Should a church give a reason when firing the pastor?
- Posted on January 07, 2011
- Viewed 1331 times
- (24) comments
Here is an interesting story. A Wichita area pastor was fired last week from a fairly large (800 or so) church. That's not the news. The story here is that the church is not saying why. In fact, they're not giving any reason at all.
The local newspaper has picked up the story, and the church isn't commenting.
The church, according to the newspaper report, really isn't telling the congregation much of anything either.
Pastor Bryson Butts (unfortunate name) helped found GracePoint Church eight years ago.
The news was delivered by Pastor Butts (sorry again... but that's a really unfortunate last name) on his Facebook page:
"Last night, the GracePoint board voted 4-0 to sever my relationship as lead pastor."
The word from the church: "We view this as an internal matter, and we are busy making sure our congregation is understanding what's going on."
No word on if the church is being more candid internally.
I think the statement made publicly to the newspaper was unfortunate, for three reasons:
1. It looks like they're hiding something. Whenever someone doesn't tell you the reason for something, it's because they don't want to. They're protecting themselves or someone. That doesn't look good when you're a church. Better to say something generic like "we needed a different kind of leader to move us forward" or "we wish Pastor Bryson the best".
2. It seems impersonal and cold. The pastor is never mentioned in the statement.
3. It isolates the church from the community. Whenever you say that something is an 'internal matter', it means that everyone else is on the outside. That's not the normal way a church wants to or should be seen in the community.
Nor should the announcement have been made by the pastor on his Facebook page. That's a horrible way to announce a staff person leaving.
Perhaps I am being too hard here. I don't know the situation...but I think it could have been handled much better.
It's been my observation in working at three different churches on staff, and working with literally hundreds of churches in the area of staffing and leadership, that most local churches are not prepared for a personnel situation of this type.
Pre-planning is absolutely necessary.
And don't 'pull the trigger' before you have a plan:
1. Why are we firing? What is the private/public reason that we are giving?
2. How will this be communicated to the church?
3. How will the be communicated to the media?
4. How will we respond to the criticism we know we'll get for making this decision?
5. Who will say what? and when? and how?
Firings and terminations are never easy... especially when it's the senior leader. But they sometimes need to happen. Just make sure when they do, that you have a plan.
UPDATE: It appears further reasons have been given to the church family via email. Perhaps they didn't anticipate the Facebook announcement before the official word got out. Good lesson learned. The newspaper article with the statement sure didn't help the standing in the community though.
Todd
Your thoughts? Have you been fired? Was it done well? Have you had to fire a church staff person? Did you have a plan? Did it go well, or was it ugly?
Comments
if you want a Globally Recognized Avatar (the images next to your profile) get them here. Once you sign up, your picture will displayed on any website that supports gravitars.
Post a Comment