Where does a multi-site megachurch find a new pastor?

When Gateway Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex announced its new senior pastor, most attention fell on Daniel Floyd’s role in picking up the pieces of his predecessor’s sexual abuse scandal. But his appointment is significant for another reason: He is one of the few pastors ever to leave one multi-campus megachurch to lead another multi-campus megachurch.

It’s hard enough for an average church to find a pastor, but for megachurches — and especially multi-campus megachurches — the right fit is akin to Cinderella’s slipper. Many may want to act like it fits when it, in fact, does not.

The skillset required to lead a megachurch is significantly different than the skillset required to lead a 500-member church.

“The skillset required to lead a megachurch is significantly different than the skillset required to lead a 500-member church.”

In 2019, Thom Rainer wrote about this struggle.

“Boomer megachurch pastors are retiring. The number grows every month. And, as we thought might take place, the churches are having difficulty finding their successors. In fact, we are seeing search committees or their equivalents taking longer and longer to find a pastor. This trend will soon become a crisis,” he predicted.

Megachurches, Rainer said, have unique profiles that few candidates fit: “The requisite age is 38 to 49. The candidate must have proven leadership experience. The prospective pastor must currently be serving in a church with an attendance of 500 or more. Dynamic preaching is a given. Doctoral degrees are preferred but not mandated by all churches. Oh, and the candidate must be happily married with 2.6 children.”

And, “the number of Millennials who are in vocational ministry and meet the profile is small.”

Add multi-campus to the mix and the list of candidates gets even shorter. These pastors must be able to command multiple rooms at the same time due to video-broadcast sermons. They must be welcomed into the hearts and minds of people they never see. They are part pastor and part televangelist.

No seminary prepares a pastor for this.

Perhaps that’s why we shouldn’t be surprised that Gateway Church — one of the largest churches in America — found a new pastor who already served in a multi-campus megachurch. Daniel Floyd and his wife, Tammie, clearly know how this model works.

Problem is, their departure from Lifepoint Church in Fredericksburg, Va. — a church they founded 20 years ago and served as co-pastors — leaves another difficult position to fill. There are only a few pastors in America with this kind of experience.

Some good news: That trend could get a bit easier in the future, according to megachurch researcher Scott Thuma, who told me, “Given that many new hires for megachurch leadership come from other megas, and now that roughly three-fourths of megachurches are multisite, my guess would be that this is rather common and will be even more so in the future.”

Definitions vary, but the common threshold for identifying a megachurch begins with weekly attendance — not just membership — of 2,000 or more. Hartford Institute for Religion Research, the gold standard for such things, offers even more details in its definition.

Hartford reports the average megachurch in America has a weekly attendance of 4,092 people. But that can stretch upward to 75,000.

“Not all megachurches are multi-site and not all multi-site churches are megachurches.”

Here’s another wrinkle: Not all megachurches are multi-site and not all multi-site churches are megachurches. While there are an estimated 8,000 multi-site churches in the U.S., there are only about 1,800 megachurches. About 70% of megachurches are multi-campus, and the trend is growing toward that model.

Oh, and don’t forget this: A huge number of megachurches either were founded by or reached megachurch status under the leadership of their current pastors. Put another way: Most pastors of megachurches grow into the role over time and are not thrust suddenly into such a role. And most do not want to leave the churches they started and grew.

Outreach magazine lists Gateway Church as the eighth largest church in America, with average weekly attendance of nearly 28,000. Outreach reports only 16 churches in the nation with weekly attendance of 20,000 or more.

So if you’re Gateway going out on the open market looking for a new senior pastor, the fact that your founding pastor is facing criminal charges of child sexual abuse is not the greatest of your problems. You face a small pool of potential candidates.

And there are lessons to be learned from the few places successful pastor transitions have happened in multi-campus megachurches.

One of the closest comparisons for Gateway Church happened 40 miles southeast in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall, when in 2021 Josh Howerton was named senior pastor of Lakepointe Church, succeeding founding pastor Steve Stroope, who had been there 40 years and grew the church from 13 people to tens of thousands.

Howerton came to Lakepointe from The Bridge Church in Nashville, Tenn., where he followed his own father, who was the founding pastor. The Bridge had become a multi-campus church 11 years before Howerton left for Texas, so he had experience both as the son of a founding pastor and as the leader of a multi-campus megachurch.

In an interview with Outreach, Howerton outlines how Stroope identified him as the pastor he would like to be his successor. That’s an interesting read.

Overall, Lakepointe has continued to thrive, although Howerton has much more flair for the controversial and the complementarian than his predecessor, who was more mild-mannered.

Another example still in process is Saddleback Church in Mission Viejo, Calif. Founded by Rick and Kay Warren, Saddleback today is the seventh largest church in America, and it has been multi-campus for decades.

In 2022, after 40 years of leadership at Saddleback, Rick Warren stepped down as senior pastor and anointed his hand-picked successor, Andy Wood, who came from Echo Church in the San Francisco Bay Area, a congregation he and his wife, Stacie, founded in 2008. Echo also had grown to become a multi-campus megachurch.

The Saddleback succession seems to have gone fairly smoothly, except that Wood — like Howerton — has more of a flair for conservative drama than his predecessor. He’s currently preaching against divorce and homosexuality.

And then there are some less-than-stellar examples, beginning with Second Baptist Church in Houston, where longtime pastor Ed Young got the church bylaws changed to give himself the power to name his son Ben Young his successor. That pastoral transition is now being challenged in court.

Ed Young was not the founding pastor of the church but he was the pastor who grew it into megachurch status and made it multi-site.

But one of the greatest cautionary tales of all multi-site megachurches is Willow Creek Church in suburban Chicago. This was one of the first megachurches and multi-site churches and was a model for others across the nation.

Founded in 1975 and led for 43 years by Pastor Bill Hybels, the wheels came off the cart in 2018 when Hybels stepped down due to allegations of sexual misconduct. The church transitioned to a co-pastoral leadership model with Heather Larson as lead pastor and Steve Carter as lead teaching pastor.

However, Carter also resigned in 2018, citing moral concerns. Dave Dummitt came to lead the church during the height of COVID and just this year stepped down to be succeeded by Shawn Williams, an internal candidate who had been campus pastor of Willow Creek’s South Barrington, Ill., location. He previously served on staff at megachurches in the Chicago suburbs and in Las Vegas.

This rocky pastoral transition included four new pastors in seven years.

By any standard, the task Daniel Floyd faces at Gateway Church is daunting. But, in the growing world of megachurches and multi-site churches, he at least has some examples to pay attention to.