April 23, 2025 • 21 mins
Are you stepping into a new pastoral role? Or do you know someone who is? In this episode of the Church Revitalization Podcast, hosts Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu share practical, actionable advice for pastors beginning their journey at a new church. Drawing from real-world examples and years of experience, they unpack key strategies such as being a learner before a leader, the importance of building relationships over seeking immediate results, and understanding the “why” behind church traditions before making changes. Learn how to communicate hope, find early wins, and set a healthy foundation for your ministry and your new congregation. Whether you’re a senior pastor, youth pastor, or part of church leadership, these insights will help you or someone you know start strong.
Full show notes: malphursgroup.com/287
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
You're a pastor about to start at a new church. Let's talk about
how to make that work well at the start right now on the
church revitalization podcast. Hello, and welcome to the
Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs
Group team, where each week we tackle important,
actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now,
(00:24):
here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu.
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball.
I'm joined by my friend and cohost AJ Mathieu.
Last week, we were talking about starting,
having a new pastor start at your church. This
(00:46):
week, we're talking about you're the pastor and you're starting at
the new church. What should you do? So we we laid down in week
one some advice to hopefully help
you out, help you be successful in that position. And
today, we wanna lay some truth on you to
help you help yourself be successful in this
(01:08):
new position. And as we gave caveats last week, even if this isn't
you, even if you're not starting at a new church right now, you
may you may know someone who's gonna be starting it at a new church and
you could pass this advice along. You may have some other staff person.
This is not just for senior pastors. This is true for youth pastors. Actually, I
had a conversation just yesterday, by the way, with a
(01:29):
church who let a youth pastor go. And he
hadn't done anything wrong, but it just wasn't working. And I was
thinking, man, I think they set him up for failure.
And So, yeah, this is this is good
advice to have in your back pocket regardless of your current
employment situation. Yeah. Yeah.
(01:51):
Wow. Yeah. Boy, that's I hate hearing that. You know? I
mean, to to know that they couldn't work that out, and it which
always makes me think, could they have worked it out? You know? I mean, how
much effort was put in? How much grace was given on both parties? You
know? Any relationship between humans or groups of humans
requires Mhmm. Requires grace, requires good communication.
(02:13):
You know? I mean, it requires people with an attitude of giving
towards the other. I, you know, I think about this all the time. I don't
think about all the time. I've thought about this. You know, people that get
divorced, you know? I mean, I I think making a marriage work is putting the
other person before yourself. And so, you know, when
relationships sever, I think when there's
(02:34):
not necessarily anything has happened, some acute
situation has happened, then, you know, I feel like it
might often be the product of kind
of a selfishness to some degree on one or both
parties not wanting to give up something for the other in
order to make the relationship work. And then there's a gazillion different reasons that
(02:56):
that things might not work, and it's it's no fault of one or the other.
But, Oh, no. I mean, yeah, you're saying that, but it's
usually the fault of one or the other or or Yeah. So
yeah. Yeah. But also just bad communication. I can and I don't
wanna sort of give details here.
But, you know, with this specific situation with this youth pastor,
(03:19):
I don't know that the expectations were clear. Mhmm. I
don't know that, you know, essentially, they were
bleeding some families. You know, and if you kinda have a loss
of confidence from the youth ministry families, it can be
really hard to get that back. Mhmm. Well, how did that happen in the first
place? Yeah. Right. You know? So just and sometimes it's a bridge too far
(03:40):
like the you can't sometimes you can go back and fix
those communication things. Sometimes you can't. And that's actually the point of
this episode is, like, get out get you wanna get started on the right foot.
So yeah. Maybe we can hop there. Let's jump into our
first point, and we're saying be a student before becoming
a shepherd. It's so important. Whenever you get
(04:03):
you hit the ground, you're maybe not even unpacking yet, and you're you're
already gonna be working on relationships at that point when you come to start at
a new church. You've got to be the student gaining
as much information as you can. And with with that attitude,
like, please tell me everything. I wanna know everything. With last week, we
talked about all of the details. In fact, the in the first point we talked
(04:24):
about last week, the details that a pastor is going to
need to be successful and not, you know, accidentally
step on toes and things like that. So, yes, from your perspective now,
coming in, be asking for these things. Be thinking
about all that you may not know. You're gonna wanna
know about all of these little things. The example I gave last week was the
(04:46):
the people that get hurt because the previous pastor
would pop into their little prayer group that was meeting on
Sunday morning, you know, before getting getting ready to start the service.
Well, find out out. Do these kinds of things happen? What are what are
the rhythms of the church? What are these things that aren't necessarily in
the bulletin? You know, the unwritten meetings
(05:08):
or connection points that your church is used to having. Or,
Scott, you brought up, you know, like the race weekend in Bristol, Tennessee.
Cultural things that happen in and around the city
or the church. Just ask. Ask questions to find
out things that you don't even know what to ask so that you can start
to have those conversations. But the more details you can get about
(05:30):
people and places and things and processes, the
better you're going to be and the faster you can get up to speed.
Yeah. Yeah. I you could summarize it as just be, like, be
curious. Mhmm. Be inquisitive. I, this is a
this is good advice for consultants too, and I and I I like to pride
myself. I think I'm pretty pretty good about
(05:53):
being curious, but sometimes I find myself skipping steps
and not being as curious as I should be. And if anyone from
this church is listening, you'll know. It's a it was a minor mistake, but a
mistake I made just a couple of weeks ago. I was
doing a a an analysis with the with the church and they
kept talking about a particular space on their property.
(06:14):
And I had been around their property but I had not been in every room
and in every space on their property and there were a lot of
comments as we were working through this analysis on this one space
and I kept thinking that they were talking about one building
that they own. And some of their comments were about that one
building, but most of the comments were about a building I had never walked
(06:37):
into. And so it kind of like I definitely
didn't catch the drift and then they were like, why don't we take you over
there so you can see it? And then I was like, those comments make
way more sense now that I've seen this room. And so
I I know that as the pastor, there's probably not gonna be, like, rooms you
haven't walked into, but, there can be
(06:57):
programs that you might be making an assumption that when they say
women's bible study, you think it's the one that meets on Thursday nights, but, actually,
they're talking about the one that meets on, you know, Tuesday mornings,
and that's not the same group of people. You know, like, there are things that
you just don't know. You don't know the dynamics. You don't know the
relationships involved. It's like you should ask way more questions.
(07:20):
People will be gracious with you. So, So, like, in that situation, I'd be like,
woah. I totally missed this. Sorry, guys. And no one was mad. Everyone was like,
yeah. It makes sense. And it didn't hurt anything in the process.
In fact, we all had kinda a a huge laugh about this
particular space and why they're like, yo, you've really missed out. You really should go
see this room. But people will be gracious with you if you go, can you
(07:42):
explain that to me? I feel like I'm missing something. Tell me more about
that. People will be gracious with
with you, but when you kinda go in guns blazing making assumptions, it's a great
way to get people not to like you. Yeah. Yeah. And there's gonna
be things that they don't even realize. You know? I mean, pet names
that buildings or rooms end up with, you know,
(08:05):
that might sound like one thing to you, but it's not. It's something different.
So these are the the weird little things that from
no fault of theirs, they're not intentionally trying to mislead you. They're just
using the lingo that they use. And you're gonna have to go, tell
me exactly what that is. I wanna make sure, and we run into this all
the time, Scott, because churches come up with cute names for
(08:27):
all kinds for ministries and and events and all kinds of things. And,
and we're always having to go, okay, tell me what this is. What is
that exactly? Yeah. Yeah. So a
little bit of the lightheartedness, a lot of curiosity.
Yeah. A ton of humility goes a long
way. Absolutely. Absolutely.
(08:49):
Alright. Our second point is to prioritize
relationships over results. Don't come in there guns blazing
because you've got great ideas and you're really excited
about the future and potential that the church has, we're
gonna we'll speak into this a little bit in our next point as well, but
prioritize relationships first. And we would always tell a pastor, unless,
(09:10):
you know, there's there's some sometimes different circumstances, but for the most
part, you know, give it give it six months. Give it at least six months.
Just get to get to know the people and the rhythms of the
church and just the things that can't be
explained on paper. You just have to experience them
and feel it out. So just take some time. Don't
(09:32):
don't expect that you're making changes on day one unless there's some really
weird circumstance and you know already know all about it and they are excited
for you to do something, and that's not usually the case.
So just take take the time. Plan plan times for this,
though. You know? I mean, have coffee times and dinner
plans and, you know, weekend outings or various things
(09:54):
to to get to know people. I mean, I I know you're you probably
have left relationships behind from wherever you were previously.
And, you know, there there may be this, you know, this human relationship need
even. So you want to make friends. You're gonna have to
prioritize that, for you and your your wife,
your kids. I mean, these you know, everybody that's been affected by the change.
(10:18):
And, yeah, just plan that out. Don't don't get so buried in the
work, that you miss out on the opportunity to build
new new friendships and relationships and, and get to
know the people. Yes. I'm going to read to you a
quote Alright. From from GK Chesterton.
Okay. This is gonna be familiar to some of our
(10:41):
listeners, maybe not to to others. It's the, the principle of Chesterton's
fence. So he says, in the matter
of reforming things as distinct from deforming
them, there is one plain and simple principle, a
principle which will probably be called a paradox.
There exists in such a case a certain institution
(11:03):
or a law, let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or
a gate erected across a road. The more
modern type of reformer goes up to it and says, I don't see
the use of this. Let us clear it away. To which the
more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer,
If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you
(11:26):
clear it away. Go away and think. Then when you
can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I
may allow you to destroy it. So it's it's
this idea that until you understand why something is
the way it is, you shouldn't get rid of it. Mhmm. So if you
can explain why it's there and then explain why it would
(11:49):
be better if it were not there, then you shouldn't torpedo the
thing. And so we have when you're a new pastor, you have the
benefit of objectivity because you see things perhaps
that other people do not see. But
you're you are unwise if you think
that it it showed up that that program
(12:12):
or that system or that team or that
bureau you know, bureaucratic rule, if you think that it
just showed up de novo, like, you know, they just thought here's
an here's a thing that we're going to do, it's it's there for a
reason. Someone started that ministry, that program,
that committee, instituted that rule or that policy
(12:34):
for a reason. And it doesn't mean that you can't get rid of it. It
just means that until you understand why it was instituted in the first
place, you shouldn't recommend it because, one, you
might very well come around to it and go, yeah, we really maybe should keep
that thing. Or two, people will not I think
people will not buy into the change that you're wanting to
(12:56):
propose. Mhmm. Until you can speak their language and go, I
know why we've done this. Mhmm. You know, we did it for this reason, but
here's why we shouldn't do it this way anymore. And so, it
kinda goes back to being curious, I guess, to point one. But you
need that relationship. You need to know why things are there. You need to have
the, you know, the and have the trust currency in place to be able to
(13:18):
make recommendations. So I know I've kind of maybe started to
bleed into point three a little bit, but I I think it's so important for
us to understand why are
things the way that they are. Maybe just a kind of a
small subpoint here or a story. You and I,
you know, taking over for our founder, Aubrey Malphurs,
(13:40):
We have found sometimes, like, we come up with new ideas or new ways of
saying or doing things, and then, we'll come across some, like,
old document of Aubrey's in Dropbox or something and go, I think we
thought we were getting away from something or innovating, and then we see Aubrey had
the same point or was making the same point or saying something the same way.
And so sometimes that happens. You you think you're innovating, but really you're just
(14:02):
going back to to something more fun. Which is kind of the nature of our
work altogether, you know, that we help churches sometimes
realign back to some biblical principles Yeah. That's true. That
we've innovated away from over the centuries. Yeah. Not
that we ever thought that Aubrey anything Aubrey was doing was was not good or
something, but we No. No. Sometimes we go, oh, let's try it in a new
(14:23):
way, and then we we found ourselves innovating our way back to
something that Aubrey was doing. Maybe we call it something different or whatever,
slap a slap some new paint on it, but it's like, no. This is what
Aubrey was doing with churches twenty years ago, and it because it was smart and
it was good. Yeah. Yep. You and I have not
authored 26 books or,
(14:44):
taught in the seminary for thirty years. So, yeah, we still have things
to learn as well. Yep. Okay. Our last point
here is to communicate hope before you try to
cast vision. And again, I think it was in our third point last week. We
talked about the relationship between pastor and church coming together in this
new relationship in regards to vision and the future of the
(15:06):
church and how this should be, you know, a symbiotic relationship,
that that really God ordains together for the benefit of the church and
for the world that the church will affect with the gospel. But,
but, yeah, communicate hope first, before we get
into strategy and all that. And this can be done even in the
early stages of relationship with the church. Hope,
(15:28):
obviously, is where what we want the church to sense and feel,
regardless of where it is. Excuse me. We're gonna sort of flavor this point a
little bit with, you know, a church that maybe is in
need of some revitalization or could benefit from optimization
to be able to move into a growth trajectory. But
communicating hope first, you can do that in
(15:50):
almost any situation in the church as somebody new. And you
probably feel that way. I mean, it's it's rare that a pastor
would accept this new position not feeling
hopeful himself or seeing potential in the church and in the people. And
so I think this is a good additional relationship
building element to feel hopeful, to project hope as
(16:12):
you're getting to know everybody and and learning your way around this
new environment. And then in the right time, in
format venue, begin to cultivate
strategy for vision that hopefully will, again, have been
talked about in the hiring process, and, you know, between the senior
leadership of the church and the new pastor. But but I think this is going
(16:34):
to help people to feel maybe confident towards you and
excited about the future with you leading that,
that you see a hopeful future for them. Mhmm.
Mhmm. Yeah. I think this is so important.
You know, they they have to people have to trust you. People have to have
confidence in you. People have to see what you're seeing, they have to be excited
(16:57):
about where you're wanting to lead the church, and it needs to be in alignment
with where they see the church. We talked again, we talked about that last week.
Direction should be shared, you know, and they shouldn't be
you should be winning them over on your ability to guide
them towards that shared destination rather than trying to win
them over on the destination. So, you know, if if you got
(17:19):
hired by a church and they didn't have a vision for the future,
don't sit in your office and go, well, I waited six months and I cooked
up a vision over the last six months, and now I've been here six months
and I can spring it on them. Don't do that.
Build it with them, that part. And then beyond
that, try to get people excited about your leadership and your ability to take them
(17:41):
there. You know? And you can do that through your sermons. You can do that
through relationships. You can do that, you know, through
casting vision. But and then and look for early wins.
You know, what are what are some things you know, we didn't talk about this
last week, but we should have a piece of advice we we give to churches
that are going through transition is, like, save low hanging fruit
wins for the new pastor, things that no one is gonna
(18:05):
be offended by and everyone is gonna be happy with. Like,
you know, we're gonna re stripe the parking lot, you know,
and it, you know, it's gonna things are gonna look fresh or we're putting in
some new sign things that peep no one's gonna be mad about. Everyone's going to
love. You know, hopefully, you can get some of those things early too because that
that makes people go, oh, things are changing and they're and that oh, I
(18:25):
really like that. We should've done that years ago. You know, if there's some easy
things that you can do like that in the first nine months, then that's
that's good too. But I would be remiss if I
didn't say you should consider an outside process.
If you're if the church doesn't have a vision for the
future so that it doesn't come off like you're trying to railroad
(18:48):
something down the throat of the church, if you partner
with someone like the Mouthers Group, let us be
the ones who are guiding the discussion, then it won't
feel like, oh, well, it's just, you know, pastor AJ's
idea. You know? I'll go, oh, no. This you know, we we built this thing
together. So consider that because it really is
(19:11):
a it's a great way to get kicked out is if people feel like you're
jamming something down their throats. Yeah. What it communicates is
let's work on this together. You know? Me,
pastor, you, church, we are we are one, and and
we're gonna have somebody come lead us through something that we can we
can develop together. And that just builds
(19:33):
ownership in it. You're just Trust that you wanna hear. That you
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's a it's just a really healthy
way of processing through the shared vision,
developing strategies, and making sure that everybody is unified. I mean,
unity in the church is is a huge element. And
so, yeah, when the church is is moving in the same direction together, the fruit
(19:55):
of that is just the sky's the living. Heaven's the living.
So That's right. There you go. Alright, Scott. We've
we've got, some things last week that the church can do to,
prepare healthily for their new pastor. And then this week,
things the pastor can do to work, from a healthy perspective building the
relationship with his new church. Yeah. And
(20:18):
like we said last week, go to healthychurchestoolkit.com.
Sign up free for seven days. And inside the toolkit, you'll see there's,
a thing called the church checkup challenge. It's a it's a seven day
kind of mini course that's inside there. I'd encourage you to go through
that because with with your team, with your elders or whatever,
(20:39):
because it will get them starting to ask some of the questions. That's something that
you can do before you would go into a whole revitalization process.
Go through that church checkup challenge because you'll go, well, we
don't know. We don't know what our discipleship pathway is or, oh, I'm not sure.
Are we clear on our our mission language or I don't know. Do we have
a clear vision for where we're going? It it doesn't give you all the answers,
(21:01):
but would get your team asking some of the right questions. And, you
can sign up at healthychurchestoolkit.com
for seven days and go through that material with your team in that
time frame, and it might be helpful for you to figure out
should we go through a revitalization process or not?
Brilliant idea. Thanks for being with us, everybody. The
(21:23):
links that we've mentioned are gonna be down in the description, for
this episode in your podcast app or in the YouTube description below.
Thanks. We'll see you again next week.
You're a pastor about to start at a new church. Let's talk about
how to make that work well at the start right now on the
church revitalization podcast. Hello, and welcome to the
Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs
Group team, where each week we tackle important,
actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now,
(00:24):
here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu.
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball.
I'm joined by my friend and cohost AJ Mathieu.
Last week, we were talking about starting,
having a new pastor start at your church. This
(00:46):
week, we're talking about you're the pastor and you're starting at
the new church. What should you do? So we we laid down in week
one some advice to hopefully help
you out, help you be successful in that position. And
today, we wanna lay some truth on you to
help you help yourself be successful in this
(01:08):
new position. And as we gave caveats last week, even if this isn't
you, even if you're not starting at a new church right now, you
may you may know someone who's gonna be starting it at a new church and
you could pass this advice along. You may have some other staff person.
This is not just for senior pastors. This is true for youth pastors. Actually, I
had a conversation just yesterday, by the way, with a
(01:29):
church who let a youth pastor go. And he
hadn't done anything wrong, but it just wasn't working. And I was
thinking, man, I think they set him up for failure.
And So, yeah, this is this is good
advice to have in your back pocket regardless of your current
employment situation. Yeah. Yeah.
(01:51):
Wow. Yeah. Boy, that's I hate hearing that. You know? I
mean, to to know that they couldn't work that out, and it which
always makes me think, could they have worked it out? You know? I mean, how
much effort was put in? How much grace was given on both parties? You
know? Any relationship between humans or groups of humans
requires Mhmm. Requires grace, requires good communication.
(02:13):
You know? I mean, it requires people with an attitude of giving
towards the other. I, you know, I think about this all the time. I don't
think about all the time. I've thought about this. You know, people that get
divorced, you know? I mean, I I think making a marriage work is putting the
other person before yourself. And so, you know, when
relationships sever, I think when there's
(02:34):
not necessarily anything has happened, some acute
situation has happened, then, you know, I feel like it
might often be the product of kind
of a selfishness to some degree on one or both
parties not wanting to give up something for the other in
order to make the relationship work. And then there's a gazillion different reasons that
(02:56):
that things might not work, and it's it's no fault of one or the other.
But, Oh, no. I mean, yeah, you're saying that, but it's
usually the fault of one or the other or or Yeah. So
yeah. Yeah. But also just bad communication. I can and I don't
wanna sort of give details here.
But, you know, with this specific situation with this youth pastor,
(03:19):
I don't know that the expectations were clear. Mhmm. I
don't know that, you know, essentially, they were
bleeding some families. You know, and if you kinda have a loss
of confidence from the youth ministry families, it can be
really hard to get that back. Mhmm. Well, how did that happen in the first
place? Yeah. Right. You know? So just and sometimes it's a bridge too far
(03:40):
like the you can't sometimes you can go back and fix
those communication things. Sometimes you can't. And that's actually the point of
this episode is, like, get out get you wanna get started on the right foot.
So yeah. Maybe we can hop there. Let's jump into our
first point, and we're saying be a student before becoming
a shepherd. It's so important. Whenever you get
(04:03):
you hit the ground, you're maybe not even unpacking yet, and you're you're
already gonna be working on relationships at that point when you come to start at
a new church. You've got to be the student gaining
as much information as you can. And with with that attitude,
like, please tell me everything. I wanna know everything. With last week, we
talked about all of the details. In fact, the in the first point we talked
(04:24):
about last week, the details that a pastor is going to
need to be successful and not, you know, accidentally
step on toes and things like that. So, yes, from your perspective now,
coming in, be asking for these things. Be thinking
about all that you may not know. You're gonna wanna
know about all of these little things. The example I gave last week was the
(04:46):
the people that get hurt because the previous pastor
would pop into their little prayer group that was meeting on
Sunday morning, you know, before getting getting ready to start the service.
Well, find out out. Do these kinds of things happen? What are what are
the rhythms of the church? What are these things that aren't necessarily in
the bulletin? You know, the unwritten meetings
(05:08):
or connection points that your church is used to having. Or,
Scott, you brought up, you know, like the race weekend in Bristol, Tennessee.
Cultural things that happen in and around the city
or the church. Just ask. Ask questions to find
out things that you don't even know what to ask so that you can start
to have those conversations. But the more details you can get about
(05:30):
people and places and things and processes, the
better you're going to be and the faster you can get up to speed.
Yeah. Yeah. I you could summarize it as just be, like, be
curious. Mhmm. Be inquisitive. I, this is a
this is good advice for consultants too, and I and I I like to pride
myself. I think I'm pretty pretty good about
(05:53):
being curious, but sometimes I find myself skipping steps
and not being as curious as I should be. And if anyone from
this church is listening, you'll know. It's a it was a minor mistake, but a
mistake I made just a couple of weeks ago. I was
doing a a an analysis with the with the church and they
kept talking about a particular space on their property.
(06:14):
And I had been around their property but I had not been in every room
and in every space on their property and there were a lot of
comments as we were working through this analysis on this one space
and I kept thinking that they were talking about one building
that they own. And some of their comments were about that one
building, but most of the comments were about a building I had never walked
(06:37):
into. And so it kind of like I definitely
didn't catch the drift and then they were like, why don't we take you over
there so you can see it? And then I was like, those comments make
way more sense now that I've seen this room. And so
I I know that as the pastor, there's probably not gonna be, like, rooms you
haven't walked into, but, there can be
(06:57):
programs that you might be making an assumption that when they say
women's bible study, you think it's the one that meets on Thursday nights, but, actually,
they're talking about the one that meets on, you know, Tuesday mornings,
and that's not the same group of people. You know, like, there are things that
you just don't know. You don't know the dynamics. You don't know the
relationships involved. It's like you should ask way more questions.
(07:20):
People will be gracious with you. So, So, like, in that situation, I'd be like,
woah. I totally missed this. Sorry, guys. And no one was mad. Everyone was like,
yeah. It makes sense. And it didn't hurt anything in the process.
In fact, we all had kinda a a huge laugh about this
particular space and why they're like, yo, you've really missed out. You really should go
see this room. But people will be gracious with you if you go, can you
(07:42):
explain that to me? I feel like I'm missing something. Tell me more about
that. People will be gracious with
with you, but when you kinda go in guns blazing making assumptions, it's a great
way to get people not to like you. Yeah. Yeah. And there's gonna
be things that they don't even realize. You know? I mean, pet names
that buildings or rooms end up with, you know,
(08:05):
that might sound like one thing to you, but it's not. It's something different.
So these are the the weird little things that from
no fault of theirs, they're not intentionally trying to mislead you. They're just
using the lingo that they use. And you're gonna have to go, tell
me exactly what that is. I wanna make sure, and we run into this all
the time, Scott, because churches come up with cute names for
(08:27):
all kinds for ministries and and events and all kinds of things. And,
and we're always having to go, okay, tell me what this is. What is
that exactly? Yeah. Yeah. So a
little bit of the lightheartedness, a lot of curiosity.
Yeah. A ton of humility goes a long
way. Absolutely. Absolutely.
(08:49):
Alright. Our second point is to prioritize
relationships over results. Don't come in there guns blazing
because you've got great ideas and you're really excited
about the future and potential that the church has, we're
gonna we'll speak into this a little bit in our next point as well, but
prioritize relationships first. And we would always tell a pastor, unless,
(09:10):
you know, there's there's some sometimes different circumstances, but for the most
part, you know, give it give it six months. Give it at least six months.
Just get to get to know the people and the rhythms of the
church and just the things that can't be
explained on paper. You just have to experience them
and feel it out. So just take some time. Don't
(09:32):
don't expect that you're making changes on day one unless there's some really
weird circumstance and you know already know all about it and they are excited
for you to do something, and that's not usually the case.
So just take take the time. Plan plan times for this,
though. You know? I mean, have coffee times and dinner
plans and, you know, weekend outings or various things
(09:54):
to to get to know people. I mean, I I know you're you probably
have left relationships behind from wherever you were previously.
And, you know, there there may be this, you know, this human relationship need
even. So you want to make friends. You're gonna have to
prioritize that, for you and your your wife,
your kids. I mean, these you know, everybody that's been affected by the change.
(10:18):
And, yeah, just plan that out. Don't don't get so buried in the
work, that you miss out on the opportunity to build
new new friendships and relationships and, and get to
know the people. Yes. I'm going to read to you a
quote Alright. From from GK Chesterton.
Okay. This is gonna be familiar to some of our
(10:41):
listeners, maybe not to to others. It's the, the principle of Chesterton's
fence. So he says, in the matter
of reforming things as distinct from deforming
them, there is one plain and simple principle, a
principle which will probably be called a paradox.
There exists in such a case a certain institution
(11:03):
or a law, let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or
a gate erected across a road. The more
modern type of reformer goes up to it and says, I don't see
the use of this. Let us clear it away. To which the
more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer,
If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you
(11:26):
clear it away. Go away and think. Then when you
can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I
may allow you to destroy it. So it's it's
this idea that until you understand why something is
the way it is, you shouldn't get rid of it. Mhmm. So if you
can explain why it's there and then explain why it would
(11:49):
be better if it were not there, then you shouldn't torpedo the
thing. And so we have when you're a new pastor, you have the
benefit of objectivity because you see things perhaps
that other people do not see. But
you're you are unwise if you think
that it it showed up that that program
(12:12):
or that system or that team or that
bureau you know, bureaucratic rule, if you think that it
just showed up de novo, like, you know, they just thought here's
an here's a thing that we're going to do, it's it's there for a
reason. Someone started that ministry, that program,
that committee, instituted that rule or that policy
(12:34):
for a reason. And it doesn't mean that you can't get rid of it. It
just means that until you understand why it was instituted in the first
place, you shouldn't recommend it because, one, you
might very well come around to it and go, yeah, we really maybe should keep
that thing. Or two, people will not I think
people will not buy into the change that you're wanting to
(12:56):
propose. Mhmm. Until you can speak their language and go, I
know why we've done this. Mhmm. You know, we did it for this reason, but
here's why we shouldn't do it this way anymore. And so, it
kinda goes back to being curious, I guess, to point one. But you
need that relationship. You need to know why things are there. You need to have
the, you know, the and have the trust currency in place to be able to
(13:18):
make recommendations. So I know I've kind of maybe started to
bleed into point three a little bit, but I I think it's so important for
us to understand why are
things the way that they are. Maybe just a kind of a
small subpoint here or a story. You and I,
you know, taking over for our founder, Aubrey Malphurs,
(13:40):
We have found sometimes, like, we come up with new ideas or new ways of
saying or doing things, and then, we'll come across some, like,
old document of Aubrey's in Dropbox or something and go, I think we
thought we were getting away from something or innovating, and then we see Aubrey had
the same point or was making the same point or saying something the same way.
And so sometimes that happens. You you think you're innovating, but really you're just
(14:02):
going back to to something more fun. Which is kind of the nature of our
work altogether, you know, that we help churches sometimes
realign back to some biblical principles Yeah. That's true. That
we've innovated away from over the centuries. Yeah. Not
that we ever thought that Aubrey anything Aubrey was doing was was not good or
something, but we No. No. Sometimes we go, oh, let's try it in a new
(14:23):
way, and then we we found ourselves innovating our way back to
something that Aubrey was doing. Maybe we call it something different or whatever,
slap a slap some new paint on it, but it's like, no. This is what
Aubrey was doing with churches twenty years ago, and it because it was smart and
it was good. Yeah. Yep. You and I have not
authored 26 books or,
(14:44):
taught in the seminary for thirty years. So, yeah, we still have things
to learn as well. Yep. Okay. Our last point
here is to communicate hope before you try to
cast vision. And again, I think it was in our third point last week. We
talked about the relationship between pastor and church coming together in this
new relationship in regards to vision and the future of the
(15:06):
church and how this should be, you know, a symbiotic relationship,
that that really God ordains together for the benefit of the church and
for the world that the church will affect with the gospel. But,
but, yeah, communicate hope first, before we get
into strategy and all that. And this can be done even in the
early stages of relationship with the church. Hope,
(15:28):
obviously, is where what we want the church to sense and feel,
regardless of where it is. Excuse me. We're gonna sort of flavor this point a
little bit with, you know, a church that maybe is in
need of some revitalization or could benefit from optimization
to be able to move into a growth trajectory. But
communicating hope first, you can do that in
(15:50):
almost any situation in the church as somebody new. And you
probably feel that way. I mean, it's it's rare that a pastor
would accept this new position not feeling
hopeful himself or seeing potential in the church and in the people. And
so I think this is a good additional relationship
building element to feel hopeful, to project hope as
(16:12):
you're getting to know everybody and and learning your way around this
new environment. And then in the right time, in
format venue, begin to cultivate
strategy for vision that hopefully will, again, have been
talked about in the hiring process, and, you know, between the senior
leadership of the church and the new pastor. But but I think this is going
(16:34):
to help people to feel maybe confident towards you and
excited about the future with you leading that,
that you see a hopeful future for them. Mhmm.
Mhmm. Yeah. I think this is so important.
You know, they they have to people have to trust you. People have to have
confidence in you. People have to see what you're seeing, they have to be excited
(16:57):
about where you're wanting to lead the church, and it needs to be in alignment
with where they see the church. We talked again, we talked about that last week.
Direction should be shared, you know, and they shouldn't be
you should be winning them over on your ability to guide
them towards that shared destination rather than trying to win
them over on the destination. So, you know, if if you got
(17:19):
hired by a church and they didn't have a vision for the future,
don't sit in your office and go, well, I waited six months and I cooked
up a vision over the last six months, and now I've been here six months
and I can spring it on them. Don't do that.
Build it with them, that part. And then beyond
that, try to get people excited about your leadership and your ability to take them
(17:41):
there. You know? And you can do that through your sermons. You can do that
through relationships. You can do that, you know, through
casting vision. But and then and look for early wins.
You know, what are what are some things you know, we didn't talk about this
last week, but we should have a piece of advice we we give to churches
that are going through transition is, like, save low hanging fruit
wins for the new pastor, things that no one is gonna
(18:05):
be offended by and everyone is gonna be happy with. Like,
you know, we're gonna re stripe the parking lot, you know,
and it, you know, it's gonna things are gonna look fresh or we're putting in
some new sign things that peep no one's gonna be mad about. Everyone's going to
love. You know, hopefully, you can get some of those things early too because that
that makes people go, oh, things are changing and they're and that oh, I
(18:25):
really like that. We should've done that years ago. You know, if there's some easy
things that you can do like that in the first nine months, then that's
that's good too. But I would be remiss if I
didn't say you should consider an outside process.
If you're if the church doesn't have a vision for the
future so that it doesn't come off like you're trying to railroad
(18:48):
something down the throat of the church, if you partner
with someone like the Mouthers Group, let us be
the ones who are guiding the discussion, then it won't
feel like, oh, well, it's just, you know, pastor AJ's
idea. You know? I'll go, oh, no. This you know, we we built this thing
together. So consider that because it really is
(19:11):
a it's a great way to get kicked out is if people feel like you're
jamming something down their throats. Yeah. What it communicates is
let's work on this together. You know? Me,
pastor, you, church, we are we are one, and and
we're gonna have somebody come lead us through something that we can we
can develop together. And that just builds
(19:33):
ownership in it. You're just Trust that you wanna hear. That you
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's a it's just a really healthy
way of processing through the shared vision,
developing strategies, and making sure that everybody is unified. I mean,
unity in the church is is a huge element. And
so, yeah, when the church is is moving in the same direction together, the fruit
(19:55):
of that is just the sky's the living. Heaven's the living.
So That's right. There you go. Alright, Scott. We've
we've got, some things last week that the church can do to,
prepare healthily for their new pastor. And then this week,
things the pastor can do to work, from a healthy perspective building the
relationship with his new church. Yeah. And
(20:18):
like we said last week, go to healthychurchestoolkit.com.
Sign up free for seven days. And inside the toolkit, you'll see there's,
a thing called the church checkup challenge. It's a it's a seven day
kind of mini course that's inside there. I'd encourage you to go through
that because with with your team, with your elders or whatever,
(20:39):
because it will get them starting to ask some of the questions. That's something that
you can do before you would go into a whole revitalization process.
Go through that church checkup challenge because you'll go, well, we
don't know. We don't know what our discipleship pathway is or, oh, I'm not sure.
Are we clear on our our mission language or I don't know. Do we have
a clear vision for where we're going? It it doesn't give you all the answers,
(21:01):
but would get your team asking some of the right questions. And, you
can sign up at healthychurchestoolkit.com
for seven days and go through that material with your team in that
time frame, and it might be helpful for you to figure out
should we go through a revitalization process or not?
Brilliant idea. Thanks for being with us, everybody. The
(21:23):
links that we've mentioned are gonna be down in the description, for
this episode in your podcast app or in the YouTube description below.
Thanks. We'll see you again next week.
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