You already have a name in your head.
Someone on your staff who is not going to make it here. You have known for a while. Months, probably. Maybe longer than you would say out loud.
Every week, you find a reason to wait. You call it grace. You call it patience. You tell yourself you are giving them one more season to turn the corner.
It feels pastoral, and that feeling is the trap. What you are calling kindness is quietly costing the very people you think you are protecting.
What You Are Actually Avoiding
The real reason most pastors keep the wrong person too long comes down to discomfort.
The conversation is going to be hard. They might cry. They might get angry. They might tell other people their version of it. They WILL tell other people their version of it. They have a family, a mortgage, and a seat in the church they love.
You will have to sit across from someone you care about and say the thing you have been swallowing for months. So you wait. You hope it resolves on its own. You hope they sense it and leave first.
They almost never do.
And while you wait, you have quietly decided that your own comfort is worth more than everyone else’s clarity.
The Cost You Are Already Paying
This is not a future cost. You are paying it right now, this week.
1. It Costs Your Mission
A role that should be moving the church forward is being managed, covered for, and worked around. The work that person was hired to carry is not getting carried. Someone else is absorbing it on top of their own load, and they are doing it without being asked.
2. It Costs Your Team
Your best people already see it. They always see it. They watch you tolerate underperformance, and they learn exactly what your standards are worth. When leaders protect comfort over clarity, the strongest people start wondering why they are working so hard.
3. It Costs Your Church Financially
Every dollar of that salary was given to you. Someone tithed it, believing it would advance the mission. You are spending sacred money to delay a hard conversation.
4. It Costs the Person You Think You Are Protecting
This is the part we miss. They are stuck in a role that’s going nowhere. They feel the cold drift of being worked around. They are not growing, and they are not free to go find the place where they would actually thrive, because no one will tell them the truth.
Sparing them is the story you tell yourself. The reality is that you are stranding them in a seat, with no clarity about their future.
Why Clarity Is the Kindest Thing You Have
Clarity is kindness. Including hard clarifying conversations.Â
The day you know is the day the kindness clock starts running.
That clock starts the moment you have real clarity, well before you have a replacement lined up, before the budget cycle turns, before a convenient month shows up on the calendar. The moment you know, you owe them the truth, and you owe your church the decision.
The truth, delivered with honor, is the most respectful thing you can offer someone whose calling is somewhere else.
How to Release Someone Without Letting Them Fall
Move quickly once you know, and move with honor the whole way. Both at the same time.
A few non-negotiables:
- Tell them first, fully, and in person. No one should learn their future from a rumor or a reorganized org chart.
- Be honest about the why. Give them clarity and a door they can walk through with their head up. Skip the prosecution. They do not need every failure relitigated.
- Protect them publicly. You set the narrative. Something simple, like “We’re grateful for their contribution, and we’re cheering for what’s next.” Then you hold that line, even when you are tempted to explain yourself. Your team is watching how you treat someone on their way out, and that is how they learn how you will treat them.
- Be generous. Severance, runway, a real reference, time. Generosity on the exit is the gospel showing up in your HR.
Done this way, an exit can be the most pastoral thing you do all year.
And go ahead and know that they probably won’t agree and will say some unfair things on the way out. And you cannot and will not counter their comments publicly. You’ll continue taking the high ground, saying you’re “grateful for them and their contributions, and cheering on what’s next.”
The Move This Week
You already know who this is about. You thought of them in the first paragraph.
So here is the move. This week, put their name and a date on your calendar. Not a vague “soon,” but an actual date for the first honest conversation.
Then say that date out loud to one person you trust, so you cannot quietly let it slide.
That is the whole move. You are not solving the exit today. You are putting a stake in the ground so another month does not disappear into “later.”
What Delay Will Cost You
Keep waiting, and here is how it plays out.
The role stays half-filled. Your strongest people keep covering, and slowly they start to resent it. A few of them update their résumés, and those are the ones you cannot afford to lose. The person you will not release stays stuck, season after season, in a job that was never theirs.
And every Sunday you stand up to call your church toward courage and clarity while modeling neither in your own office.
Your staff will only ever be as honest as you are willing to be in the hard conversations.
You have the name. You have the clarity. Now do the kind thing.
If the conversation still feels impossible to start, that usually means the decision underneath it is bigger than one meeting, and you are carrying it alone. That is exactly the kind of thing I help pastors think through before they walk into the room. Reach out anytime. I would rather you make this move well than make it by yourself.
Other Reads Of Interest…
Quotes to Share
- “The day you know is the day the kindness clock starts running.”
- “You are spending sacred money to delay a hard conversation.”
- “Your staff will only ever be as honest as you are willing to be in the hard conversations.”
Helping You Add More Intention To Your Mission,
Dr. Gavin Adams
