Analysis for May 26, 2005
By Greg Warner
Two more Baptist megachurches are venturing into mostly uncharted waters-replacing legendary preachers-where success has proven rare.
Jerry Vines announced May 1 he will retire next February as pastor of the 28,000-member First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla. And First Baptist Church of Orlando announced the same day that David Uth, pastor of First Baptist in West Monroe, La., will be recommended as co-pastor, eventually to succeed Jim Henry, who is retiring.
Vines and Henry, both 67, each served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention after conservatives came to denominational power in 1979.
Likewise, three-time SBC president Adrian Rogers retired this year from Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn. So far, no successor has been named.
In recent years, First Baptist churches in Dallas and Atlanta have lost their world-famous pulpiteers-W.A. Criswell and Charles Stanley, respectively. Like Bellevue, both congregations have storied pulpits that predate Criswell and Stanley, but both churches have struggled to move on or regain their prominence.
The era of the megachurch-with 5,000 and even 25,000 members on the roll-is a recent phenomenon, dating mostly from the 1980s. Many are led by bigger-than-life founding pastors whose shoes will be hard to fill. The lack of precedent, at least for Protestants, could spell problems when the patriarch needs to be replaced, say observers and experts.
“If they bat 50 percent, it would be an act of God,” said Joel Gregory, who tried unsuccessfully to follow Criswell at First Baptist of Dallas.
Planning for a successor is the most urgent strategic issue facing megachurches, said Russell Crabtree, co-author of The Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken About Pastoral Transitions. But almost no large churches are facing up to the issue, said Crabtree, an organizational consultant based in Columbus, Ohio.
“You know it must be an emotional block, because it makes no sense,” said Crabtree. If anything is certain, it's that a pastor won't be around forever, he said. “Of all folks who should know that we are mortal … .”
“Most churches don't function strategically,” said Crabtree, “but even those that do, many don't have a transition plan.”
Many megachurches grew by relying on the intuitive leadership of their founding pastors, said Gregory, who wrote Too Great a Temptation about the pitfalls of the prominent pulpit.
“These men are enormously charismatic characters,” said Gregory, now an itinerant preacher based in Fort Worth, Texas. “More than great preachers, the men who have built these churches are extraordinarily gifted administrators. Preaching is just an entry-level requirement for these guys. They are intuitive strategists. And whether or not you can take the work of an intuitive strategist and hand that off is unknown.”
A pastor who follows a legend inevitably encounters problems if the previous pastor, or even his “personna,” is still around, Gregory said. “Immediately, you get caught in a trap of dismantling the program that got them where they were. But in many instances the program that got them where they were won't get them where they need to go,” he said.
His advice for pulpit legends: “Get out of the picture. I know that's not easy for them to do.”
There are so few successful megapulpit transitions that no model exists, he said.
But there could be a bigger issue, Gregory continued, if the megachurch itself has run its course. “The superchurch phenomenon may be an anomaly of the late-20th century,” and may not have a place in the postmodern world, he said.
“The whole idea of the superchurch is new in Kingdom history, certainly Protestant history, not just American history,” said Gregory, distinguished fellow at Georgetown (Ky.) College.
The only antecedent outside the Catholic tradition, he said, may be Charles H. Spurgeon, legendary pastor of the 5,000-member Metropolitan Tabernacle in London in the 1800s.
Crabtree, executive director of Holy Cow Consulting, said large churches have a particularly hard time with succession if they develop “icon” cultures, in which strong-personality pastors are the “entry point” for members. The culture of the church often does not permit “healthy, open communication” about leadership transition, he said.
This happens, he said, if the pastor fears he will become a “lame duck” once he mentions retirement, if the congregation develops “unhealthy dependencies” on a single leader, or if the identity of the pastor is wed to the position.
Smaller churches also can struggle if they nurture a “family culture,” in which the loss of a pastor would be grieved like a death in the family, said Crabtree.
Crabtree said Jesus modeled succession planning “on both ends” of his earthly ministry-graciously accepting leadership from John the Baptist and preparing his disciples for his ascension. “He was very clear about what he was doing,” he said. “It's an issue of discipleship.”
“Today it's the opposite,” he added-lay people are anxious to talk about pastoral transition but pastors often are reluctant.
“If you love the church, you should do what Jesus did and make provision for leadership once you are gone.”
Associated Baptist Press
Greg Warner is executive editor of Associated Baptist Press.