Getting the Executive Pastor/Senior Pastor Relationship Right (Part 2)
The job of the Senior Pastor is enormous.
Prepare and deliver sermons. Ensure the spiritual health of the church. Model biblical priorities. And, roughly, 400 other items.
Whether it’s in the written job description or not, senior pastors have too much to do. And when everything is on your plate, everything feels equally urgent.
But there’s a handful of things that only the lead pastor can do. And the gap between that and everything else on the to-do list is where lead pastors get stuck.
In this episode, Jimmy and I break down the unique role of the senior pastor—what only they can do, and how to delegate everything else.
- Roles the Senior Pastor Can’t Delegate
- What the Senior Pastor Should Delegate
- Protecting Your Calendar and What Only You Can Do
Casting vision effectively is the hundreds of small moments during the week where you’rereinforcing where you’re going. [episode 457] #unstuckchurch Share on X Whatever you don’t like about your church’s culture is probably a reflection of how you operate. [episode 457] #unstuckchurch Share on X There's a small set of things that only the lead pastor can do. And those are exactly the things that just get pushed to the back burner because they're rarely the thing that feels on fire today. [episode 457] #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 we are in part two of our series on the relationship between the lead pastor and the executive pastor. Last week we talked about why this relationship is so hard to get right, the different types of wiring that we see in these roles and personalities, and the communication that tends to die, tends to disappear in busy seasons. And then added to that, the trust that you have to choose on purpose or you will end up not trusting each other. So if you missed it, go back and start with that episode. This episode is gonna build on that one. Today we’re gonna get a little more specific. We’re talking about the lead pastor’s real job description, and I say real on purpose because there’s the job description that’s on paper, which is, you know, roughly, Jimmy, 400 items long. And then there’s a handful of things that only the lead pastor can do. And those are two different lists. And the gap between them is often where a lot of lead pastors tend to get stuck.
So, before I bring in my co-host Jimmy McLoud for the series, I wanna pause and say, thanks to this week’s and this series podcast sponsor: PlainJoe Studios. You know, one of our most recent unstuck church reports, we found that the average church is growing by 14% year over year. And that means there are a lot of churches that are paying more attention than ever to their worship space. Well, the creative team at PlainJoe works with churches to create beautiful, engaging worship spaces that connect with their community. They have a team of architectural, design and branding experts that will come in and help you transform your worship space and create an attractive, engaging hub for your community. So, if that’s an area where your church could use some help, you can reach out to them today at plainjoe.net.
Alright, I have got Jimmy McLeod back with me again. Jimmy’s the lead pastor at First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio, and a consultant on the Unstuck team. Jimmy, welcome back. You survived episode one. I would love to hear from you. You’ve been traveling, you’ve been working with churches lately. What churches have you been to? Or maybe just give us some highlights from some of the churches that you’ve engaged with.
Jimmy:
Yeah, Sean, it’s great to be back. Thanks for having me for another episode. And man, I’ve been having a blast lately working with some great churches in the Pittsburgh area and over in Central New Jersey. Gonna be in Philadelphia here before very long. And actually this is cool, getting to work with a church about 15 minutes from home right here in our community.
Sean:
Oh, I love that.
Jimmy:
Didn’t even realize they already have some relationships in that church. So, it’s been so fun to sit in those rooms with church staffs that are in all different places on the church lifecycle, but all very hungry and excited for what God has in store for them.
Sean:
That’s awesome. Alright, so before we get into deeper into the conversation, I need some real perspective from you, Jimmy. When you look at your own week as a lead pastor, how close is what you actually do to what you’re supposed to do at least?
Jimmy:
You know what’s funny is, I spent six and a half years as an executive pastor before I became a lead pastor. And a lot of that time, I spent telling lead pastors my own and others what they should be focused on. And then I became one, and I realized how much easier it is to give that advice and to live by it. So this episode hits a little close to home personally. And I’ll just say, upfront, you know, pastors, if you’re listening, prepare to be a little uncomfortable, ’cause we’re gonna talk about the gap between, what you’re supposed to be doing and what you’re actually doing.
Honestly, Sean, I start every week with the best of intentions, and I rarely land where I think I’m going to. So, I would say like most pastors, the best-laid plans, right? I mean, it’s just like, we start out with an understanding of what, at least what we want to get done. Even if it’s not all what we should be focusing on, but the crisis of the urgent and, you know, priorities can shift so fast. So for me, man, the average week is just a hurricane, depending on what pops up. And, usually I find myself Thursday, mid-morning, Thursday afternoon, cramming for the weekend because other things took over.
Sean:
Yeah. So this might be like one of those messages where you’re preaching to yourself and to the people in the seats as well.
Jimmy:
For sure. Yeah. Some people on my staff are gonna listen to this episode and laugh to themselves a little bit when they hear this.
Sean:
That’s great. That’s great. All right, well, let’s dive into the tension. And I wanna start just by being fair to lead pastors listening, because this job is genuinely enormous. You know, if you think about everything the senior pastor’s responsible for, whether it’s the on the job description written there or not, it’s a big role. And so here’s the non-exhaustive list that I put together. They have to ensure the spiritual health of their church model. Biblical priorities, provide strategic leadership and planning, oversee the worship experiences, supervise and develop their staff team, oversee budgets, cash flow, stewardship campaigns, payroll leases and purchases, reproduce the church into new locations sometimes and serve on the board. And you know what, also, Jimmy, in your spare time, you also have to have a thriving walk with Jesus and a healthy marriage. And this becomes less like a job and more like a dare, right?
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Sean:
And I think here’s the problem that it creates. When everything is on your plate, everything feels equally urgent. So you just kind of react to whatever is the loudest in the moment. And the problem is that the loudest thing is almost never the most important thing. The last-minute meeting tends to kind of scream at you, but the long-term direction of your church just whispers in the background. And guess which one of those tends to win? It’s the loudest, right? So the real tension isn’t the lead pastor has too much to do, everybody already knows that; we get it. I think that actually the real tension is that there’s a small set of things that only the lead pastor can do. And those are exactly the things that just get pushed to the back burner because they’re rarely the thing that feels on fire today. So Jimmy, you’re living in this tension right now. Where are you feeling it the most?
Jimmy:
Oh my gosh. Every lead pastor knows this tension. When the what gets shuffled, the how becomes more important than the why faster than you even know it’s happening. So, you know what you’re really saying is the lead pastor hasn’t fully believed in their bones. That those four things that we talk about on the podcast here in the past that only lead pastors can do, are more important than the a hundred things that anybody could do. And listen, until you believe that as a senior leader, the calendar’s never gonna reflect it. And you’re gonna keep finding reasons why this meeting or this crisis or this operational decision needed you specifically to step in and put your hands on it. And every single one of those reasons is gonna feel legitimate in the moment. Even if it’s not, you’re gonna find a reason that it should be legitimate. Sometimes that’s just simply as lead pastors, so much of what we deal in is abstract, and it’s nice to do something concrete once in a while, but it’s just not that important. And the really uncomfortable thing is those reasons that we legitimize things also typically come out of our own insecurities, which is a podcast topic for another time.
Sean:
Yeah.
Jimmy:
The other thing I’d add is that the people around you are gonna unconsciously train you to be available for the wrong things if you let ’em. Your staff, just like my staff, they learn what you respond to. And if you always show up to fight the operational fires, they’re gonna keep bringing you the operational fires. You have to retrain the system, not just your own calendar.
Sean:
That’s good. So let’s, today, Jimmy just jump straight to solutions because I think we already all get the challenge here, and you alluded to this already, but there’s a resource that we created on the four roles a senior pastor can’t delegate. And we’ll link to that in the show notes, and I think it’s the perfect structure for our conversation today. So let’s kind of, I wanna work through the four together.
And it starts with the very first one. We call it the vision caster. You are the primary owner of helping people buy into where God is taking your church. Now, I think you can, and you should develop the vision with the team, but you cannot outsource the casting and communication of it when you stand up and say, here’s where we’re going and here’s why it matters for you. That hits us differently coming from the lead pastor, you know, it just does. It’s human nature. I think you can delegate a lot of things, but you can’t send a substitute to rally your people and to galvanize your congregation. So, that’s like asking your worship leader to also create the architectural drawings for your new building because they’re an artist and maybe they know some math, right? Some roles just don’t transfer over. So we’ve gotta make sure that we are the ones primarily doing the vision casting.
The second is the spiritual leader and teacher. And this is the one that genuinely I don’t think can be delegated at all. It’s the thing that makes the senior pastor role different from running any other organization on earth. And here’s the truth that I think all pastors know, but some just have a really hard time scheduling for. You can’t wait until Friday to throw a message together and expect it to be great. You just can’t. Great teaching takes time during the week to study, to write, to rehearse, and that time it’s typically the first thing that every other responsibility tries to eat up. Everybody respects message prep, in theory. Almost nobody protects it in practice. So, Jimmy, where have you personally experienced either some hits or some misses when it comes to these two roles specifically?
Jimmy:
Yeah. I’ll be honest about a miss first because I think it’s more useful. Early in my time as a lead pastor, I let message prep get eaten alive. I like to blame it on the transition from being an XP to a lead pastor. And I was so used to being involved in operational things that I just kind of naturally went there. But I think unless you were just born a good time manager, like wired to be a lead pastor, if you’ve transitioned from any other role, then you’ve felt that tension too. So I told myself that I was protecting that message prep time, but actually what I was doing was protecting the slot on the calendar, and I let everything else borrow time from it. So my, you know, my calendar said sermon prep, but I would answer emails. I would take phone calls, impromptu meetings. I’m troubleshooting and solving problems and fighting fires that felt big in the moment and really weren’t in the grand scheme. But around Thursday, you know, again, I’d start to panic, and I preached the messages during that time that were, that were fine, and I would get, you know, some, some good feedback about some of those. But I knew that I could do better. And I knew they were not what they could have been. And I’ve lived in this kind of guilty tension that our church deserved better.
So on the vision side, what I’ve learned is casting vision. And I think this mentality will help with your calendar too, and protecting your sermon prep time. Casting vision is not just a big Sunday moment. It’s not just an annual state of the church talk. It’s not a big vision Sunday. Casting vision effectively is the hundreds of small moments during the week where you’re either reinforcing where you’re going or where you’re not reinforcing where you’re going. And that’s where you’re going as a leader and where you’re going organizationally.
Lead pastors who are buried in operations miss most of those moments without even realizing it. And when you do realize it, I mean, you just get discouraged because you realize you failed to lead well in a season, and then you start this internal narrative where you tell yourself that people aren’t following your lead and you don’t have what it takes. And you know, if you can’t even walk out the vision for yourself, how would you or anyone else be able to walk it out, and you just spiral. So the whole time you team is waiting for you to step up and lead, and you don’t notice it because you’re just caught up in the day-to-day.
Sean:
That’s so true. Yeah. And I think, you know, kind of delineating between vision being your primary role is to communicate it, but you’re not the one who has to go to the mountain by themselves and come back. And clearly that’s on this ongoing basis here’s where we’re going. That’s a team play. You gather your senior leaders around you, you determine direction, but then for you as that primary communicator, you are the one that’s galvanizing the rest of the church around the vision.
Jimmy:
Absolutely. I started using a calendaring methodology years ago called Time Blocking, and I’ve had to just become unapologetically protective of my calendar in more recent seasons. And I have an assistant who’s really good at protecting my calendar, too, but there are just days where people need something from me, and instinctively I want to give that to them, and I just have to say no because the best yes for my church is to say no in the moment.
Sean:
That’s so good. Yeah. And our friend Lance Witt, just a few podcasts ago, talked about that as part of one of the habits that helps pastors lead towards having a healthy soul and maintaining a healthy soul over time. So that’s a really key practical step that a lot of pastors need to take. Alright, let’s move on to the other two of the four roles that a senior pastor can’t delegate. Role three is the leader of leaders. And, you know, as the church grows, the pastor’s job has to shift from doing the ministry to leading the people who lead the ministry. In our, book that you can download, we make the point, and I love this, the four stages of leadership. And if you think back, we just did a podcast on this: lead by example, lead by delegating, lead through empowerment and lead through vision.
And most pastors get stuck somewhere in that framework. Small church pastors tend to get stuck by only leading through example, doing it all themselves. Pastors of midsize churches, they learn to delegate, but they sometimes don’t really empower people. So then they become the bottleneck, you know, every decision has to come back to them and go through them, and then large church pastors empower their team, but never develop a team that then can empower others. So wherever you’re stuck, I think the move, the change, the shift here is all the same. Take the next step in your leadership. If you wanna lead other leaders effectively, where do you need to grow as a leader?
And then the fourth role is what we call the culture champion. Culture is just a set of behaviors that you model, you tolerate and celebrate. And it starts at the top, whether you’re intentional about it or not. And I think that’s the part that gets people, you know, you’re setting the culture either on purpose or by accident, but either way you’re setting it. There’s a line in the four roles book that I think it feels like a punch in the gut and maybe not necessarily intended to be that, but it says, whatever you don’t like about your church’s culture is probably a reflection of how you operate. That’s a thought I think that should cause all of us to pause for a second, and at the very least, do a quick mental assessment on where our mode of operation might be negatively affecting our culture. Jimmy, anything that you would add to that?
Jimmy:
I don’t know if I’d add a fifth category, but to expand on the culture piece, I think that’s the one I would linger on, because it’s the one that lead pastors are least honest about. We carry the most responsibility there that we don’t acknowledge. And Sean, you quoted that line, you know, whatever you like least about your culture is probably a reflection of how you operate. I’ve heard it put really simply, your culture is what you tolerate, which is a hard word because it means if you hate your meeting culture, you probably allowed it. Or worse you modeled it. You know, if you don’t like the a lack of accountability on your team, it started somewhere at the top. If you have silos between departments, there’s a good chance that the lead pastor, executive pastor relationship modeled that first for the rest of the staff.
So what I would add to the list is just context around this. I would say the lead pastor is also the chief permission giver. Not officially, it’s not on the org chart, but culturally, your team is watching what you celebrate. They’re watching what you overlook, they’re watching what you personally do when things get hard, and they’re taking mental notes. And so your culture is not set in your staff meeting. It’s set in the moments that you think nobody’s watching. An example of that from my leadership experience, particularly when I became the lead pastor, because it was important as the xp, it became even more important when I became the lead pastor in our organization. Andy Stanley talks a lot about trust gaps and the idea that if there’s an unknown, people are gonna fill it with trust or suspicion based on not what you say, but what you have done in the past.
And so, I like to work offsite, especially if I need to be creative. I’ll lock myself away in the back corner of a coffee shop somewhere, or I’ll find a quiet place to work. And if I’m in my office, that’s part of how I protect, especially my sermon prep time. And so there would be afternoons where I’d get through lunch and handle a couple of things, and then I’d pack my bag, and I’d leave, and I’d go somewhere and write for the afternoon. But not everybody knew that’s what I was doing, and I took for granted that they did, or at least that they would assume that I was somewhere getting work done. And, I found out the hard way that there were some people who, did not assume that in fact, they assumed that I was checking out early and going home, or, you know, that I was, just slacking. And phoning it in.
And so I had to work extra hard because I want us to have a low management, high accountability culture. I had to work really hard to proactively fill those gaps with trust and not suspicion so that other people didn’t begin to do what I was, or at least what they thought I was doing. Because I didn’t wanna have a culture that tolerated low accountability, tolerated, you know, laziness. We wanna be free and flexible to work the way that we need to work and get things done. But that started with me, and I had to change the way that I communicated so that I could still do what I needed to do, but strengthen our culture in the process and not weaken it, which I had unknowingly been doing.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s really good. Those are tough shifts too, because you want to make sure that your team is believing the best. And I think that’s something that you have to protect and teach as well. Believing the best is an important part of their culture. In fact, I’ve seen that show up, specifically on some teams’ culture-shaping behaviors lists. As we work with them on site, we’re gonna choose to believe the best. We’re gonna fill those gaps with trust over suspicion that can lead to, of course a more healthy culture for us in the long run. So for you to model that, for you to set that as a key expectation is really important.
Alright, so let’s talk about what senior pastors can do starting this week to begin to address all of this. And I’d like to start here. Your job as a lead pastor is to protect these four things that only you can do. And then I would say aggressively delegate almost everything else. As our friend Lance Whitt says, you are the boss of your schedule. You have to take control. Jimmy, you talked about how you’ve done that in the past. So go back to that giant job description for a second. Most of what’s on it, you know, overseeing the budgets, coordinating staff meetings, monitoring your facilities, the operational machinery of the church, that’s important. It matters, but it doesn’t have to be done by you. The other four things that are on that, if you don’t do them literally nobody else can. Everything else is negotiable.
So the filter for this is, I think, pretty simple for anything that’s on your plate. Ask, is this one of the only four that I can do? Or am I just the one who’s always done it? Because I, here’s what happens to a lot of lead pastors. I think they delegate the stuff they’re bad at and hold onto the stuff that they enjoy, even when somebody else should own it. And that’s not really delegation; that’s just kind of throwing your veggies and keeping the dessert. Have you ever done that, Jimmy? My kids do that all the time.
Jimmy:
Yeah. I might have modeled that culture for our family. But yes.
Sean:
The real discipline I think here is letting go of good things, right? Things that you know that you enjoy and you might even be good at so that you have room for the things that only you can do. And then I would say after that, get really practical and just track your time for one week. And I know this actually takes more time from you, but I think it’s worth it. I want you to actually write down where all the hours go and then sort every block of time into one of, lemme just call ’em two buckets. One bucket is the four nondelegable. These are the four things that only I can do. And then the other bucket is just everything else, you know? And I think a lot of lead pastors are gonna be surprised when they do this exercise. You think you’re spending your week casting vision and developing leaders, and then the calendar says you spent your week doing other stuff and the calendar is not gonna lie to you. So Jimmy, again, since you sit in this role, where have you found success with this? You’ve talked a little bit about your calendar already or, and then I mean, also feel free to share. Are there any areas where you feel like you’ve made mistakes and you learn from ’em? Yeah.
Jimmy:
The mistake that I made, and I’ve watched a lot of lead pastors do the same thing, is that I delegated things that I didn’t enjoy or, you know, that I felt like I didn’t wanna spend my time on, but it was more of a want to thing. And I kept things that I enjoyed, even when somebody else should have owned them. And Sean, you named that exactly right. It’s not stewardship, it’s self-indulgent, stressed up as leadership. So the discipline that I’ve had to develop is asking the right questions. It’s not, can I do this? Because most lead pastors, you know, they can find a way to say yes to that question. And it’s also not, am I good at this? Because again, we can find a way to justify things in our mind, and we even lie to ourselves and tell ourselves we’re better at some things than we really are.
But the question we need to ask is, should I be the one doing this? Or am I just the one who’s always done it? Or do I wanna hold onto this because I have a pride issue or a control issue, or it’s an insecurity, or I just want an easy box to check. Those are completely different questions. Those three questions not, can I not, am I good at this, but should I do this? And the last one is the only one that actually leads to freedom when it comes to thriving as a lead pastor.
So, just one more thing. The fastest route to burnout, I think is expending energy on things that move you sideways. There’s this old sports highlight of Walter Payton. It’s like his, probably his most famous highlight where he runs back and forth in the backfield a couple of times before he finally breaks downfield. And, it’s a bad analogy because he scored a touchdown. But I think what happens to most lead pastors is they run back and forth in the backfield a couple times and get sacked for a loss. It’s when you pour yourself into things that don’t advance the mission. You pour yourself into things that somebody else could do while you neglect things that are essential, those four things that we’ve talked about in this episode. Or you pour yourself into things that are outside of your strengths or things like what Patrick Lencioni calls your working geniuses. When you start living in your working frustrations, it might even feel good. It might not feel frustrating in the beginning, but you’re gonna burn out. Those are the things that wear you down. So you gotta get out of that mode of thinking and hand off the things that you may want to hold onto, but they’re just not the things that are most deserving of your time and focus. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your family. You owe it to your staff and your church to do what you have to do as a lead pastor. Handle those things, and do them well.
Sean:
That’s good. That’s a really good reminder. And I think it’s great that we’ve two weeks in a row now, used football analogies, so we must be ready for football season.
Jimmy:
I don’t like to talk about football here in northeast Ohio between August and January, so I have to talk about it, you know, in May and June. That’s all I get.
Sean:
Sure. Yeah. Understandable. Yeah. Alright, so before we close our episode today, here’s a reminder: nobody is great at all six or eight or 12 things on that official job description. You know, we said that last week, but every lead pastor can be faithful to the four that only they can do. Vision caster, teacher, leader of leaders, championing the culture. If those four are healthy, you have the framework for healthy leadership, even when everything else feels a little bit messy. So if those four aren’t getting your attention, it almost doesn’t matter how well run everything else is, protect those four, give away the rest, and next week we’re gonna flip this whole thing over and talk about the person that you’re giving some of that, or maybe all of that rest to the executive pastor and the roles that they can’t delegate because this only works if both of you know your lane. Jimmy, I’ll let you leave our listeners with the last thought for today.
Jimmy:
Yeah. I would just leave with this thought. If you’re a lead pastor and you’re honest with yourself, you probably already know which of these four things you’re neglecting, and you don’t need another assessment to tell you, you probably know, or if somebody’s telling you, you just need to listen. So the question is whether you’re gonna do something about it. And I think the reason most pastors don’t is that doing something means having some hard conversations with your xp, with your board, with your staff, with yourself, and you’ve gotta have those conversations about what you’re giving away and what you’re keeping and why. So those are risky conversations. They’re not fun. But the other side of it is, when you actually protect those four critical roles for a lead pastor, the four things only you can do when you do show up fully as the vision caster and the teacher and the leader of leaders and the culture champion, not only will you feel it, but your church feels it. Your team feels it. And there’s a version of this job that’s genuinely life-giving, but it starts when you stop playing everybody else’s position, and you make the main thing the main thing.
Sean:
Alright, well that’s it for episode two. If you’re listening and you realize your job isn’t primarily built around these four roles, it’s actually good news. Now you know what to fix. So if you’d like some outside help sorting out who should own what on your team, that’s right in the center of what we do at the Unstuck Group, we help pastors lead unstuck churches that are healthy and growing and by getting your staffing and structure clear, and that’s one of the most freeing things you can do as a leader. So you can start a conversation with us today at theunstuckgroup.com/start. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week for the executive pastor’s turn.
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