PODCAST | Seamless Pastoral Transitions (Feat. Lee Kricher)

Resources:

https://www.amazon.com/Seamless-Pastoral-Transition-Imperatives-Pitfalls/dp/1662851227

https://futureforwardchurches.com/

Transcript:

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, Senior Marketing Coordinator here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, I get to talk with Lee Kricher, author, former pastor, and founder of Future Forward Churches. Pastoral transitions are inevitable for every church. They can often result in major setbacks, which is why it's vital to plan for succession. In this conversation, Lee shares about his newest book, Seamless Pastoral Transition, and explains six leadership transition pitfalls to avoid. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm so excited because I get to talk with Lee Kricher. He just wrote his newest book, Seamless Pastoral Transitions, and I'm just excited to have you here. Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kricher:
Thanks, Christa. I'm honored to be with you.

Christa Neidig:
Of course. Let's talk about your new book. I actually have my copy right here. I was talking earlier with you about how your last book is actually on the coffee table in our office, and I'm sure this one will get added to the pile on the coffee table next.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. The last book I wrote, For a New Generation, was really about how a church can turn around from being an aging, dying church to a multi-generational church, and we lived it at Amplify Church, where I served. But then there comes a time when you need to hand that church off to a next generation leader, and that's really what Seamless Pastoral Transition is all about.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. Well, let's dig a little bit more into that because we are talking about pastoral transition, something that we at Vanderbloemen are so passionate about. So, let's talk about your background and then an introduction of what led you to writing this book.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. I've had a unique journey. In my 20s, I was a pastor. In my good portion of my 30s and 40s, I was a leadership development coach with a couple different international leadership development firms. There, I learned a lot about change leadership and also about succession planning. But then in my 50s, I went back into ministry. So, during the 15 years I was there, our church turned around from, as I was mentioning, an aging, dying church of about 150 to a healthy, multi-generational church of about 2,000.

Lee Kricher:
So, what happened is as a result of this combination of church, living in the church world, working in the corporate world, I just had this passion about what it was to lead change and what it was to hand off to a next generation leader when it's the right time. So, that's really what was the spark for what this is all about. I really believe in leadership transition and the principles in the book are applicable to whether it's a corporate setting or a not for profit setting. But I'm passionate particularly obviously for a church setting because of the Christ centered mission that we have.

Christa Neidig:
I love that. That takes a bold person to step into change within a church because we always joke how much churches love change around here.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. I remember I was living in Atlanta when I got the call to move back to Pittsburgh for this particular church and I met with my pastor, Andy Stanley. He was saying, "Starting a new church, you don't have all the baggage that you have when you're trying to turn around a church that's really set in his ways." So, he gave me fair warning. But he was also been one of my biggest cheerleaders as we navigated our way through that church revitalization.

Christa Neidig:
That's amazing. So, let's talk about, so with your new book, who the audience of the book is and who can benefit really from reading about seamless pastoral transition.

Lee Kricher:
Well, church leaders who are involved with planning for pastoral transition. So, that would be an outgoing pastor. It would be an incoming pastor. It would be a denominational leader, if they're going to be involved, and it could be a board member. So, it really talks about best practices in leadership transition. For those particularly who are looking ahead to a transition in the short term or in the next several years, it's really wise to get a head start thinking about it instead of waiting until you're in your mid-60s or mid-70s or beyond to say, "Hey, maybe I should be preparing more for pastoral transition."

Christa Neidig:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. We talked about, I think Carey Nieuwhof wrote the intro on this and he brings up such a good point that we always talk about here with the outgoing pastors right now. Pastors were aging and are aging out. So, you're getting this new wave of the younger, newer pastors that are coming in and just, there's such a wave of succession right now that we're seeing as the workforce is getting older and starting to age out, and then especially post-COVID, just expedited everything.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. We definitely are in a time where there's a lot of baby boomer pastors who are either hanging onto their church too long or aren't planning effectively. One pastor I talked to said, "You know what? When I'm finished, I'm finished, and then what happens after I'm gone is between the church and God." I thought, wow. You've you love your church. You love your community. You've invested decades, and this is an independent church, you've invested decades into your church and you're okay with the fact that things could go south or go into a ditch when you're gone because you're finished. But you know what? I don't think that's the typical heart of a pastor, but it actually happens an awful lot.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. It's more common than you think. We always say every pastor's an interim pastor. William wrote that time and time in his books, but also just, that's so true. The longer I've worked here and seen that, the more and more I see that that reigns so true.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. The book, Next, that William wrote along with Warren Byrd really was one of the ones we purchased for our entire board, for me, for the incoming pastor, and it was really a helpful resource when we were going through our transition.

Christa Neidig:
Oh, we're so glad. So, let's go back to, in the book, you define a seamless pastoral transition. Go ahead and just explain what you mean by that for people who may not be familiar with the term of succession planning or pastoral transitions, what that means.

Lee Kricher:
Yes, and it's nothing that's dramatically new. But what it really just says is that the outgoing pastor and the incoming pastor overlap in their service to the church. So, the church gets to see both the outgoing and incoming pastors serving together on the church staff, and so there is no gap in time. The best for profit and not for profit organizations, they really do everything they can to avoid a gap in time between leaders so that the organization doesn't lose momentum or mission. But it's so funny. In many church traditions, there is a planned gap in time. In other words, the outgoing pastor is not even permitted to be involved in any way in identifying or mentoring or commissioning the incoming pastor, and as a result, churches very often take a step backward during pastoral transitions and very often end up losing momentum, losing their focus on their mission, and in today's world, churches are becoming more and more fragile and you just can't afford to lose that kind of momentum.

Christa Neidig:
No. You really can't, and it's really sad the idea of how much a church can break or fall apart just from the leaving, and especially like a founding senior pastor. I think that has to be some of the hardest transitions. Someone who's been there 40 years and that's all the church knows.

Lee Kricher:
Yes, and I think that can be, especially for founding pastors, it's hard for them to let go and it's hard for them to really see the fact that at some point, there's a next generation leader who will have a fresher vision and more energy and there's something different to bring to the table for that next season of ministry. There is a Joshua in your world that it's time to identify at some point and not just wait until you die and hope he's there. Moses made sure that when he left, that the day he was gone, the next day, at that very moment, Joshua led the people, and that was a seamless leadership transition.

Christa Neidig:
I love that example. That's a good one. Your organization is unique. Therefore, the way you find your next staff member should be unique too. Whether your school, nonprofit, family office, or values based business, we are ready to help serve you. Contact us today to get started. So, in the book, you talk about a lot of case studies, and you study a lot of these, you explain a lot of them. Do you mind either hitting on one specifically? Or I just want to know some themes that you found as you were writing this, some transitions that were done well and what you saw through those.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. I recently completed my doctorate and as part of my study, I decided instead of just writing based on others' writings to do case studies of churches that have gone through a seamless pastoral transition. About half of the case studies in the book are interestingly from churches that forbid it from happening. In other words, they're churches with traditions where the outgoing pastor is not permitted to be involved in a transition, and yet in each of those cases, the bishop of, in one case, a Methodist church, the bishop of a Lutheran church, in another case, the bishop of an Anglican church, they all looked beyond. Instead of just saying, "This is the way we do things," they said, "What's the best way? What's in the best interest of this particular church."

Lee Kricher:
So, with their blessing, a seamless pastoral transition took place. Other case studies, which include an Assembly of God church, an Alliance church, these are churches that really would almost be out of sorts if they didn't plan in some way, in one large non-denominational church, where they were actually planning and saying, "Wow. We just can't hope that things work out after this person is gone." Especially for non-denominational or independent churches, you have to get on top of it.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. You really do. It's so important and so vital to the church body and the congregation. You talk about specifically, I think it's three imperatives and six pitfalls throughout the book that you have found through all of this study. So, let's talk about those imperatives, some of those, I think the top three that you have.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. As I look, and I think the handoff from Moses to Joshua is a great biblical example. It's the most in depth leadership transition that we can study in the scriptures. But then when I looked at the case studies of the churches that had a successful seamless pastoral transition, these three, they're almost virtues, that you should do these things, I think, whether you're doing a leadership transition or not. One of those is sharing leadership. So many pastors are in a position where it's a kind of Lone Ranger type of approach, or maybe the idea, I'm the leader and then I just mobilize a bunch of volunteers to do what I need them to do. But they don't really genuinely share leadership, and I think that is absolutely critical because if you don't share leadership, you may go through a succession, but it will have to be with somebody from outside of your church. Without sharing leadership, you really have not given any opportunity for a person to prove themself as a potential successor.

Lee Kricher:
Secondly, I talk about paving the way as a virtue and also as an imperative because there are so many things that you can do where you can just ... There's an on/off light switch where you leave and the next person comes, or you can have an attitude, which is more like John the Baptist where Jesus was, or John the Baptist was with Jesus when he said, "He must increase. I must decrease." So, there's this phasing out and phasing in of these ministries, and that can happen and it needs to happen in a very practical way. Finally, the third imperative is the importance of modeling humility, which is, I think, the most difficult because when you've got overlapping incoming and outgoing pastors, the congregation gets a chance to see this Christlike honoring of one another, this Christlike humility. But when it goes wrong, they're watching something that's very, very different.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. So, let's talk about the flip, some of these pitfalls that you mentioned. I think that these are almost, in some ways, more important because you really have to be aware of these and how common they are. We talked about them a little bit before we started in our conversation, but I want to make sure everybody hears these because I think they have a lot of opportunity, and Satan can use a lot of these throughout the process.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. I think one of those has done way too long because at least in the case studies I did, the ages ranged of the outgoing pastor having a formal handoff between age 64 and age 72. If you wait too long, all of a sudden, you're in your mid-70s, late 70s. I've talked to pastors in their 80s who just hang on and all of a sudden, as one pastor who transitioned said, "I've been there for the growth of the church. I don't want to be there when the church dies, and I'm the one who's sparking its growth and also its decline." So, I think you wait too long and if people around you love you, your board loves you, they're not going to bring it up. It's the leader who needs to say, "We need to plan for a transition."

Christa Neidig:
I heard this example the other day and it's kind of a funny one, but in the work that we do and specifically to this point, I thought it was the perfect example. I don't know if you've seen the play, Hamilton, but it was really popular and they talked about when George Washington is saying goodbye and the song all about, "You taught us how to say goodbye," and he left when everybody was shocked and, "What? You can leave? You mean you're not going to stay? You're not going to see the end of this?" And everybody loved him and just the example that he led of what that looked like and setting up for future success, and I just thought that was the coolest example of a good leader saying goodbye.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. What's interesting, Christa, is in each of the case studies that I did, there was a celebration of the outgoing pastor's ministry. So, there was an honoring of what they had invested in the church. Yet, when people wait too long, very often, instead of leaving in honor, they leave in dishonor and people are saying they're happy they're leaving instead of having all these mixed feelings that should happen when a beloved leader makes the transition.

Christa Neidig:
I like that you mentioned the celebration of goodbye. We talk about that a lot in our succession reports with churches, when the pastor is leaving at the right time, how important it is for them and their family as they're leaving to celebrate and honored, but also for the congregation to be able to process that as well, and as church members to celebrate that and say goodbye. It kind of helps both of those sides in the transition.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. I think of the key pitfalls that leaders particularly fall into is failing or dismissing the need for a detailed transition plan because it's one thing to say, "Yeah, sometime I have to leave," or even identifying an associate pastor or someone who you say, "and when I decide to leave, you can take over." But so often when it comes down to the timing and the details of the plan, that's left to be nebulous and that can cause many, many difficulties in the whole transition process. One pastor in his mid-70s had told an associate pastor, "You're my successor." When the associate pastor, when it was clear there was not going to be a timetable that they were going to discuss, when they even asked about it, he said, "Just even asking about it means you're not my successor anymore."

Christa Neidig:
Oh, wow.

Lee Kricher:
So, that's a big failure and that's one thing one of your coaches came up from Vanderbloemen to help us in our transition and really building that detail plan was very helpful, very insightful, and it also caused some great conflict with me and the incoming pastor because I had a certain timetable in mind. He had a certain timetable in mind. But until we put a detailed plan together, we couldn't wrestle through what that actually meant. Actually wrestling through it was a very powerful exercise that would not have happened if we didn't say, "Here's going to be the exact time when this transition takes place and here's what's going to happen between now and then. You'll be speaking about 50% of the time for this nine months, or about a third of the time. For the last nine months, you'll be speaking about half the time. You'll be leading board meetings and staff meetings with me present the last few months before the transition." So, all those things were hammered out and it made a huge difference.

Christa Neidig:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think the planning is really one of the most important parts when it comes to doing this well is there's, one, every church is different. We always say if you've seen one succession plan, you've seen one succession plan because we have to come in and know the church and know the congregation, know what it's going to take and what's going to work best because every church is a little bit different and unique. So, we have to figure out what plan works, which is why it's great there are so many options and ways to do that with overlapping and teaching and still helping and being involved and finding that right balance. That's great.

Lee Kricher:
For sure.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. So, I want to ask, how would you say is a way that you measure a seamless pastoral transition? What's the mark of a good transition?

Lee Kricher:
Yes, and what I don't try to do and what we shouldn't try to do is to say, well, let's look at attendance two years or three years later and then we'll know if it was successful. Well, way too many factors are involved. About six months after I handed off the church, the global pandemic started. So, it's like, oh, I guess I picked the wrong guy because church attendance really dropped off.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. Really.

Lee Kricher:
There's way too many factors on things like attendance and giving. So, to me, the success of a seamless pastoral transition is simply that a church has not lost momentum or mission during the handoff. That's very simple. It's very powerful. It can be seen within months of the transition. But then where it goes from there, you can't guarantee what will happen once a transition takes place. But you can guarantee that the church doesn't need to lose its momentum or lose its sight on its mission because there's a rough handoff.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. Momentum and mission. I love that. That's great. Well, Lee, thank you so much for sharing about your book and just the time and the energy that I know went into this and into these pages. I know how valuable this is going to be. So, I want to go ahead and share with everyone where they can access this book and get ahold of their own copy.

Lee Kricher:
Yeah. Obviously, it's available on Amazon, but a good resource is the website, Future Forward Churches, futureforwardchurches.com, and there, there's some free resources about pastoral transition and also church revitalization. Also, there's links to be able to purchase the book. But I think that's a great stop for those listeners as leaders who are looking ahead to a pastoral transition.

Christa Neidig:
Great. Thank you again so much, Lee, and for everyone else, we will have all of these linked in the show notes on our website so you can get access to those. Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, vanderbloemen.com, to learn more and subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.