Last Sunday my church voted in Matt Manning as our new senior pastor…to take effect eleven months from now. The vote was part of an unusual five year process, one that Patti and I have enjoyed watching.
I say “enjoyed” because I’ve been through the pastoral selection process three times myself. Each time I felt like I was looking for a bride in a mail order catalog, or like I was getting a physical at a drive through clinic: both intimate and impersonal at the same time.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how humble are you?” and other truly inane questions like, “Have you ever jumped out of an airplane?” (“No, but I’d sure like to now.” I thought.), “Have you ever postdated a check?” and “Can your wife play the piano?” made the entire process sooo special.
Fortunately, Pastor Kim, my beloved Pastor for almost twenty years, and the pastor of Crossroads Church in Northglenn, Colorado (both as its youth pastor for ten and then senior pastor for thirty), knowing the the pitfalls of the typical candidating process, instituted a “succession plan” with the approval of our church board.
The plan involved Pastor Kim mentoring Matt over five years by gradually giving him more and more responsibilities, including administration and preaching duties. At the beginning of this process, Crossroads already knew Matt well. He had come to Christ as a youth in our church and had demonstrated the kind of personal and spiritual qualities the church was looking for. He also had acquired an excellent education and had proven ministry experience. Matt is, in effect, our very own “Timothy.”
The result of these past four years: both he and the church know exactly what we are getting.
Pastor Kim will be retiring next January 1, which is the reason why Pastor Matt will not officially take over as senior pastor until then. But I do have one question for Pastor Matt:
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how humble are you?”
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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One thought on “How Crossroads Church Had Mercy on Matt Manning”
Well my wife says Im the most humble person she knows… wink, wink.