Are You a Church Planter or a Church Pastor

On this episode of the Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the differences between church planting and church pastoring, emphasizing that both roles are equally important and challenging. He advises listeners to consider which set of problems they feel most equipped and passionate about solving when deciding between the two paths. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

What is Lead On Podcast?

Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.

Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.

From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.

Put these principles into practice and Lead On!

Jeff Iorg: 00:55

Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Orage, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, welcoming you once again to our continuing dialogue about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Again, if you're new to the podcast, this podcast is about the everyday work of ministry. I really try to focus on the issues that I encounter as I interface with 100, and sometimes it seems like thousands of ministry leaders all across the country. And as those issues surface, I try to talk about them here on the podcast.

Jeff Iorg: 01:26

Well, today, church planting is cool. But I was a church planter before church planting was cool. In fact, there's a country song, an old one that says, I was country, when country wasn't cool. And I've always thought that was kind of my theme song about being a church planter. I moved to Portland, Oregon in 1989 with my wife and 3 preschool children, to plant a church.

Jeff Iorg: 01:53

We started with, just a couple of families in a middle school gymnasium, and from that, a significant church grew, which now, of course, has a beautiful campus and expanding ministry and just a remarkable story of, God's work through us and in that context. So I am not only passionate about church planting, I believe in church planting. I was myself a church planter, and so naturally, I think it's a very important part of what we're doing. However, I wanna bring some balance to it today. Because recently, I've spoken with several pastors who have apologized to me that they felt more called to be the pastor of an existing church than they did to be a church planter.

Jeff Iorg: 02:40

And in some way, because church planting is so popular today and so many people are doing it, they feel like that maybe they're not as committed or as spiritually, motivated or as respected. And all of that, of course, is simply not true. The hard reality is that God still calls many, many men to be pastors. In fact, we actually need more people to step forward and be pastors even than we do to step forward and be church planters because there are countless churches today that need pastoral leadership and need the kind of leadership that brings them invigoration and life and passion and vision for the future. So I wanna talk today about the difference between church planting and church pastoring, and I wanna talk about how you can discern which one of these you should be committed to.

Jeff Iorg: 03:34

And I wanna speak today not just to lead pastors or senior pastors or or pastors. I wanna speak to all of you who have the capacity to work in either a church planting context or to work in a church pastoring context. Because while you may not be the lead pastor in one of these contexts, you likely have gifts and abilities and, talents that you can contribute to one or the other. For example, my son is a member of a church that would still be classified as a church plant, and he has intentionally chosen to be there as a lay leader because he feels the kinds of gifting and opportunity and challenge that are before him in that church planting context really suit who he is and how he approaches life and ministry and what he wants to accomplish, in the in the lord's kingdom or in his work. So it's not just about pastors today on the podcast.

Jeff Iorg: 04:31

Although, I'm really focusing it on helping pastors think through whether they should be church planters or church pastors and why that is so important.

Jeff Iorg: 04:41

Well, when a person says to me, should I be

Jeff Iorg: 04:45

a church planter or a church pastor? I ask them a response question, and my question is usually this. Which set of problems do you wanna solve? Which set of problems do you wanna solve? You see, church planting has a whole set of problems that come with it, and church pastoring has a whole set of problems that comes with it.

Jeff Iorg: 05:11

And you have to ask yourself, which one of these sets of problems do I feel most equipped to address? Do I feel most passionate about solving? Which one am I willing to invest myself in and really expend myself in trying to find the answers? For example, let's consider the issues related to buildings. If you're a church planter, your primary concern is finding a meeting place, being able to make that meeting place work with the flexibility that may be required in

Jeff Iorg: 05:44

the moment, handling all of

Jeff Iorg: 05:47

the move in, move out responsibilities that come, sometimes even weekly, with a church planting responsibility. I know when we planted our church in Oregon, I think we met in 5 or 6 different locations in the 1st few years. Some of those moves were caused by our growth. We had to find larger facilities. Others of those, were caused by, the landlords changing their minds and either moving us out or leasing to someone else who had a better use or could pay more money.

Jeff Iorg: 06:18

And in some cases, we moved because we were trying to get to a more favorable location or a more favorable opportunity. And so there were lots of reasons why we had to move, but we had to remain flexible. And in fact, our church was portable for the 1st 10 years. That meant for 10 years, that we backed our old, U Haul truck up to the door, and everything came out, and everything had to be set up, and everything had to be taken down, everything had to be hauled away for 10 years. Now at the end of that time, we were able to negotiate some on-site storage, which made it a little bit simpler, but we still had the full setup and

Jeff Iorg: 06:54

the full teardown every weekend. Well, if you

Jeff Iorg: 06:58

have an existing building, you may say, man, I wanna be a church pastor because I don't wanna have any building hassles. Oh, my goodness. You will have all kinds

Jeff Iorg: 07:05

of building hassles. Existing buildings have

Jeff Iorg: 07:07

to be maintained. Things in them break. Natural disasters befall them. For example, in my first church, I received a phone call one day that said our church is flooding. And I went there, and a creek had flooded, and other issues had happened with some drainage problems in our area, and the lower level of our church had about 6 inches of water in it.

Jeff Iorg: 07:32

That was not a good day. And so we had a building, and it was a very serviceable building, but now this building had been negatively impacted in dramatic and significant ways. And in that same church where I was a church pastor, once we got that problem solved and our church continued to move forward, grow, and progress, we reached a point finally where we were out of space. So now we had to go to 2 worship services, then we ran out of space again. And then the possibility of relocating was put before us, and so we made the decision as a church to do that.

Jeff Iorg: 08:02

So we had all kinds of building related issues, from maintenance issues to damage from storms to, running out of space to having to reformat the buildings that we had and, ultimately, having to put them on the market and move to another location. So it doesn't really matter if you're a church planter or a church pastor. You're going to have problems related to facilities. Which one of those sets of problems do you feel like you really wanna solve? Let's think about leadership for just

Jeff Iorg: 08:30

a moment. If you're a church planner, you don't have any leaders. What you have is a lot of baby Christians

Jeff Iorg: 08:35

who are going to have to be nurtured, developed, field tested as leaders, given shared amounts of responsibility, and brought along over the 1st several years until you can start creating a cadre of leaders that can lead your new church. Now if you're in an established church, you may say, well, I wanna go and be a church pastor because I'll already have leaders, and they won't be a problem. Well, they will be if they've decided to settle in and be stuck in what they think or feel or the traditions that they've adopted. They may have reached a point where power and control or comfort are more important to them than anything else. And so now you have a whole different set of problems of trying to break through the log jam of either their past expectations, their commitment to tradition, their love of comfort, or whatever is holding them back and keeping them from moving forward with you.

Jeff Iorg: 09:24

I'm simply illustrating that church planting and church pastoring have issues related to leaders. Those issues are very different, and you have to ask yourself, which one of these sets of problems do I most want to address? And that'll help you to sort out whether you ought to be a church planter or a church pastor. Now as you've heard from these illustrations, planting and pastoring are both equally difficult. They're both hard.

Jeff Iorg: 09:53

So you can't think, well, one is gonna be easy and the other one's gonna be hard. No. They're both hard. No matter which path you choose to go down, you can expect spiritual resistance, you can expect circumstantial difficulty, You can expect hardship and heartache along the way as people will disappoint you. Planting and pastoring are both hard.

Jeff Iorg: 10:12

But as I've already illustrated, planting and pastoring both have unique challenges and unique opportunities. So as you think about them, you think which ones of these sets of challenges and opportunities do I feel most suited to address, do I feel most eager to take on? And that'll help you sort out which one you ought to be. And then planting and pastoring often have very different goals. Now, I realize the overarching goal is the expansion of the God's kingdom, the propagation of the gospel.

Jeff Iorg: 10:42

I get that, but I'm talking about in the immediacy of goals. What do we hope to accomplish in this year or in the next 3 years? And when you're a church planter, your goal is survival, and your entire focus is on reaching the lost and making disciples and doing everything you can to create a community of people who can move forward as a church. But when you have, an existing church, you you may have very different goals and that you still want those same overarching things of the propagation of the gospel and expansion of God's kingdom, But now your goals are very different as you think about managing processes and working through systems and having to deal with tradition and having to think about how things have always been and past leadership and how that's been structured and all the stuff that goes along with that. And you may have goals that are more incremental in solving some of those problems in order to get to some of the larger issues that you want to accomplish.

Jeff Iorg: 11:35

So church planting and church pastoring. Which set of problems do you wanna solve? Which set of problems do you feel most suited to address? Which set of problems are you willing to invest yourself to sacrifice yourself to pour yourself into solving over the next several years? That'll help you sort out whether you're really called to be a church pastor or called to be a church planter.

Jeff Iorg: 12:03

Now before we talk about some differences between these in more specific ways, let me say that whether you're a church planter or a church pastor, there are some commonalities about both roles that need to be underscored. The first commonality is what I will call character issues. The character issues described in the bible as it describes what it means to be a pastor are applicable to both church planters and church pastors. So the character issues are the same. You have to be a person of integrity, of fidelity.

Jeff Iorg: 12:41

You have to be a person who models family commitment and respect from the community. You have to be able to model and and, demonstrate the character of a pastor. Another commonality is certain leadership skills,

Jeff Iorg: 12:59

the capacity to cast vision,

Jeff Iorg: 13:02

the capacity to articulate mission and keep an organization narrowly focused on it, the capacity to work with people in a way that you can bring them together to accomplish something jointly or in community. These leadership skills are common to both pastors and planters. Another commonality is preaching capacity or preaching skills. You have to be able to communicate. So whether you're a church planter or a church pastor, your time standing up in front of people, especially communicating

Jeff Iorg: 13:34

the word of God, is vital. It's essential that you be able to

Jeff Iorg: 13:39

do that well and that you be able to do that in ways that really connect people with God's word. And then finally, another commonality between church pastors and and, church planters is what I call relational skills or, caring skills or really just human intelligence or emotional intelligence. Have to know how to work with people. And so this skill of providing care, of building relationships, of being able to connect with people and to have demonstrated a human, if you wanna call it an emotional IQ, where you are really able to work with people, those are the same or those are common to both roles. So while there are some differences I'm gonna talk about now, more specifically, these commonalities kind of undergird the unity of what it means to be a pastoral person, either in a church plant or a church pastoring situation.

Jeff Iorg: 14:31

But what then are some of

Jeff Iorg: 14:33

the measurable differences? So for example, you're a seminary student or a person who's starting out in ministry or a lay person who's trying to decide if you should go with a group that's gonna plant a church and that really fits you and that's who you

Jeff Iorg: 14:43

really wanna be. You're trying

Jeff Iorg: 14:45

to work through this. So let me give you, about 6 checkpoints to help you understand whether you should be in the church planting category or the church pastoring category. Now, I wanna underscore though these are general principles. These are not hard and fast rules or laws. There are always exceptions.

Jeff Iorg: 15:04

And no, you don't have to get all 6 right or all 6 in one category before you can go forward. These are general points to help you think through some of the distinctions and get some clarity about where God might be wanting to use you going forward. So the first one is this. Church planters are usually more entrepreneurial than church pastors. Church planters like to make things happen, and they like to make things happen creatively, with innovation.

Jeff Iorg: 15:36

They're not afraid to take on and try something new. They are risk takers.

Jeff Iorg: 15:43

They are also, because of this, sometimes a little less stable. They wanna make decisions faster, and because

Jeff Iorg: 15:53

of that, they have a propensity or a tendency to make the wrong decisions from time to time. But because they're entrepreneurial and they're moving quickly, they've learned how to fail fast. In other words, this isn't working. Let's move on. So church planters are typically more entrepreneurial.

Jeff Iorg: 16:13

Church pastors, on the other hand, tend to be more systems oriented, more focused on systems, and more willing to work within systems. So for example, church planters need real help to even develop bylaws and learn how to write documents that give their church form. Church pastors, on the other hand, they understand the importance of leading through process and through documents and through principles and policies that are put down so everyone knows that we're all on this certain certain or same page. So, the first difference is church planters are typically more entrepreneurial than church pastors, which means they're also sometimes less stable, little quicker to make decisions, oftentimes failing faster and moving from thing to thing very quickly. That's a strength of church planters.

Jeff Iorg: 17:03

Now, second, church planters also embrace risk. They also say, in companion with this, have less to lose.

Jeff Iorg: 17:15

So church planters, for example, are willing to embrace risk. They're they're willing to try things. They're willing to to take a chance. They're willing to do something bold or to do something different. They're willing to go into the community and and, and and and try to make a splash in some way.

Jeff Iorg: 17:33

Well, church pastors, on the other hand, tend to be

Jeff Iorg: 17:35

a little more cautious. Why? Well, because they have a lot more to lose.

Jeff Iorg: 17:40

They have facilities. They have staff. They have an earned reputation over years. They typically have a fixed location. They're typically well known in the community, and that can be that that that reputational presence can be lost or impacted negatively by poor decision making.

Jeff Iorg: 17:58

So while pastors are not unwilling to take risk, they are, by nature, more risk averse, more cautious about taking risk. I know that when that when we moved to Oregon and planted the church, we tried all kinds of ways to reach into our community. We tried everything from telemarketing to, door hangers on doors, to cold turkey knocking on doors evangelism, to outreach projects like, volleyball nights in public school gymnasiums, to marriage conferences that we put on for the community, to going to the public library and using their public conference room to put on parenting conferences for the community. I mean, we did all these kinds of things, and some of them

Jeff Iorg: 18:50

worked, and some of them failed dramatically. But we didn't really care.

Jeff Iorg: 18:57

We expected failure because we knew that we were going to take risks. We were going to try new things. We were gonna try to do things that maybe had never been done before, and we're gonna do things in places and in ways that were maybe uncomfortable even for some churches, but we were willing to take those risks because, I mean, there were only 10, 15, 20, 30 of us. If it failed, well, there weren't that many people to explain what happened, and pretty much we all understood it anyway because we were all

Jeff Iorg: 19:22

in this together. There was not a

Jeff Iorg: 19:24

lot of risk because there wasn't a lot of money anyway. We if we lost everything we had, there wasn't gonna be that much lost, and so we were more willing to take risks.

Jeff Iorg: 19:33

But I'm telling you now, you know, I

Jeff Iorg: 19:36

I lead a big organization now. And before this, I I led a major seminary. And I'm telling you, I'm getting more and more risk averse the longer I go because I have more to risk. I just can't make decisions like I did as a church planter because now the stakes are so much higher. So planters embrace risk and are willing to take chances that pastors are not willing to embrace and are not willing to take.

Jeff Iorg: 20:02

That doesn't mean pastors don't, ever take a risk or that pastors don't embrace some possibility of failure. It just means they're more cautious about how they approach decision making and what they're willing to do. A third difference between planters and pastors is planters thrive on new ideas, and quite frankly, that means they also get bored easily. Planters thrive on new ideas. But pastors, on the other hand, they wanna find an idea that works and stay with it for 3 to 5 years.

Jeff Iorg: 20:33

They they wanna find something that charts a course for a time or for a season. Now that's why, you know, again, back to new ideas and evangelism when I was a church planter, I was always constantly trolling for new ways of doing evangelism and re outreach into the community. I read books. I went to conferences. I paid attention at that time, to video.

Jeff Iorg: 20:59

I listened to pastors in different places that were doing effective things. I tried every way I could to find every idea I could and adapt it in any way I possibly could to reaching people where I was. But when I was a pastor of an existing church, I didn't change my evangelism approach that frequently. Instead, I picked a plan, and I told the church, let's work this plan for the next 3 to 5 years and train as many people as we can in evangelism and involve as many people as we can in outreach into our community through this process. So planters thrive on new ideas.

Jeff Iorg: 21:35

Pastors tend to look for ideas they can identify and stay with for a longer period of time and build something in a church context over that idea.

Jeff Iorg: 21:46

Here's another one. Planters love meeting new people. They love meeting new people, but they also tire quickly from problem people

Jeff Iorg: 21:59

or from people who do not immediately embrace their vision or their passion. Planners love meeting new people. They thrive on the exhilaration of connecting with community, and they get really frustrated when people are either holding them back because they won't buy into the vision, or they're problem people who are draining them of spiritual resource and energy? Pastors, on the other hand, recognize that the problem people are called church members. They are going to be there.

Jeff Iorg: 22:30

And when I say problem people, I'm not talking about necessarily people that are that are negative or attacking or anything like that. I'm talking about people who just have a lot of needs, who just simply drain you from the the spiritual resource that you have to offer in your ministry context. I know that, when I'm with pastors in their ministry settings, like I'm preaching on a Sunday or something like that, I'll oftentimes see them interfacing with the people, and I think, you know, that pastor is being very patient with that woman or that man. That pastor is being very patient because he knows they're gonna be here next Sunday and the Sunday after that and the Sunday after that just like they have been for the last every Sunday over the past 5 years.

Jeff Iorg: 23:15

He knows that people are

Jeff Iorg: 23:17

a part of his flock, part of his ministry, and he has to be patient with them and not tire of meeting their needs. So planters thrive on new people, get frustrated when people don't buy in quickly to their vision or their passion, and get tired easily from dealing with difficult or troubled or people who are draining them in ministry need. Pastors, on the other hand, recognize those people aren't draining them. They're just church members. That's just the way ministry is.

Jeff Iorg: 23:48

That's what we're here for, and they understand that.

Jeff Iorg: 23:51

And then, number 5. Planters

Jeff Iorg: 23:55

are more what I'll call 1 dimensional, whereas pastors tend to have a more multi dimensional view of their ministry and their church. Church planters have a strong commitment to evangelism, and they tend to see everything through the lens of evangelism. And frankly, that's essential. You do understand that collecting up disaffected members from other churches is not church planting. That's called colonization.

Jeff Iorg: 24:25

That's called that's called bringing together, a new flock from existing flocks, which doesn't expand God's kingdom by reducing lostness. It just reorganizes, the way we gather, week by week for church. So church planters are a bit one dimensional in that they are evangelism focused. They eat, breathe, sleep, think, eat. How can we reach more lost people with

Jeff Iorg: 24:51

the gospel? And they are very focused

Jeff Iorg: 24:54

on that, and that's what they really know that they have to do if they're going to build a church. Now that doesn't mean that they don't also wanna practice some discipleship and build some community and start creating infrastructure and develop, you know, bylaws and policies and all of that. They understand that somewhere along the way, they're gonna have

Jeff Iorg: 25:12

to do some of that. The church planners, they are energized by reaching people. Pastors, on

Jeff Iorg: 25:21

the other hand, reach people, and they have to keep that as a priority. But pastors tend to have a more multidimensional view of ministry. They understand that they have a responsibility, for example, for disciple making, for strengthening families, for providing care to their members, and even extending that care into the community. They recognize that they have a stewardship of a facility, that that stewardship is their responsibility, and that a building is a tool, but a tool has to be maintained and used properly in order to fulfill its purpose. So they recognize that reaching people is the priority, but it's not the only thing a pastor has to give his attention to as he manages the total work of

Jeff Iorg: 26:01

a ministry in a church. And then, finally, planters

Jeff Iorg: 26:06

tend to connect well with a target audience. Pastors are better at relating to a wide range of people. You know, when we planted our church in Oregon, we had a very specific target audience. We were trying to reach families between with the adults between the ages of 25 to 40, most of them married and most of them with children. That's who was in our community.

Jeff Iorg: 26:29

Now I was 30 years old. I was right in the middle of that demographic. And so I went there as a 30 year old church planter with 3 preschool children, planted myself in a community that was full of families, adults between ages 25 and 40, and I poured myself into trying to reach them with the gospel, and I connected well with them. Now very early on, other people outside that demographic started coming to our church. We had some teenagers coming.

Jeff Iorg: 26:55

We had some senior adults coming, and we welcomed them, and we incorporated them. But I remember one conversation with one particular senior adult. She started coming to our church. She was a Christian. She was from a Baptist background, and she looked at our church and how different it was from her past experiences, and she said to me very sincerely, I'd like to join your church, but I just wanna want to know, is there a place in your church for a person like me?

Jeff Iorg: 27:22

And I remember telling her,

Jeff Iorg: 27:24

yes. Absolutely. We would welcome you to our church, but you must realize that

Jeff Iorg: 27:30

our church isn't going to change to accommodate you or your generation's expectations of what church will be like. If you join us, you're joining a church that's very specifically targeting young families and trying

Jeff Iorg: 27:43

to reach them with the gospel. And she smiled and said,

Jeff Iorg: 27:46

that's what I wanna do too. I'm about the next generation. I wanna be a part of your church. She came into our church and was a wonderful member because she would stand there on Sundays, and we would be singing songs that she did not know, and she'd just smile and try to work her way through them with us. She sometimes would come to activities with all kinds of younger adults around her, and she might be the oldest person in the room, But she was committed to that next generation, and so she was able to be a part of our church.

Jeff Iorg: 28:14

But that just illustrated my focus. As a church planter, I had a very narrow focus on connecting with a target audience, and I was completely committed to getting that done. Didn't mean I didn't want other people, but it meant that I had a unique capacity for connecting with who I was trying to reach. Pastors, on the other hand, man, they have a much broader view of community and a much broader understanding of the fact that their ministry has

Jeff Iorg: 28:35

to be to everyone. They care

Jeff Iorg: 28:37

as much about the preschool child as they do the senior adult and everyone in between, and their churches tend to be more broad and more general in terms of who they're reaching and how they're reaching people in the community they find themselves. Well, today on the podcast, I've tried to give you some differences between planters and pastors, but I wanna go back now and underscore what I said at the beginning. One is not better than the other. We need men to respond as church planters and as church pastors. And we need lots of lay people to step forward and say, I feel like my skill set, my gifts, and my ministry perspective really fits church planting, and I wanna go with a planter and try to help make that happen.

Jeff Iorg: 29:12

But we also need many to step forward and say, nope, I fit better in a church pastoring context. My skill sets, my gifts, my passions, that's where they fit, and I want to find a good pastor and an established church and do everything I can to help fulfill the vision that he has for that ministry. It's not a matter of one is better than the other. They're both valid. It's more important that you fulfill your calling, that you use your gifts, and that you be satisfied with your role.

Jeff Iorg: 29:44

I started this podcast by saying that it was motivated by some conversations I've had recently with church pastors who've said, you know, I know I'm not a church planter, but and I just cut them off and say, hey listen, don't apologize for being a pastor. If pastoral ministry fulfills your calling and your gifts, be satisfied with the role God has given you and pour your whole heart into it. We need church planters. We also need church pastors. Most importantly, we need every one of us to discover where we fit best and then use our gifts, our abilities to fulfill our calling with the passion that we can bring to the task.

Jeff Iorg: 30:27

We need to do this however God is using us, as we lead on.