Handling transitions with dignity

Feb 2, 2008

Two of the key leaders at Willow Creek Church will be moving on in the next few months. It will be interesting to watch and see how this transition is handled. If you are a leadership junkie like me, you will be constantly wondering about the "story behind the story."

A little over 14 years ago I was transitioning from one ministry to another. I had just completed a multi-year stint as a "volunteer" executive pastor of a church of about 1000. I had been the key leader in a move from one location to another. I had also seen the church decline from 1000 to 500. When the move was completed I was getting "strong leadings" from God that one chapter had ended and another was beginning.

Making a long story short, although I am quite sure that God was leading, I am also quite sure that I didn’t handle myself with much dignity as I moved on to pastor a church in a community 10 miles away and over the hill from where I had been working for the previous five years. While there were no "dead bodies" or split congregations, there were some hard feelings and difficult moments. Even the smallest rejection is painful. We all yearn to be celebrated and appreciated, but when we are leaving, and both sides, "the leavor and the leavee" (I don’t think these are actual English words, but they do kind of work, don’t they?) are not in mutual agreement, there are bound to be some hurt feelings.

The worst kind of leaving is when we have been "fired" or forced into resignation. I have experienced this a few times in my life and boy, that is no fun at all. Closure is an impossibility. We can’t help but conduct postmortems in our minds, sometimes ad infinitum, trying to make sense of what happened. I hope to learn from my past mistakes and make my future transitions with dignity and grace.

What Do You Think?

Tom

February 2, 2008 at 9:04 pm

Yeah, I haven’t experienced the greatest departings myself. I have always marveled at Willow’s approach to these matters and it seems they have been consistant over the years. One thing you said is that closure is an impossibility. That is so true in whatever the case may be. We still have a small tiny bit that remains at each place we have departed that wishes for a split second that things could have been different. One thing is for sure, when given the opportunity to lead, I want to lead like the example from Willow and not from the ones I have been apart of.

Still learning,

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Scott

February 2, 2008 at 11:38 pm

You know when a football team that is supposed to be great fails to make the playoffs, it becomes assumed by the media that the head coach will be fired? That’s the feeling I got as I read Willow’s report on their failure at making disciples. I immediately started wondering who’s head would roll over it. Maybe that is the “story behind the story” of the recent departures… I’m not sure.

I do remember reading about a former IBM exec that made a decision that cost the company literally 10 million dollars. He appeared before his boss, sure he would be terminated. “I’m not going to fire you!” his boss exclaimed, “I just spent $10 million training you for this job.”

Well that’s a long way to ask, why is it that a large part of the church can’t seem to deal people’s mistakes?

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Charlie Wear

February 3, 2008 at 10:46 am

In the church “business” we aim to prevent “mistakes (sin).” Of course, this is why, most of the time we live in a kind of Fantasyland instead of reality. I am sure that the pressures of running an enterprise like Willow Creek would cause anyone to crack within a few years, especially the pressure of doing your job in front of the Founder and Senior Pastor that you have just replaced.

There is a pretty consistent history of the failure of the transition from founder to whoever is next. This is especially so when the next leader is a generation or more beyond.

The reason is, that despite the best efforts of church leaders, it is difficult to achieve an “intergenerational” congregation. The rule of thumb is that the group will be up to ten years older and ten years younger than the key leader. This creates a dilemma. In order to prevent the death (literally) of the organization, it must constantly be renewed with younger people. But younger people are not usually attracted to older leaders.

Don’t know that any of this is at play, but I could have predicted when Gene Appel was the lead voice in explaining the demise of Axis (the young adult church within a church at Willow) that this might cost him a ton of leadership equity.

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