Getting the Executive Pastor/Senior Pastor Relationship Right (Part 1)
Of all the relationships in your church, there’s one relationship that determines whether everything else runs smoothly or grinds to a halt—the relationship between the senior pastor and the executive pastor.
When it’s healthy, the whole organization feels it. And when it’s not…the whole organization feels that too. And if this relationship isn’t healthy, your staff is talking about it too.
We invited Jimmy McLoud, lead pastor at First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio, and a consultant on our team to speak into this topic. Jimmy has served in both the executive pastor role and the senior pastor role, so it’s safe to say he’s experienced when it comes to the relationship between these two roles.
In this new series, Jimmy and I are going to dig into how to clarify these two roles and strengthen the partnership between them. And in this episode, we’re starting at the foundation: why is this relationship so hard to get right?
- People-Focused Roles vs. Task-Focused Roles
- Understanding Each Other’s Wiring
- Doing the Work Only You Can Do
As the lead pastor, you have to actually empower your executive pastor to be the integrator, to lead the staff team day-to-day and to drive your vision forward. [episode 456] #unstuckchurch Share on X Executive pastors that honor lead pastors are going to go further faster in leadership because they’re going to garner trust that leads to empowerment. [episode 456] #unstuckchurch Share on X When the lead pastor and executive pastor are genuinely locked in together, there is nothing more effective and more powerful to help a church grow and move forward in the mission. [episode 456] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Reach out to the team at PlainJoe.net and dream up the bright future of your church.
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean Bublitz, managing director here at The Unstuck Group, and today we’re kicking off a new series on one of the most foundational conversations that we have with pastors at churches that we’re working with. Of all the relationships in your church, there’s one that determines whether everything runs smoothly or starts to grind to a halt. And it’s the relationship between your lead or senior pastor and the executive pastor. And when it’s healthy, the whole organization can feel it; when it’s not, the whole organization feels that too. And trust me, if this relationship isn’t healthy, this is what your staff are talking about. So over the next three episodes, we’re gonna dig into how to clarify these two roles and strengthen the partnership between them. And today in episode one, we’re not even gonna talk about the roles specifically yet. We’re gonna start a little more foundational and talk about why this relationship is so hard to get right in the first place.
Before I introduce my co-host for the series, I wanna pause and say thanks to our series sponsor PlainJoe Studios. If you really wanna unlock the power of story in your worship space, the creative, passionate team at PlainJoe, which is a Storyland Studio, works with churches to create beautiful, engaging spaces that connect with your community. They have a team of architectural design and branding experts who transform worship spaces into attractive, engaging hubs for the community. So if that’s something that’d be helpful for your church, you can reach out to their team today at plainjoe.net.
Alright, let me introduce my cohost for the series, Jimmy McLoud. Jimmy is the lead pastor of First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio, and he is also a consultant on our team here at The Unstuck Group. And I thought Jimmy would be a great fit for the series because he’s been in both of these seats. And Jimmy, I think it’s safe to say that you’ve experienced some of the good and probably some of the bad when it comes to the relationship between these two roles.
Jimmy:
Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me back on the podcast. It’s really exciting and an honor to be a co-host with you for this series. And this has been such a helpful resource for me for years. So I love the opportunity to speak into this, and that’s a great way to put it. I’ve seen some of the good and some of the bad. I’ve spent several years, six and a half years as an executive pastor, and I’ve been a lead pastor here in our church now for about four and a half years. So I’ve been on both sides, literally both sides of the same table. So I can tell you, man, the view is so different from each side, depending on the chair that you’re sitting in. And I’m excited about this series because I think it’s one of the most important conversations that senior leaders need to have. But it’s almost one of the conversations very few senior leaders have with honesty. And I think this is gonna be a helpful resource so that they can do that.
Sean:
Yeah, that’s a great setup for today. Because here’s the thing, most leaders don’t think about this relationship until it starts to get tough. Let me kind of talk about it this way. And this is the tension that I see, and it starts with something most leaders, I think, underestimate, Jimmy. It’s the wiring for these two roles and just how really different the wiring is. You know, one of these roles tends to be more people focused, and the other tends to be more task focused. And I believe that that’s kind of the point of these two roles. The difference is supposed to be a strength.
So this is not a perfect analogy, Jimmy. Okay. But bear with me for a second. So, it’s kind of like marriage. So typically in a marriage, you have two people that are in many ways opposites, opposites attract, right? You marry a person who balances you out, who’s strong in areas that you’re not, but then you get a few years in and that very thing that attracted you to them, that’s the thing that starts to drive you up the wall sometimes. And I think that’s kind of the same dynamic here. You bring two different sets of giftings to the same mission. So the church gets the best of both, and then you spend half of your energy just kind of being annoyed at each other for being exactly who you hired.
I think when somebody’s wired different than you, it’s so easy to misread their intentions, right? The task-focused leader, they get labeled as cold and kind of robotic. And you start to wonder, does this person even care about people at all? Or they just care about their to-do list? And the people-focused leader, they get labeled often as disorganized or maybe even flaky, and you start to dread meetings with them because the meetings often turn into a counseling session or a time to just catch up with no really progress that feels tangible. And I don’t think either of those reads on the personality are fair, both happen all the time. So, Jimmy, you’re seeing this from both seats, like you said. How do you look at this?
Jimmy:
Yeah. First of all, that tension that you’re describing is really a real thing. Felt that from the executive pastor seat and the lead pastor seat. And I thought it’s interesting as I was listening to you, I’m a very fast-paced, task-oriented person. So as an xp that worked really well for me in some ways. As a lead pastor, I felt a little bit like a fish outta water for a while. But I was listening to an episode of a great leadership podcast a while back where they talked about building a team around your strengths. And we’re gonna talk about that later in this series. So I just wanna encourage, especially lead pastors right now, tune in for the rest of the series, even the episode about executive pastors, because we will, we’ll get a little deeper into that.
This is something I experienced from both sides for sure. And when the lead pastor and executive pastor are wired differently, and that communication starts to break down, what fills the gap is almost always just narrative that’s mostly imaginary. It’s rarely charitable. So as an executive pastor, there were moments I can remember watching my lead pastor make a decision, and I’m thinking, he has no idea what this is gonna cost us operationally, much less relationally or emotionally. And I’m sure there were moments he looked at me and thought, man, Jimmy has, he just doesn’t get the vision here and the decision that I’m making. So it’s not that one or both of us were totally wrong, but neither of us stopped to ask, you know, what are you thinking? We were just building cases and narratives in those conversations.
So what I pushed back on slightly is sometimes I think we’d frame this as a personality problem. Like if we could just find two people who are wired more similarly, more alike, then it would be easier. But I’d actually argue the opposite. And I think you said this, well, you need the tension. It’s healthy. Patrick Lencioni talks a lot about that lead pastors who are wired for vision and executive pastors who are wired for execution with giftings that just like you said, are a little bit opposite, can be such a healthy complement to each other. And so there’s friction, but when it’s healthy, that’s what keeps the church from being all dream and no delivery or are all systems and no soul. I’ve heard it put that way before. You don’t want that.
So, at our church, we use a lot of assessments, like, you know, Working Genius. We talked about that on in past episodes of the podcast. So for our listeners who are familiar with that, they’ll understand what I mean when I say my geniuses are wonder and discernment. And my executive pastor’s geniuses are galvanizing in tenacity.
Sean:
That’s good.
Jimmy:
And it’s a great handoff between the two of us. So there’s not a lot of frustration and overlap where we’re trying to live in the same, you know, work out of the same geniuses. So I’m vision; he’s execution. It’s working well. I don’t think the question is how do you eliminate the tension? I think it’s how do you leverage the tension to make your team and your organization more successful?
Sean:
That’s really good. Jimmy, let me build on a couple of things that you said there that just kind of came to mind. They hit me as you were talking through that. The first other kind of tension that exists, I think, is communication. You know, success usually in this relationship, it requires great communication. And great communication typically requires proximity. You’ve gotta be near each other. You’ve gotta be talking often, not just during your scheduled weekly check-in.
And here’s the problem that I’ve seen in senior pastors and executive pastors. Proximity is the very first thing that goes away when you get busy. When you get into those busy seasons, when things get full. And in ministry, you know, we have to be honest. When are they ever not full? The casual conversations that we have, those are the first things to go. So you stop overhearing each other’s thinking. And it’s like being in separate boats without paddling. You know, I look at it this way. Nobody paddles away from the other person on purpose. You just both stopped paddling towards each other. And then one day you look up and think, how did I get way over here? You weren’t communicating less because you stopped caring, you were communicating less because you felt overwhelmed. But the relationship starts to suffer either way.
And then the second thing that came to mind, Jimmy, was trust. And I mean, a really specific kind of trust. There has to be consistent, almost daily decisions to believe the best about your teammate, to assume the best about their decisions and their intentions, even when you have absolutely no idea why they made the call that they made. Because when you’re wired differently and you’re not in close proximity, you know, you get into those busy seasons, you’re not always gonna understand each other.
And in that gap, you really have a choice, believe the best, or just assume the worst. And here’s what I think pastors can fall into the trap of sometimes. I think for us, and it just as being, you know, human beings, assuming the worst is so much more fun in the moment, I think it actually feels productive. Sometimes. It feels like you’re being discerning, but you’re not. You’re just building a case against a teammate in your own head. And I think high trust partnerships refuse to do that, and they refuse to do that with a purpose.
Jimmy:
Absolutely.
Sean:
So Jimmy, let’s kind of pivot over to solutions. And I think the first one sounds simple, but it’s genuinely hard. And you have to start by being honest about your wiring. You talked about your wiring a bit, Jimmy, and how you discern that with your executive pastor as well. So here’s what I mean. I think a lot of lead pastors feel this pressure to kind of be the whole package, the visionary leader, the primary teacher and preacher, and at the same time, the world-class organizational leader, basically. That’s a unicorn. But here’s what our team has learned after working with really quite literally hundreds of lead pastors. Very, very few people are great at all three of those things.
You know, it’s like, Jimmy, you are in Canton, Ohio, football Hall of Fame is there. So let me use a football analogy. It’s like expecting a quarterback to also play wide receiver and then also handle the kicking game. And for our Australian and international listeners, this is American football. So, but I hope, I hope you get the analogy. You know, technically you’re on the field, you’re on the playing field for all of it. But there’s two-thirds of your job you’re gonna be terrible at. Maybe you’re a phenomenal as a pastor, communicator and visionary, but running an organization just drains the life out of you. And frankly, a lot of pastors will self-assess, and I’ve heard this from them, you know, say, I’m not good at that. That’s not a character flaw, that’s just your wiring. But you’ve gotta be honest about it because if you keep pretending that you’re great at all three things, you’ll never build the partnership that you actually need.
And I think this is where assessments become really valuable. They give you an objective look at your strengths and weaknesses instead of just assuming we see our own giftings accurately. I think that’s really hard to do. I know when I’ve taken assessments in the past, I’ve come away realizing some things about myself that were true. But I just hadn’t recognized them yet. And then I think beyond that, you need a few trusted advisors who will tell you honestly what they see in you. You know, most leaders are surrounded by people who affirm them no matter what, which is I think great for our egos, but it is completely useless for our growth. And you need a few people in your life who love you enough just to look at you and tell the truth, to kind of hold up a mirror for you and say, this is what I see.
So here’s the flip side of that. Jimmy and I, it’s just as important. I think executive pastors do this too. I think they just do it in the other direction. A lot of XPs feel this pull to help their senior pastor by stepping into areas that they’re not actually gifted in. The senior pastors got a gap. The XP loves them. So the XP just kind of heroically dives into fill that gap when it’s nowhere near their lane or wiring. And sometimes churches build this mistake right into the org chart. They post a job for, this is what I see a lot, Jimmy, associate Pastor.
Jimmy:
Yeah.
Sean:
And expect that one human being to do some of what the senior pastor does and some of what some of the executive pastor does, which is a bit like writing a job description that says you have to be an extroverted introvert who loves spreadsheets and also weeps during worship. Very few people come in that package. So, XPs have to be every bit as honest and clear about their own wiring as the senior pastor does. So Jimmy, you do this work with churches, you see this role all the time and you’ve lived it. What would you add to that as far as solutions?
Jimmy:
Yeah, that’s the other duties as a sign line on a job description, right? You’re just gonna fill all the gaps. And by the way, Sean, if you could also explain American football to our football team up here in northeast Ohio, that would be great. They need the help too. Yeah, man, the honesty about your wiring piece is so critical and it’s a lot harder than it sounds. A lot of lead pastors I know, and I’ll talk to these guys, they’ll say they know their weaknesses, but you watch what happens when they actually try to build an org chart around those weaknesses and like the rubber meets the road. Watch what happens when somebody suggests maybe the lead pastor shouldn’t be the one running staff meetings or driving the budget process, and they’re, you know, they wanna control those things. That’s what it becomes about. It’s not about wiring, it’s not about personality and strengths and weaknesses and complementing each other and leadership, but it’s just about control.
And I think that’s the real, yeah, the real conversation. I felt that tension as an executive pastor, and it was because I wanted the best for our lead pastor and I wanted the best for our church. And I don’t even know that I realized at the time that by trying to fill all of the gaps and cover for all of his blind spots and weaknesses, I wasn’t helping him. I was actually hurting his leadership. But it was just easier to do it that way than to have the honest conversation, tackle the elephant in the room and come up with, you know, a real solution to deal with the issue.
The other thing I’d add is assessments, whether you’re a lead or executive pastor, they’re only as useful as the conversation that you have after you take them. I’ve seen a lot of churches, and we’ve been guilty of this too here at FCC, churches that’ll run their whole staff through an assessment like Leading from Your Strengths or Working Genius or whatever, you know, what have you. And then they just file the results away, and they never really start to dig into what they mean and how they help you create healthier balanced teams around projects or in ministry areas. And so those assessments don’t do the work for you, they just give you language to use, but the language only helps if you’re willing to use it honestly and consistently and teach your team what it means. And you gotta do that with each other, not just on your own.
So this is one of those things that, like, if we had more time here on the podcast, we can unpack this a lot further. But this is one of the benefits that I’ll say of our consulting team. I always tell every church I work with that I, the reason that I love working with churches is because of the value Unstuck brought to us when I was just a pastor sitting at a table and we needed help. And one of the most helpful conversations we had was when Amy came in and worked with us, and we talked about our team makeup, our personalities and our strengths and weaknesses. And she peeled back so many layers that we were aware of, but we just didn’t have the language for yet. So our consulting team brings that value to the churches that we work with. We have amazing trained, certified, experienced consultants that can help lead and executive pastors not only navigate their own wiring, but also help ’em understand how their team members are wired so they can leverage their strengths to cover blind spots and they can minimize their weaknesses and maximize success. So, you know, I just, I can’t state how helpful that was for our church and this part of the process made all of the difference.
Sean:
Yeah, that’s good. I wanna follow up on that conversation about wiring and just, you know, one of the next steps after you get through understanding your wiring, and you mentioned, Working Genius, Jimmy, we also use a tool called Leading From Your Strengths. That’s the tool that we used with your church as well. I think once you get through that, you’ve gotta clarify the actual roles and the role descriptions for these two jobs. And this is where I think some of our other resources can help. We have two guides. One is the four roles a senior pastor can’t delegate, and then the other is the three roles an executive pastor can’t delegate. And those are, I think, a great starting point for leaders as they’re defining their roles.
We’re gonna spend the next two weeks unpacking those. So I won’t get into the list today, but here’s the principle. Both of you in these roles need to understand the key roles each of you has to play. And then this is the hard part to this. You don’t step over those boundary lines. The lead pastor stays in the lead pastor’s lane. The XP stays in the XP’s lane and you know, think of it less of like a turf war, more like kind of lanes in a swimming pool. You can absolutely cheer for the person next to you; just stop swimming into their water and then wondering why is everybody kind of crashing into each other now that we’re in each other’s lane?
And there’s one piece that I specifically wanna put on the senior pastors listening today. You have to actually empower your executive pastor to be the integrator, to lead the staff team day to day, to driving towards that vision. That’s the handoff that I’ve seen a lot of senior pastors just can’t quite make; you hired a driver and then you kind of refuse to give them the keys and now you sitting next to them as the passenger, kind of pulling at the wheel every turn and going, why aren’t we getting anywhere? Until you make that handoff, your XP can’t do the job that you’ve asked them to do. So Jimmy, any other thoughts before we move on to specific next steps?
Jimmy:
Yeah, I love that analogy of a swimming pool and swimming in lanes. And I would just add, I think this is specifically for the executive pastors listening, and this is coming from a former executive pastor: that empowerment has to go both ways. Sean, you said the lead pastor has to actually hand over the keys and that’s true, but the executive pastor has to be willing to take them. And I’ve seen a lot of XPs that say they want more authority, they want more ownership, more leadership latitude. But the moment they actually get it, they’re back in the lead pastor’s office every day asking for approval on decisions they were fully empowered to make, and they feel like they have to run everything back through that senior leader.
And honestly, I get it because when you’re the XP, you’re executing somebody else’s vision. And so there’s a vulnerability in making a bold call and having it go sideways. But that’s the job. And you have to be willing to drive the car, not just polish the car. So, Clay Scroggins nails this and the book How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge. He says, leaders who hide behind when I’m in charge one day as an excuse for a lack of initiative will most likely never be in charge. The executive pastor version of that is hiding behind. I’m waiting for approval when you’ve already been given the authority to act.
Sean:
That’s good.
Jimmy:
So critical that XPs actually take that and run with it. But then also when we talk empowerment, man, XPs need to remember, you’ve also gotta empower your lead pastor, which sounds funny to say, but I’ve seen some XPs who really cut the legs out from under their lead pastors sometimes, completely innocent, like with best of intentions, but just some of the comments they make or the way that they lead. And to go back to the swimming pool analogy, I would call that like peeing in the pool and then your lead pastor’s gotta swim in it. You know?
Sean:
I like your analogy better.
Jimmy:
Well, you know, we’re real around here at FCC. When they do that, they lose trust so fast. And I don’t think an XP understands how quickly that can demoralize a senior leader. So XPs that honor lead pastors are gonna go further faster in leadership because they’re gonna garner trust that leads to empowerment.
Sean:
That’s good. Alright, so let’s try to make this practical for our listeners. I think here are a couple of next steps you can work on right away. The first is take an assessment to understand your wiring. I mentioned the one we use here on our team is Leading from Your Strengths. We’ve run that now with hundreds of churches at this point, and it’ll show you where you are and your teammates, and where you both kind of have complementary strengths and just as importantly the spots that each of you need to kind of keep an eye on. So mistrust and tension don’t start to creep into your relationship. Jimmy, you mentioned the Working Genius. I love that tool. also. You can find that at workinggenius.com. I should have mentioned with Leading From Your Strengths, it’s at ministryinsights.com.
But anyways, Working Genius, it’s fantastic for understanding roles in meetings and decision making, and it’ll explain a lot about why some people kind of light up in your brainstorm and then they disappear. Time to get around to finishing something. I think Jimmy, that’s probably a little bit of you and me, tenacity is a frustration. Don’t really love the kind of, let’s get it across the finish line. We love more of the ideas and the discernment. And then, read the two resources that I mentioned earlier. We’ve got the four roles a senior pastor can’t delegate, and the three roles an executive pastor can’t delegate; both are free, which I’ll admit, Jimmy, is absolutely my favorite price in the world: free.
Jimmy:
I love it too.
Sean:
And I think we’ll have those linked in the show notes as well. So, Jimmy, what would you add to that as far as next steps?
Jimmy:
Well, I wanna say one thing. Both of those assessments are so worthwhile, and I’d recommend in both the churches. With Leading from Your Strengths, one of the most valuable things in that assessment is the strength scales, particularly the adapted strengths. In light of this conversation, pay close attention not just to your natural wiring, but how have you adapted because of your environment. That tells you a lot about the state of the relationship among senior leadership and about how you feel like you’re having to cover gaps maybe for people who have blind spots that they’re not aware of. So a lot of value there.
One more thing that I think is actually maybe the hardest thing of all in this conversation and that’s, you have to have the honest conversation about how you make decisions together. Not just who does what, but when does the lead pastor have to say, when does the executive pastor get to make the decision? What happens when you disagree? Most lead and executive pastor teams have never actually sat down and spelled that out. They just sort of figure it out in real time, which is a really rough way to try to land decision rights in a healthy way. They’re figuring out in the middle of conflict and under pressure, you know, which way do we wanna handle this? And that’s the worst possible time to try to establish a process. So sit down before you need it and agree on how you’re gonna navigate disagreement. Make those decisions about decision rights in your organization. Put it in writing if you have to, whatever it takes. But that conversation alone is gonna save to you six months of tension down the road.
Sean:
That’s good. Alright, so that brought to mind one more next step. And that’s just to listen to this series together. It just, your senior pastor and executive pastor sit together side by side. Take time to actually talk through your roles as you go through this and then document whatever you need to so that you can really get to clarity. Don’t just consume it on your own. Really sit and process this together because the podcast doesn’t fix anything. The conversation that it starts in your office is the thing that actually is gonna move the needle for you.
So, alright, let’s wrap up episode one, Jimmy. And as we do, I just want to add that the reason we are spending three whole episodes on two specific people in roles is because this is the highest leverage relationship in your church. If you get it right, the clarity that comes from this, it you will be incredible. Your team will get healthier. Decisions get faster, your vision will start to feel like it’s moving. If you get it wrong, there is no amount of strategy underneath that can really make the difference up. You can’t out strategy a broken partnership at the top. It’s like trying to fix a crack in the foundation of your house by just repainting your living room. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.
Remember, you know, back where we started, the very thing that makes this partnership just really a powerful relationship is those two different sets of wiring. It’s the same thing that can actually tear you apart at the end of the day. So name the differences and protect your communication and make sure you choose to believe the best, so that you can get clear about your lanes. That’s the work, and it is totally worth it. Jimmy, anything from your perspective before we close?
Jimmy:
Just this, if you’re listening and you’re in one of these two seats, I wanna be honest with you, if this relationship is strained, it’s probably not because you hired the wrong person. And it’s not because you’re failing; it’s because it requires something of us that most of us aren’t naturally good at, and that’s to stay curious about somebody who thinks completely differently than you do. But having been on both sides of this, I can tell you man, when it works, when the lead pastor and executive pastor are genuinely locked in together, there is nothing more effective and more powerful to help a church grow and move forward in the mission. A whole organization runs better and people feel it. So don’t settle for functional and just feel like you’re surviving when this relationship can be great. It can thrive, and it’s so life giving and leadership when you’re clicking with your fellow senior leader.
Sean:
That’s good. Alright, well that’s episode one. Next week, we’ll specifically look at what only the lead pastor can do and then how it impacts the church when they get busy doing everything else instead. So if today’s conversation hit a little close to home for you, and if you recognize some of these tensions within your team, within your leadership, and you’d love some outside help getting clear on your staffing and structure or doing some of these assessments, that’s a big part of what we do here at The Unstuck Group. We help pastors lead unstuck churches that are healthy and growing, and clarifying the roles at the top of your team is right in our wheelhouse. So you can start a conversation with us today at theunstuckgroup.com/start. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.
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