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Sr. Pastors’ Roles Change as Church Grows

Twenty-two years ago, when Tim Harlow became the senior pastor of Tinley Park Church of Christ, the following newspaper ad was considered the cutting edge of church marketing.

Senior pastors who have been at the same church for any length of time can most likely complete this exercise: Think back through some of the stages of your congregation’s development, and take note of how your role as a senior leader had to shift during those various stages.

For Parkview Christian Church, Orland Park, IL, and Senior Pastor Tim Harlow, this time travel challenge takes him back through 22 years with the congregation—a time span in which he:

Broke through growth barriers as an aggressive young pastor in an established and plateaued church—“I made a lot of people mad,” he says.

Created a new vision and developed structure to make it happen—“It was about rallying the troops around the idea of what God could do instead of what God had done.”

Pushed through a downturn and a period of burnout—“Much of my leadership through these times comes from a God-given stubborn, sometimes clueless, leadership gift.”

Started to think about the next generation and who would take the leadership baton—“Where do I go next? My wife and I have recently become empty nesters,” Tim says.

Do any of those phases sound familiar?

You might have different labels for the development stages of your church, but there’s a strong chance your role has also shifted along the way to adapt to your congregation’s leadership needs—and it’s probably still changing.

Tim’s certainly did.

Breaking Through Barriers.

For Tim, it’s always been about removing barriers for lost people to have a chance to find their way home—even after nearly three decades in the same place with barriers that cropped up during his watch. “Do we really think there is anything difficult about connecting people with their loving heavenly Father? It’s the easiest job in the world,” Tim says. “It becomes difficult only when those on the inside forget about what it’s like on the outside.”

In the early days of taking over a congregation founded 40 years prior to his arrival, that commitment to connect with outsiders meant “being stubborn and continually fighting against the ‘we’ve-always-done-it-that-way’ mindset and the fence that has been keeping people out,” Tim says.

The good thing for Tim at this stage was he “didn’t have a problem being aggressive,” as he voices it, when it came to setting direction for the church. That was also his downfall at times. “The unfortunate part was the lack of wisdom and the inability to choose the right battles,” he says.

But there were—and still are—battles worth waging.