If a scandal were to hit your church, what’s your plan? What will your church do when your senior pastor suddenly resigns due to financial impropriety? How will your leadership react if an extra-marital affair is discovered with a staff member? Even an accusation of molestation against a nursery worker will bring the TV cameras with tape rolling. What’s your plan? What’s that? You don’t have a plan? Most churches don’t…
Take the recent Ted Haggard scandal. I’ve been very complimentary of the way New Life Church stepped in and took control of the situation quickly. It appears they handled things much better than most churches faced with those kind of dire circumstances. But an article in a recent edition of the Denver Post had a statement that blew me away… the interim Senior Pastor said that there was no succession plan in place at Haggard’s 14,000 member church “because no one thought it was needed”.
If your church is over 2 people, you should really consider (and talk openly about) a succession plan. What happens when the leader leaves (under good OR bad circumstances)? Working with hundreds of churches in the area of staffing, I found that few had any kind of contingency plan when a staff member leaves. Most search committees had no forewarning or inclination that the staff member was even thinking of resigning. And no one who was going through scandal ever would have predicted it beforehand. After all, it will never happen to us.
In their book, The Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken Truth about Pastoral Transitions—Carolyn Weese and J. Russell Crabtree—experts in the field of church leadership—have written a nuts-and-bolts guide to developing a succession plan for smoothing pastoral transitions, particularly in crisis situations. In the book they write:
“The critical elements of any crisis plan are safety, command structure, continuity of service, communication, and restoration of normalcy. When a pastor departs suddenly, each is an issue; a crisis plan should address them all.
Safety — The plan should provide a way to ensure the physical, emotional, and spiritual safety of members. If the pastor has died suddenly, critical incident debriefing may be necessary for the church staff and lay leadership, and perhaps for the entire church. Since the sudden death of a role model can be traumatic, prompt attention should be given to the entire congregation. The crisis transition plan should contain a list of mental health care providers, with contact names and phone numbers.
Command Structure — In the emergency phase of a crisis (generally the first twenty-four hours but as long as one week), there is often insufficient time for collaborative or group decision making. Trusted individuals have to be given the authority to act. These individuals should be identified in the crisis plan.
Continuity of Service — Since the primary mission of the church is to provide service in the name of Christ, it is important that the plan feature a way for quality services to be continued wherever possible. Critical. Pastoral Resource. We call this person your “CPR” (for critical pastoral resource). The purpose of a CPR is to offer worship leadership during those first two critical weeks when the right tone can have long-term benefits. This provision for a CPR in a crisis plan has a number of advantages. It gives the congregation a worship experience under the leadership of someone they know and trust. It brings a person with the right gifts to the situ¬ation that can promote healing and inspire confidence. It sends a clear signal to the congregation that the church is in capable and compassionate hands. Finally, it gives leaders who are work¬ing to provide interim worship leadership more time to do that task well.
Communication — One critical function in a crisis is communication. Generally, it is advisable that one person be given the responsibility for managing communication. There are a number of levels of communication that must be managed:
• Staff
• Lay leaders
• Congregation
• Area pastors
• Denominational bodies
• Friends of the church
• Geographical communities (local, regional, national)
• Media communities (radio, television, Internet)
Restoration of Normalcy—Once the emergency phase of the crisis is past, work can be resumed on restoring the church to normalcy. This requires an orderly, focused process to recruit and orient a new pastor.”
The end result is the tendency to ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ with your next hire. And that’s where things get really ugly. Many churches hire out of desperation to fill a position. Clearly, a transition plan would help many churches be more intentional and make better decisions when they hire.
Simply saying “no one thought it was needed” is just bad planning. In Haggard’s case, he could have simply stepped into the street and been run into by a bus. You never know. And when you’re talking about the well-being of a group of God’s people, a more detailed and thought out approach is warranted.
I’m not picking on New Life… as a matter of fact, I think they did many things right, in spite of not having a plan. Most churches, unfortunately, do not fare so well.
Take some time today and think… where would the church be without me? Would some ministries come to a grinding halt? Would the ministry of the church be hindered? What can I do to make a transition (whether it is my choice and timing or not) go more smoothly?
The ministry-life of your church is at stake. Take time to have a plan!
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