The truth is that we have a TON to gain by investing in your relationship with your senior pastor. And I don’t mean a bigger budget, or getting to preach when he steps out. I’m gonna go Jesus-style on you, and say that maybe…just maybe…the results for investing in a good relationship with your senior pastor are mainly in the realm of what happens in your heart.
Proverbs 17:1 says it best: “Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife.”
I’ve decided to share four quick points of action I’ve used in order to preserve my relationship with my senior pastor. These may totally not work for you, but we’ve found that this is what keeps us reading on the same page.
4 Tips to Consider:
1. Don’t gossip. I heard Dave Ramsey say recently that he instantly fires people who’ve been caught gossiping. “It’s that serious,” he said. It’s so true! But how many of feel the entitlement to talk to different people about all the things he’s done wrong? All I know is that I hope, if I’m ever a lead pastor, that I can trust my youth pastor not to do that. Think about it this way. Good communication means not sharing bad communication about him.
2. Email him periodically. What? More email? We don’t get enough of that already?! Let me explain. One of the small things that Tom and I realized was hard to keep up with was communication. We’re both hard-workers by nature, and therefore, we rarely stop into each other’s offices to talk about what we’ve been up to or what we’re looking forward to. One of Tom’s values is the connection point between people; “touches” he calls them. He always wants to know when a connection point was made and how it went. He also loves to hear feedback on services. As a student pastor, he wants to know when I hit the schools, or when I one-on-one disciple a student, or when I visit a new member’s home. In order to keep those communications flowing, I shoot him a periodic (monthly) email to let him know what all I’ve been up to. That way he can trust me with my office hours (if you’ve ever worked in an environment in which you weren’t trusted, you know how valuable this is!). This has been one of the keys to our relationship staying on point.
3. Over-communicate. This tags on the last point a little, but it deserves its own stage time. As a young youth pastor, I made the mistake that almost every single youth pastor (and teacher) makes. I thought that if I said something once, that everyone heard it loud and clear. There was no reason that they shouldn’t remember what I said verbatim. Right? Wrong? I’m assuming I’m talking to youth pastors for the moment. Even if I’m wrong, you can transfer this concept into your work relationship with your boss. You have a lot going on, right? It’s hard to balance everything, right? How much more do you think your senior pastor is balancing? He has so much on his plate, and so much weight on his shoulders. And we expect him to remember every little detail? Rest assured, a lot of our bosses (secular world, too) are hearing what we’re saying the first time. However, I’m sure you’ve experienced what it’s like to have a tiny (by tiny, I mean huge) details slip between the cracks. Over-communication might be annoying, but a lack of communication starts all kinds of fires.
4. Be honest. “What did you think of my sermon?” “How do you think that meeting went?” “That event was awesome, right?” Ladies and gentlemen, it’s simple, but not easy. Lying is wrong. Are we trying to preserve our jobs? Are we trying to make sure that we have a good relationship with our senior pastor by lying to him? This simple truth is what has changed my relationship with Tom the most. When he asks what I think, I tell him the truth. What I’m about to tell you might be counter-intuitive, but I’ve found it to be true: When I’m honest with my senior pastor, he invites me in to the planning processes of future big projects. Think about Daniel as a prophet in a foreign land. Think about Joseph telling his brothers about his dreams. Honesty gets really ugly sometimes, but God always honors it. Are you putting your trust in your ability to preserve your relationships or looking to God for that?