Campus pastors are leaders.
First and foremost, campus pastors need to start by leading themselves well so that they do not disqualify themselves for ministry. Putting yourself up against 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 on a regular basis is a healthy exercise. Reading books like Paul David Tripp’s Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry, John Piper’s Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry, and Ruth Haley Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry are necessary to keep our hearts pure, our motives clean, and our skills sharp.
Campus pastors also need to learn how to lead across—the topic of today’s article—as well as down and up, which are the topics of future articles in the coming weeks. If you missed it, take a moment to read the first article in this mini-series on Campus Pastor Skills, “How to Close a Service.”
So I like I said earlier, campus pastors are leaders. They are leaders because they need to learn how to lead laterally. They need to learn how to lead those they don’t have any formal authority over. They need to learn the basic skills of influence. Well, actually, let me correct myself and be crystal clear. Campus pastors don’t need to learn how to lead laterally, but the best ones know how to. So if you want to excel at this role that God has called you into, take a look at the following three environments and relationships that you can do this in.
1. Lead fellow campus pastors
Before you take out your job description, read through it, and tell me that this is not your responsibility, stick with me for a bit. Place yourself in one of your other campus pastor’s shoes. If you were struggling with meeting a few metrics, like baptisms, offering, and newcomer assimilation, wouldn’t you rather get some on-the-go coaching from one of your peers, rather than from your supervisor?
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to be dishonest with your supervisor. In fact, you might have an excellent relationship with him or her. But, before these issues ever become an official issue, the best leaders are constantly tweaking and problem solving, which would include getting on-the-go coaching from others. Click here to read an article that I wrote on Two Ear Active Listening.
Here’s another example. Let’s say a fellow campus pastor isn’t closing their service as they ought to. What do you think would be a better scenario for them? The two of you sharing best practices on how to close services over a coffee, where you could peer coach each other? Or, church members complaining, and better yet, leaving their campus for another, and then this eventually being escalated to the campus pastor’s supervisor after it’s too late?
In this case, I believe it’s the role of the other campus pastors to coach, guide, and teach that campus pastor the more effective way before it’s too late. No, this is not an intervention, and for gods sake, don’t gang up on the poor soul. Instead, share best practices and peer coach one another.
In addition, let’s say a fellow campus pastor is spending the majority of their week—every week—addressing pastoral care issues, rather than with leaders and the lost. Before this becomes an issue of “performance” and not meeting whatever metrics your church has determined for their campuses, I believe it’s the responsibility of other campus pastors to speak up and help. Once again, share best practices for time management with one another, or go to a conference together. You could even try a learning exercise like shadowing one another to see what you can learn from one another.
While these two issues might formally be the responsibility of the campus pastor’s supervisor, the BEST campus pastors will notice and lead across, rather than turning a blind eye and saying, “It’s not my responsibility!” When the best campus pastors see something, they do something—especially when it comes to their peers.
2. Lead peers at central services
One of the benefits of a multisite or multi-congregational model is central services, or shared services, as some like to call it. Typically, finance, operations, HR, communications, and marketing are core. If your multisite church is a bit larger, then you might also have full-time “global” staff that lead evangelism, discipleship, and ministry programming for all campuses. If your church has fewer campuses, then you might have a few individuals who are wearing dual hats where a portion of their job is dedicated to a campus, and the other portion is dedicated to all campuses, or central services.
When it comes to leading peers at central services, I like to divide them into two camps: administrative and ministry staff. This is because the way that you lead both are nuanced differently.
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