PASTORAL TRANSITION CONSULTATION


What Your Church Gets


CRITICAL QUESTIONS

When a senior pastor leaves, church leaders often face strategic questions that do not have obvious answers:

  • What gifts and experience should we look for in a new pastor?
  • What kind of church do we want to be in five years? Ten years?  How do we discern that when people have such different expectations?
  • What aspects of our church life most need to be strengthened during the next few years?  How can we identify a pastor who has the ability to lead us in strengthening these areas.
  • How do the gifts, experience, and skills of our other staff members shape what gifts, experience, and skills to look for in a new senior pastor?  How do we avoid duplicating the competencies we already have on staff?  How do we identify the missing pieces that it is essential for a new pastor to bring to our team?
  • Does the church need a period of healing or refocusing before hiring a new pastor?  Do we need to hire an intentional interim?  If so, what would our goals for the intentional interim period?
  • How do we know when it is time to begin a pastoral search?  How do we get the right people on our search committee?
  • Where can our search committee turn for coaching during this process?  How do we ask questions that give us insight into how a pastor will actually lead, not just tell us whether he or she knows the "right answers"?

STRATEGIC TOOLS AND PROCESSES

During a Pastoral Transition Consultation, your Living Stones team uses strategic tools to assess your church's strengths and weaknesses, to assess the competencies and chemistry of your present staff, and to help you discern the key issues that the church needs to address during your transition process.

  • The Natural Church Development survey measures eight Quality Characteristics that are essential to healthy church growth.  Your results point to how you can use your strengths to address your weaknesses.  This assessment points to what aspects of church health are most strategic to focus on during the transition period and in the hiring of a pastor.
  • The assessment of your current staff includes spiritual gift surveys, DISC profiles, and staff assessment tools from Living Stones' own self-study that has been developed through 35+ years of working with churches.  The Living Stones team interviews each staff member. 
  • Your self-study includes written input from all your ministry team leaders as well as a Church Vision Survey which can be filled out by up to 100 members of the congregation to help us get a read on the pulse of the congregation.
  • We meet with all your ministry leaders to share our observations and recommendations and help you develop a united plan of action.
  • We guide you in forming a Church Health Team (sometimes called a Transition Team) to guide the transition process and provides ongoing coaching to this team. 
  • As invited by your Transition Team, Living Stones provides on-site leadership training in strategic areas as identified by your Natural Church Development survey, self-study, and on-site interviews.