TENSION 7 - RAISING UP CAMPUS PASTORS

We have big aspirations for growth. We want to launch more locations and reach more people. But each location requires a very niche kind of leader (a Campus Pastor), and they don't grow on trees.

We don't want to throttle our growth plan, so we feel tempted to lower the bar to find a leader so we can keep moving forward.

Internal is Better

The CP position carries an extremely high premium for 'culture.' You need someone who you can trust to model and multiply the values of the house somewhere else. That means it's almost always better to raise up campus pastors from within the church (volunteers or staff) than to hire them from the outside. But if you do hire them from the outside, park them in a developmental role for at least a year before you give them keys to the car.

• Side note on hiring from the outside - Traditional interviewing processes are valuable and necessary. They help weed out 80% of the wrong people. But you don't truly know someone until you've seen how they respond to pressure, failure and feedback. These things can't be replicated in the sterile environment of a formal interview. Beware.

• If you don’t have time to bring an outsider in and prove their fit then you’re not ready for multisite. The turnover in the staff at multisite locations erodes culture across the whole church and very much works against your mission in the communities you want to serve. So it’s important you take this seriously… and that means setting yourself up with patience (and time and money) to properly vet your leader(s).