I recently talked with some newer pastors who want to be lead pastors but aren’t yet. They asked, “What do you know now as a lead pastor that you didn’t know in your 20s?”

I have had a unique opportunity over the last few years.

I planted a church in 2008 when I was 28 years old, and then, in 2019, I became the teaching pastor at a church for two years (where I wasn’t the lead pastor but sat on the exec team) and then became a lead pastor again in 2021.

You only know what goes into a seat once you sit there. Just like, if you aren’t a teacher, doctor, or electrician, it is hard to know what it is like to sit in those seats. We might think we know, but we only have ideas about it. 

Before I became lead pastor, I underestimated all the things the lead pastors I worked for had to deal with, all the shots they took, and this is a big one, all the protection they gave to me and my ideas.

You think about stewardship differently. Money doesn’t factor into things as much when you aren’t a lead pastor. You aren’t responsible for the budget, payroll, or the building. 

As a lead pastor, I know how much a meeting costs the church. Meaning, take how much you pay each person per hour who attends a meeting, and that’s how much a meeting costs. This idea has changed my thoughts about meetings, who is there, and how hours get spent at a church.

Before being a lead pastor, that wasn’t on my radar.

The other thing that changed related to money was the weight I felt for making sure we could pay people, knowing that families relied on the paycheck from the church. I never even thought about this when I wasn’t the lead pastor. I didn’t worry if our church could make payroll, but I have spent many nights worrying about that as a lead pastor.

Decision making. Decisions are obvious when you aren’t the lead pastor. Decisions are obvious for everyone who isn’t the boss. Decisions are obvious if you attend a church. But decisions are obvious because you only see what you want to see or what you can see.

When you are the lead pastor, you know more about the moving pieces of the whole church, the ministry season, the budget, etc., than anyone else on staff. You see more. This changes how you think about decisions and what to do. 

You still need to get it right; you see decisions differently. When I wasn’t the lead pastor, I failed to see the dominos on the other side of a decision. I only saw the decision. 

Expectations. You need to find out the expectations people have. Take your expectations and multiply that by how many people there are in your church, and now you know how many expectations are on a lead pastor (and their family). 

Yes, people in the church have expectations for staff members too. But it is multiplied for a lead pastor, a weighty thing that is easy to miss if you aren’t the lead pastor. 

When I wasn’t a lead pastor, I could see my lead pastors’ weaknesses and the areas I thought they needed to grow. I know my staff is well acquainted with my weaknesses. What I often needed to see, though, was the strengths that they brought to the table. The sad reality is we expect pastors to be great at everything. Don’t believe me; look at a job listing for a lead pastor. Now, search teams want a lead pastor with a Master’s or Ph.D., 10+ years experience in leading staff, and a great preacher, counselor, manager, and Bible scholar. The reality is no one is good at all of those things, but the expectations still exist. 

Yes, there are expectations for every staff role in a church, but I’ve seen that they are different for a lead pastor. Throw in a lead pastor’s age and expect someone in their 30s to be more mature than they are and for someone in their 50s or 60s to try to stay hip!

Responsibility. There is a responsibility that a lead pastor carries that no one else has. The lead pastor is responsible for their role, leading the staff, preaching, teaching, etc. But they will stand before God for how they led and what happened in their church.

Focus. When you aren’t the lead pastor, you want the lead pastor to care about your ministry or passion as much as you do. But then, so does everyone else on staff and in the church. 

I underestimated how easy it is for a church to get off focus and lose sight of its mission and what it should be about. 

It is hard for a lead pastor to keep their focus because they have competing voices on their team and in the church, the latest book or conference idea, and the things they’d like to try, all while still leading in the mission and vision the church has. 

Protection and freedom. I have seen this more clearly as a lead and teaching pastor. A lead pastor will take shots for their team, protect them when complaints come in, and when elders (or an elder’s spouse) have questions about a staff member or a ministry, the lead pastor runs interference for that person or ministry. Some things land on a lead pastor’s desk about staff members that many staff members never hear of. 

Their family. I never understood a pastor’s family experiences until I became a lead pastor. Yes, all pastor’s wives and kids experience life in the fishbowl and expectations from members, but it is different for a lead pastor’s family. Part of this plays out differently depending on church tradition, but every lead pastor’s family experiences things no one else does. I once had a worship pastor whose wife told me, “I don’t see myself as a pastor’s wife; my husband plays music.” That could never happen for a lead pastor. If the lead pastor’s wife isn’t at church, people notice. If the kids aren’t, people see. 

No lead pastor is perfect. None of them claim to be. But they do carry things that no one else in the church has. Their families experience things no one else in the church experiences. 

So, give them some grace as they lead. You’ll want the same grace from others if you happen to become a lead pastor one day.