When we agreed to move forward he next took it to our leadership team about five years before he planned to leave, and to the whole church about four-and-a-half years before he planned to leave. He gave my wife and me a year to consider before giving him an answer. I’d been a part of Vineyard Boise since the first year of the church plant, and had been on staff for about eight years at that point. He intended to stay a part of the church.Īt the time he first approached me in 2006, I was the youth and college pastor at the church. He still had a lot of passion and energy for ministry, but sensed God leading him to make a plan for the next generation of our church, and that God would redirect his own focus for his convergence years. He began talking with me about the transition idea seven years before the time he had in mind. Our transition was initiated by our senior pastor, Tri Robinson, who planted the church 25 years before the final handoff. I’m 67 and plan to do this as long as the Lord and our church allows. It’s been 16 months now and I’m doing a lot of coffee with almost 30 pastors in ways that vary from just talking about personal issues to pastoral issues to transitional issues to revitalization or just being allies. It would be a kingdom ministry of our church with a small part-time salary so I could help pastors and churches at no cost to them. We announced the new pastor to the church one year before my retirement, but also announced my new assignment as a Kingdom Coach to other pastors and churches.
The church overwhelmingly accepted him as the new pastor and has grown in number, depth, and missional engagement. I recommended him to the elders and we agreed to try it for a year to see if it was a “good fit.” It was.
At the end of the year, I would retire and the new lead pastor would have had a year to absorb the DNA of the church.Īfter a time of considering several younger, missional-minded leaders I realized that the man who had been my second (and the one who actually implemented of most of our plans as a church) was the best choice. Then we would have a one year gradual shift from my leadership to the new pastor. The plan was for that person to be vetted by the elders as a search team and then voted on by the church. Several years ago I knew that I would need to transition from the lead role so I approached our elders to allow me to begin the search for the new pastor. Curt Bradford, Riverbluff Church, South Carolina
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