North Coast Church sits just a short drive from the Southern California coast and the blue Pacific. Drive there someday—the canyons that snake back into the low hills are beautiful, with a strange, arid fertility.
On the way is Mission San Luis Rey, an old Spanish mission, standing as an adobe reminder that Christian ministry isn't a new part of this landscape. Just up the road, you'll find a blacktop drive into a wide, palm-ringed parking lot. The simple cluster of buildings is the clone of a California shopping mall—complete with cafes, "storefronts," fountains, and piped-in music. This is North Coast, the much-imitated, the much-critiqued. Love their ministry philosophy or hate it, it's Ground Zero for a number of innovative strategies (sermon based small groups, anyone? Video venue? They started here).
We came here to talk "transitions" with founding pastor Larry Osborne and co-senior pastor Chris Brown. They've transitioned North Coast into a model of shared leadership that Larry boldly claims has "made pastoral succession obsolete."
Is it true? Can sharing leadership all the way up to the top make for healthy pastors and ease church transitions? Leadership's associate editor Paul Pastor sat down with Brown and Osborne to find out.
Every pastor has to deal with leadership transitions. They're difficult, vulnerable times. Larry, talk to me about what led you to share your senior pastor position with Chris.
Larry: Almost 25 years ago, I started sharing the pulpit with multiple other pastors. While many churches run like a sole proprietorship (senior pastor) with valued employees (even including other pastors in so-called "shared leadership"), I wanted a true partnership—like in a law firm.
At North Coast, the undergirding principles of simplicity (we don't have big, fancy offices, as you can see) and true sharing have been in place for a long time. Chris and I as teaching pastors—along with Charlie and Paul, our other senior pastors—are just continuing to learn how to do it well. That process has led us to a place that I believe is beyond succession, because it's beyond a one-pastor hierarchy. The "one-man band" has been replaced by a team of senior pastors to promote healthy margins, and stability for the pastors and the church.
At first, did people see your partnership with Chris as priming for your succession?
Larry: Yes. But it's really not. And it's interesting, no one thought shared leadership was a transition plan when I was younger—and sharing leadership in similar ways!
Disambiguate that for me, then. How is this different?
Larry: Well, sure, if my plane goes down tomorrow, Chris would take over as lead pastor, along with Charlie and Paul as co-senior pastors. And if Chris's plane goes down, I can. So of course there are succession implications to sharing leadership. But it's so much bigger.
If you have a one-man-at-the-top mentality, leadership transitions will suck.
Chris: Speaking as a younger leader, if I was waiting to "succeed" Larry before my senior leadership giftings could be used, I would have been gone long ago. That's the beauty of this—it breaks down the assumed hierarchy and changes the church's situation from a transition from an older pastor to a younger one to the transition from a single senior pastor to a team. It's very positive, and it contributes to a strong team instead of the way many successions turn out.
Many churches have the "heir apparent" hanging around (with every three years seeming like thirty), as the senior pastor thinks, I feel great! I can go until I'm ninety!
If you have a one-man-at-the-top mentality, your leadership transitions will suck. Whoever's below is frustrated. Whoever's at the top doesn't want to let go. For us, shared leadership broadens everything. By definition "succession" means someone has to step away. That's not always healthy or natural. Sharing is much better, and allows for a lot of fine tuning. It allows for title, position, preferences, power to go to people that need it, and to maintain ministry longevity for veteran pastors who have earned it, and are entering one of the most fruitful stages of their life.
That's helpful. It's obvious that you're gifted, Chris—and with a lot of ambition to use those gifts. Why was shared leadership attractive to you when you could have had an exclusive role as a senior pastor elsewhere?
Chris: Not was attractive, but is attractive.
There you go. Why?
Chris: Health and margins. Every pastor has burnout at the back of their mind. We see pastors' marriages fail, we see the sons and daughters of senior pastors end up hating the church and resenting God. North Coast is large, and demands a lot from us. But the same principles apply to churches of any size—sometimes they're particularly important for small churches …
Speaking personally, sharing leadership gave me a life.
Larry: Let me interject here. Think about what it takes for an overworked pastor just to add a relatively simple Saturday night service. There's a huge demand for more time and energy from the senior pastor. That usually comes at the expense of the pastor's family.
We have a total of about 30 services every weekend—which is a lot of complexity for us to manage. But here's our rule—on the weeks that Chris doesn't preach, he's supposed to just come to church for one service with his family.
Speaking personally, sharing leadership gave me a life. If I had been a traditional "one-man show" when we launched our first Saturday night service, my kids would have been in school all week, and all weekend their dad would have been busy, working, preoccupied with the new endeavor. That's a way to lose a family. Or, you could share the burden with others. It impacts the way people in the church feel, too …
I was waiting for that. Tell me more.
Larry: Okay. People outside North Coast get confused sometimes. They think, Larry and Chris, the two-headed monster. But if they've been around long enough, they think way back to how Mike and I shared leadership long ago: I was clearly the managing partner by structure back then.
If you're more Kobe than Magic, this won't work. But if you want to win championships, this is amazing.
But with Chris and me, the congregation got it right away. Much of the work of a senior pastor in the community is related to the title. While anyone can give great pastoral care, it makes people feel special to have the senior pastor join their event, be with them in a hard time, and so forth. Or when there's a conflict in the church, people want to take it to the top. The congregation here quickly understood what we were doing. After an event sometimes I hear, "Wow, one of the senior pastors was there"—and realize I was home with my family.
We've found this to be a very affirming reality throughout the ministry here. Even in our youth ministry, we don't call our interns interns. If they're doing a pastoral job they are given a pastoral title. It affirms them, and helps release their giftings when they engage with parents and students.
Chris: It recognizes their significance.
Larry: Exactly. And we've lightened the load throughout the staff by honoring a person. So when a transition happens or needs to take place, the potential difficulties are spread across a larger, more invested pastoral team. The church can feel the difference, and so can the pastors. Often in church ministry, pastors share the work but don't share the perks—even as simple as the affirmation a title brings.
Chris: Back to succession for a minute. When you think about passing a baton, we've multiplied the sticks. No one's fighting over a single baton, and there's plenty of room on the track for all of us to run our best.
Recently some other pastors asked me, "God forbid, if anything happened to Larry, are you ready to take his position?"
"No way," I said. "Why would I take his position? I have mine." To me, that distinction makes all the difference in the world. I'm not waiting for something to be handed to me. I have what I need and what I want. And I think that's critical. When guys even start doing shared leadership and shared titles of positions, if there is still one baton in the room, if you've got great leaders, young leaders, they're going to go out and find their own baton at half the paycheck, half the size, half whatever, just to run it just because they know they can.
It sounds idyllic, but I suspect it isn't. What's the toughest part of sharing leadership this way?
Chris: Pride and ego are going to plague you.
Your personal pride and ego?
Chris: Oh yes—the little voice that says, Why am I sharing? I can do this on my own. Sharing means someone else is going to make decisions that affect you but you weren't in on. Sharing means someone else is going to get the glory sometimes for something that you did. Sharing it means it's no longer yours. We constantly step on each other's toes. Each of us thinks sometimes, If I wasn't sharing, I could just run it.
Larry: For me, it can be frustrating to have to go through the processes of communication that this model requires in order to honor one another. I get weekends with my wife and family, but it means that I can't be the king of the hill. If you're more Kobe Bryant than Magic Johnson, this won't work. You want to win championships? This is amazing. You get upset because somebody's jersey outsold yours? Well, sorry. This isn't for you.
Chris: The guy in Larry's position has to give up some of his kingdom—which should have never been his kingdom to begin with. Give it up to the point where it takes some of the applause from him.
Larry: Yes, that's right on. To give up the three Ps—power, prestige, and preference. When we lose any of those three and feel upset, we're dealing with a spiritual issue. This is the crux of what makes transitions such a dangerous time for a church. It's why a former deacon or elder leaves the church—they no longer have influence like they once did. It's why as church plants grow, they consistently have their little coup attempt because "Aaron" and "Miriam" are asking, "Why do you get all the prestige?"
Chris: It's easy to lose perspective here, too. Because I know I give up a lot more to work with Larry than he does. And Larry knows it takes a lot more from him. We will both go to our graves convinced that we each carried 51 percent of the load.
Ha. Just like a marriage, right?
Chris: No, in my marriage Amy and I both agree she has given up a lot more. (Laughter.)
Larry: Sharing leadership is a bit like a marriage. I'm really good with numbers … but I happen to be married to an accountant. So I don't know how to do taxes. Nancy does them. I happen to like interior design. So we swap a couple traditional roles for husbands and wives. In a marriage you just work it out—the secret is being humble and serving one another. It's not some conference that prescribes what men do and what women do.
Larry, talk about one defining moment as North Coast transitioned into having two senior teaching pastors.
Larry: At one point after Chris came to North Coast, I realized that his gifts were so big that he had to increase and I needed to decrease for the sake of the kingdom.
Here's one moment I remember clearly. We used to have to park 400 cars off site and shuttle the people to church, and so we pastors would take the shuttle to set an example. After one service, the third time Chris had preached here, I'm looking out the shuttle window (after he just rocked it) and thought, Crap, I have to preach less, faster than I wanted to. Recognizing and releasing his gifting meant that we—that I—had to transition. And so he went from preaching eight weeks to ten to eighteen weeks a year. It was a quick escalation.
After he had been here for about three years, I went to the board and I said, "I feel very confident that if my plane goes down, you guys are just going to turn to Chris. Right?" Recognizing that he was a de facto leader already. They all said yes. After I communicated that to Chris, I started asking myself what else I needed to do to recognize that position. The title—"senior teaching pastor" reflected what the trajectory was already.
Chris: That's a key thing to understand. Some pastors will want to jump immediately to a shared leadership model. But for them to simply say "Okay, pastoral team—we're all senior pastors now!" would mean a huge failure. Maybe a church split. There needs to be a natural transition.
Larry: I'm such a proponent of shared leadership. I think it's biblical. But in the end, it's all about the specific relationship between the pastors. That's what people miss—it needs to be tailored for each context. There aren't a lot of models for this out there. We had to work it out for ourselves.
Chris: I want to validate other callings, too. I know there are people called to associate pastor positions for the duration of their career. I don't want to diminish that.
That's helpful. What were the danger points during the transition? Looking back, where could it have gone wrong?
Larry: People evaluate things in light of what they've seen. There aren't a lot of scalable models for this. While there were attempts—like Gene Getz—for co-leadership (which is idealistic but practically impossible), shared leadership allows for more nuance and adaptation. A healthy model of shared leadership is the partnership that I mentioned earlier—it's not two tigers on a hill or an idealist co-pastorate.
North Coast is a very large church. What are the transferrable principles here for pastors in smaller contexts?
Larry: When I first shared the pulpit and made a second guy a "senior pastor," we were 180 people in weekend attendance—barely breaking a hundred in adults. I think much of this starts there. The same principles of health for the pastors and the church apply. So I think it's completely transferrable. But they'll need to work out the specifics in their context.
Chris: Yeah, this isn't about how to lead megachurches better. This is a healthy model to soften transitions and replace succession. It's better for pastors and churches of any size. We really believe that.
Larry: Back to margins.
Was there a moment in your ministry when you realized you needed that margin, Larry?
Larry: I sensed it for the health of the church first, and then I discovered that I needed it for the health of my family. My kids competed at fairly high levels athletically. One of my sons as a sophomore got to run in the Penn Relays with 40,000 people in the stands. Well, you don't know until ten days before if you've qualified to compete. I was only able to get on a plane and go because I had another preacher I could ask, and just enough margin in my life. I'll never forget sitting in the stands.
We thought that Josh would run for two more years. But because I had margin, I went that year instead of waiting. As it turned out, they never ran there again. As it was, everybody told me, "You're too busy. Too much is going on. There will be two more years." Even Josh! "Dad, you don't need to go. We'll be there next year."
But I got to be there to see my son. The next year that I was told to "wait for" never came.
Chris: That's it. Margin isn't just for when the crisis or transition comes up. Margin is for living.
Is it a myth that pastors need to sacrifice their own health in order to be great pastors?
Larry: Isn't that the question? Pastors need to understand that calling and potential are different. We need to fulfill our calling. We do not need to die for our potential. But we live in a culture where we think if you could have you should have—that every book that could be written needs to be written. When my oldest son was seven, I was writing my third book. He said, "I don't like when Dad writes. He doesn't play with me."
That night Nancy and I made a decision—I was not going to write another book until my kids were in college. And I didn't. That was a 13-year stretch, with lost potential for outside impact. But I have three kids who love Jesus, and think Dad being a pastor was the greatest job in the world. You see, at the end of the day, I wasn't called to be a great pastor. I was called to be a great dad … and a good pastor.
I like that line.
Larry: Me too. But with that said, sharing allows for more potential to be realized. I told Chris when we interviewed him that one of my goals was for him to look back at the end of his ministry here and see that shared leadership put all sorts of kingdom things within his giftedness, rather than putting a lid on it
Chris: That's the team thing. You got to realize that we all share trophies at the end of the day.
Larry: Exactly. We're in this to win for the kingdom, not to get individual awards. And perhaps that shift of the soul is the most important transition we experience.
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