. I’m one of the rare people that is not supernaturally pastoral and also hates spreadsheets. So I had to kind of force learning and competency in some of those areas. But the XP has to be a little bit of a Swiss army knife, which is why it can be so hard to find a good one. You’ve got to have the ability to do a number of things really at, at not even a, a mid-level of competency, but you’ve got to be able to do them well or at least identify those abilities in other people and help them dig them out.
You know, here in Northeast Ohio as a Cleveland Browns fan, I get the tension of needing to find a great coach or quarterback. And it’s really hard to find one. The good ones are not on the market for a reason. It’s hard to go find them, but they are out there. And hopefully if you’re a senior pastor listening to this episode, some of what we’re gonna talk about here as we move into solutions will help you figure out what to look for.
Sean:
So for all of our international listeners, you know, Jimmy living in Ohio here in the United States, the Cleveland Browns just aren’t good at football and haven’t been for a long time. So Jimmy, you kinda opened that wound. And I don’t mean to pick at it, but just so all of our international listeners understand your pain.
Jimmy:
I’m pretty sure our ineptitude is internationally known at this point. But thanks, Sean, for rubbing it in a little bit.
Sean:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So just like last week with the senior pastors, we put a resource together around the XP role called the three roles an executive pastor can’t delegate. Last week was the senior pastor’s four, this week’s the XP’s three. And these three are the solution to that vision-to-execution gap that we just talked about. So let’s walk through them.
Role one is make the vision actionable. The senior pastor answers the question, where are we going? The XP comes along and says, okay, well, how do we actually get there? You know, vision identifies the destination. The XP helps build the roadmap, the teams, the systems, some of the deadlines that turn a compelling direction for the future into something that actually happens this week. And here’s the tightrope that I think they have to walk. They have to manage the tension between delegating and micromanaging. You know, if you hold on too tight and you become the lid, you might lose your best leaders. And if you hold too loose to things, there may be things that start to fall through the cracks. So the XP lives right on that line, I think every single day.
The second role is that the XP drives the core initiatives. And core initiatives are the areas of your team’s focus that make the future vision and direction turn into a reality. This one’s about being out in front of your team. There’s a great resource in the question that asks, are you actually leading your team or just managing them? And I think the test for this is pretty simple. Are you out in front of them? If the XP isn’t intentionally looking out four or five steps ahead and driving those future initiatives, those initiatives aren’t gonna happen.
And part of this role is being the bridge between reality and potential, what’s true and the possibility.
So if your senior pastor is a visionary, they’re gonna keep dreaming up new things because that’s their wiring and that’s their job. The XP’s job is not to be the wet blanket who shoots all of it down. It’s to help translate what those dreams would actually cost in terms of time, energy and people. And then to keep showing the pastor the momentum so that they can really feel it. You know, think about the XP role as the person turning the pastor’s lightning into electricity. Lightning is super exciting. And I’ve seen a lot of senior pastors like this. It is also useless until somebody runs it through a system that turns it into something that can power a house, right? All right.
So Jimmy, that’s my analogy for senior pastor XP. What would you add to those first two? Anything?
Jimmy:
I love both analogies you used there, Sean.
Sean:
Thank you.
Jimmy:
The lightning into electricity thing is exactly right. And so is the wet blanket warning, all right? I just wanna add this for all of our executive pastors that are listening. Your job is not to dim the lightning. And I’ve seen XPs who get so focused on the operational cost of a vision or an idea that they become the person in the room who immediately becomes that wet blanket. They have to explain why something won’t work. As a lead pastor, I value so much an executive pastor who has a “let’s find a way attitude,” not a “let’s find a reason not to” attitude. If you have that attitude over time, and it won’t be a lot of time, your senior pastor is gonna stop bringing ideas to you first. And that’s dangerous for a church, and it’s gonna be frustrating for you and your role, so you can’t allow yourself to become that person.
Now, I’ll just throw in one quick little shameless plug here, but I think that’s one of the most valuable things that our consulting team does for a lead and executive pastor team. There is a time and a place for discernment. There’s a time and a place to sift a vision and to prioritize ideas. And our process is built to help a leadership do exactly that. So if you as an executive pastor or if you’re a lead pastor listening and you’re having a hard time working your way through some of those ideas and discerning them, we have a great process for that that we’ll come back to.
I’ll just say the best XPs I’ve seen, and I think the best version of myself when I was in that role, they’re people who lead with a yes and here’s how, not blind optimism, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not looking for somebody who’s gonna be a yes person or just rubber stamp everything. But you have a default posture of, okay, let’s try to figure out how to make this happen. If you truly believe that your senior pastor is, you know, to use the analogy like going up the mountain and trying to get that vision from God, then you don’t wanna be the person when they come back down the mountain to just shoot it all down. So before you get to here’s why it’s complicated, start with let’s figure out how to do this. That’s so, so helpful to a visionary leader.
Sean:
All right. So Jimmy, that brings us to the third role. And this might be the most important one of all of them. It’s really leading a high-impact team. You know, the XP owns building and leading a staff team that embraces both health and performance. And that both word is really important here because here’s where teams tend to go wrong, and it’s almost always one of the two of these two. Number one, you overemphasize health. You know, everybody loves each other, the team feels great, but nobody ever has a hard conversation, and you’re not actually accomplishing the mission. You basically build a really affirming small group that happens to have a budget attached to it.
Or number two, you overemphasize performance. You’re getting tons done, you’re hitting your goals, and then the culture turns transactional. It feels cold relationally. And people start to burn out and start leaving. And a great XP is able to find the balance between those two things. They drive a culture where it’s genuinely healthy, and it really performs. That’s an ongoing tension to manage. And by the way, I don’t think tensions are a bad thing. You know, if you think about the strings on a guitar, there’s tension there, but it creates a beautiful sound. So tensions are good. Some of them we just kind of have to lean into.
And then to add to that, the XP has to be able to make the hard calls, mediate conflict, have tough conversations and sometimes just lovingly speak truth. They have to be the leader that the staff will actually follow, not just report to. So that means a high emotional intelligence. That means they have to build trust, maintain confidence with their team. They can have wild mood swings, and the staff and volunteers need to feel safe and heard around them. And I don’t think you can drive health and performance through a team that doesn’t trust you. Jimmy, I leave anything out there?
Jimmy:
The one thing I’d add, and this is something that I really deeply felt as an XP, is that this role probably more than any other on a church staff requires an unusual kind of emotional maturity that doesn’t get talked about enough. The XP does an enormous amount of the hardest work in the organization, and most of it is invisible. When things go really well, the senior pastor’s gonna get the credit internally. And when things are not going well internally, the blame will be assigned to the executive pastor more often than not. So you’re the one having the hard conversations with staff. You’re the one absorbing the operational chaos so the senior leader doesn’t have to. They’re the one who gets the credit when things run smoothly, which means you’ll often get no credit at all because nobody notices. You have to be secure enough in your identity as a leader and in your calling to lead boldly and stay confidently in the second chair at the same time.
And that’s a rare thing. The XPs that I know who have flamed out in this role almost always flame out for one of two reasons. Either they couldn’t lead—they were too differential or approval dependent. They were too unwilling to make the hard call or have the tough conversation, or they couldn’t stay in the second chair, at least confidently stay in the second chair. And so they started leading like they were the senior pastor and trust eroded.
Sean:
Yeah. I think one of the great roles that this XP can fill in order to help the pastor is by having those hard conversations and actually allowing the pastor to be the pastor. I think sometimes when pastors feel like they have to do the pastoral work, the care work, but then also step in and have really hard conversations from time to time, it’s hard, especially if they’re wired up with that shepherding gift. And so when the XP can step in, have those hard conversations and take that off from the plate of the senior pastor, man it is so freeing and so helpful.
All right. So Jimmy, let’s move to next steps and I wanna be really practical here because this is the finale and I want people to actually do something with all three of these episodes. So here’s the first next step. And it’s mostly for senior pastors. Go back and look at your executive pastor or the person that’s filling that integrator role. And even if they don’t have that title, compare them against the profile that we talked about. Do they have a heart for theology and a head for organizational leadership? Are they strategically gifted? Are they thinking about the long term? Are they an activator that takes initiative? Are they a leader the staff will follow with a high emotional intelligence? And then ask the honest question, do I have the right person in this seat?
Because putting the wrong person in the XP seat is one of the most expensive mistakes I think a church can make. So a wonderful, loyal, hardworking person who isn’t wired for that role will still create a gap of alignment and unity on the team that’s gonna just widen over time. It’s like, it’s gonna be a crack right now. It’s gonna become a gap later. Loyalty is not the same thing as fit.
Jimmy:
Sean, that’s so true. You know, I’ve seen churches that have paid that cost, and there’s a literal cost to having the wrong person in that seat. It’s financially costly to make the wrong hire or put the wrong person in that chair. But even worse is the cultural cost. And it can take a long time to rebound when you create a cost deficit because you had the wrong person in the XP. Senior pastors and XPs, put your earmuffs on for a second while I say this, but senior pastors, let me just say, if you feel like you have the wrong person in that XP seat, you owe it to that person as much as anybody else to discern that as quickly as possible.
If they’re the wrong person, and I’ve lived this, if they are the wrong person, they are not gonna be happy. And you may think having the tough conversation about their fit is gonna be hard for them. They probably already feel it. And having that tough conversation, as difficult as it may be, is hopefully ultimately gonna end not only with you and the rest of your team feeling relief because you can move them out and get the right person in that seat, but believe it or not, whether they tell you or they don’t, they’ll feel the relief too.
So one more thing I would put specifically on the executive pastors in the room, you also need to get honest about whether you’re actually leading or if you’re just managing. Sean mentioned that profile and the list was strategically gifted activator, high EQ, drives health, drives performance. Read that list slowly and you need to ask yourself which of those things is genuinely true of me and which are things that I’m just hoping for. They’re more aspirational than real.
‘Cause what I’ve found in, in not just my consulting work, but my ministry experience in both roles, XP and lead pastor, is that most XPs are strong in two or three of those areas, but they’ve got a real blind spot in at least one of them. And the blind spot is usually the one that’s causing the friction that maybe everybody’s afraid to address with you, but they all know that it’s there. Some XPs are brilliant strategically, but they’re low on emotional intelligence, and their team respects them, but they don’t trust them. And then you have others who are deeply relational, and they’re deeply trusted, but they’re not actually driving initiatives, so the staff feel pastored and cared for, but they don’t feel led. You need an honest outside voice to help you discern which of those things you are.
And just realize you can’t always fix it. Everybody’s wired differently, and there’s a reason you’re wired the way that you’re wired. You have strengths, and you have weaknesses. And that’s a really good thing. But the XP profile is a demanding profile, and so it’s critically important that you get somebody in your life who’s gonna tell you the truth about where you really are so that you can leverage your strengths and put the right people around you to minimize your weaknesses and cover your blind spots. That begins with awareness and ownership of your wiring.
Sean:
Man, that’s good, Jimmy. All right. So I’ve got one more that came to mind. And this is for both the senior pastor and executive pastor together. Just sit down and go back through all three of these episodes and do the work that we keep pointing at. You know, name your wiring, get clear on the senior pastor’s four roles, get clear on the executive pastor’s three roles, and then write it down. Actually document it: who owns what because I don’t think the thing that’s going to impact or wreck this relationship is gonna be a lack of respect for each other. I just think it’s gonna come back to a lack of clarity. And that clarity isn’t gonna happen by accident. It happens on purpose, usually with proximity and great communication with each other.
All right, before we close out this whole series, let me just land the plane because, uh, here’s the big idea across all three weeks. This is the highest leverage relationship in your church. You’ve got two leaders. They are wired very differently. They have to choose to trust each other and to stay in their lanes. And when that’s healthy, the clarity that flows throughout the entire organization and the whole church just gets healthier. When it’s not, there is no amount of talent underneath these two that can fully make up the difference. The senior pastor protects the four only they can do. The executive pastor owns the three that free their senior pastor to do them. And neither one works without the other. The senior pastor without a great XP is overwhelmed and can be scattered. The XP without a senior pastor who will actually let go is just a frustrated person with great ideas and no way to accomplish or follow through. But both of these roles together, you’ve got something that very few churches ever end up building. And I mean, it really can change your church.
Jimmy, I’ll let you take us home, leave our listeners with the last word for this series.
Jimmy:
Well, Sean, just one more time. Thank you for having me co-host this series with you. I’m so deeply passionate about seeing churches have an effective senior pastor-executive pastor relationship. So I’ve really been honored to get to speak into this. I would just land with one thought for each of those roles. If you’re a senior pastor, the most important hire you will ever make outside of your own calling, the most important decision is gonna be the person you put in that XP seat. Not because they’re gonna do your job, but because they’re gonna make it possible for you to do your job. And so a great XP doesn’t diminish the senior pastor. They actually multiply them.
And if you’re an XP listening to this, I want you to hear something I wish someone had said to me earlier on in my time in that role. What you do is genuinely significant even when you feel like nobody sees it. It’s not always glamorous. It’s not always visible. It’s often invisible, but the health of your church, the clarity of your staff and where they’re going, the execution of the senior pastor’s vision, and the health and success of your senior pastor, a huge amount of all of those things runs through you. So don’t pull back from that. Don’t hide from that. Lead boldly in those things. Don’t wait for permission to lead, and don’t measure your success by how much credit you get. Measure it by how free your senior pastor is to do what only they can do and by how healthy and aligned the team underneath that senior leader is. That’s the job. And when you do the job really well, I’ve lived this from both sides, it’s one of the most important and rewarding roles you’ll ever have in ministry.
Sean:
All right. Well, that’s a wrap on the series. If these three episodes have stirred something up in you and if you’ve realized the relationship at the top of your church just needs some clarity, and you’re not sure you’ve got the right people in the right seats, that’s the exact kind of work that we love to help with. So at the Unstuck Group, we help pastors lead unstuck churches that are healthy and growing and getting your staffing and structure clear is one of the most freeing things you’ll ever do as a leadership team. We’d love to have a conversation about what that could look like at your church. So you can reach out to us today at theunstuckgroup.com/start.
And don’t forget to grab both of the free resources we mentioned throughout this series: four roles a senior pastor can’t delegate and the three roles an executive pastor can’t delegate. They are a great place to start the conversation between the two of you. So thanks for listening to this series, and next week we’ll be back with an episode really answering your questions in one of our quarterly Ask Anythings. So we’ll see you then.
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