OK, whippersnappers, gather around the old geezer’s chair for a second; I have some wisdom to impart to you just as soon as I can regulate this blasted hearing aid and remember where I put my orthopedic slippers.
Ahem.
First off, I am not quite that old, although when I was in high school, 54 seemed like the stuff of grainy black-and-white pictures of World War I. Nonetheless, as of this first Sunday of June, I will have definitely gotten to what is normally only rare old-guy territory; I will have pastored the same church for 27 years. To make it even more interesting and unlikely, we started the church from scratch. On average, pastors in America stay in a church for three and a half to four years; church-planting pastors, on average, are significantly less than that.
Basically, you are about as likely to encounter an actual Bigfoot as you are a church planting pastor still in one place after 27 years.
Anyway, this momentous occasion has had me thinking a lot this past week about what it takes to survive and thrive as a pastor in one place for a very long time. Some of the readers of this column are no doubt pastors or one day will be. Others have pastors they love and care about. So I hope that the following bits of advice will be helpful either directly or indirectly. If you want to experience the blessings of pastoring that can only come from staying in one church for a very long time, here is my counsel.