IS IT TIME TO LEAVE?
When have you accomplished as much as you're going to? Here are ten questions to help you decide.
Gary L. McIntosh
July 1, 1986
This article and "Why I've Stayed" form a pair, presenting two distinct approaches to the question: When is it time for me to leave my church? Here, church consultant and former pastor Gary McIntosh outlines some practical, technical considerations. Next, a Texas pastor who has served the same church for fifteen years shares his considerations in staying.
A phone call I received last week left me a little numb. For eleven years a close friend had enjoyed an effective pastoral ministry before taking a more challenging, growing church in Colorado. He called to say he had just resigned after barely a year at the new church.
As we talked I remembered times I had wrestled with the decision to leave a church. Opportunities that had seemed so promising when they began, matches so perfect . . .
Deciding to leave is often, if not always, filled with lingering doubts, self-criticisms, and the pain of unfulfilled dreams. I reminded myself that pastors leave churches all the time. Despite recent studies detailing the benefits of longer pastorates, long tenures are the exception, not the rule.
Parishioners even expect their pastors to leave, sometimes in the best of situations. An effective Methodist pastor in New Jersey, who has seen his church grow considerably in eight years, confided that "the people think it is time I leave." Curious, isn't it? Members can be so conditioned to pastors leaving that they expect their pastor to leave even in the midst of a successful ministry.
During my seminary training I heard, "Never take a church unless you can envision yourself staying there the rest of your life."
That sounded good to me. I admired pastors with records of long tenure. My own pastor had stayed nineteen years. Secretly I looked down ...
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