When Should a Small Church Hire an Executive Pastor?

Hiring an executive pastor for a small church can be daunting. For that matter, hiring for any position in a small church can be daunting. There are several reasons to consider hiring an executive pastor: 1. When Your Church is Growing. When your congregation reaches a certain size, an executive pastor can help take care of day-to-day operations and provide additional counsel to the pastors, church staff, and volunteer teams. Growing churches add complexity for pastors and church staff. Growth is a great thing, but even good problems are still problems. More people means more leadership decisions, pastoral care needs, budgetary management, and discipleship oversight. When a church cannot keep up with the demands of a growing congregation, the growth is capped. In most cases, the only way to lift the growth lid is to hire more leadership. Specifically, executive leadership. 2. When There's a Growing Need for Strategic Planning and Directional Leadership. An executive pastor can provide valuable strategic direction, helping the church think through important decisions to ensure it is headed in the best direction for its mission and ministry. They can offer counsel on community outreach and help make decisions about what changes need to be made. Having an executive pastor on board takes some of this burden off of the existing pastors and leadership team. 3. When the Senior Pastor Isn't Skilled in Strategic Leadership Continuing from the above, the majority of senior pastors are more visionary than practical. This is not a knock on senior pastors. It takes vision and invention to plant or lead a church forward. Yet, equally important are systems, strategy, and intentionality. It's rare to find a visionary leader who also possesses these more strategic skills. When a church is led by a senior pastor who lives in vision and ideation, an executive pastor role may be necessary to help the vision come to fruition. Final Consideration If you're a senior pastor, take an honest look at yourself, your skillset, and your current team. It could be possible your lack of growth is due to a lack of systems, strategy, and intentionality. This is exactly what an executive pastor can bring to your team.