There really aren’t many reasons why pastors leave one church and go to another. The following five reasons are among those most prominent. They are not listed in any particular order.
1. Forced Termination. This may be brought on by the pastor’s own doing, or it may be because some folks just decided they no longer liked him. There are legitimate reasons why forced termination would be necessary, but they are very, very few. One can observe churches that have forcefully terminated their pastor for reasons other than doctrinal heresy, or some type immoral behavior, and it is easy to see that the church pays an extremely high price for doing so. Not only is it devastating to the pastor and his entire family, but it does great harm to the unity of the church. Forced terminations are very frequent in our day, which may have a great deal to do with the fact that more than 75% of churches are not really growing.
2. Resignation under duress. This is a double first cousin to forced termination. It is just a matter of the pastor resigning before being fired.
3. Loss of effectiveness. It seems that the longer a pastor remains in a church, the greater his effectiveness should become, but there is the possibility of that not being the case. Effective pastors must maintain a vision and constantly be in the process of developing a plan to bring the vision into reality. If a pastor ceases to do this, he is on the road to losing his effectiveness, and needs to be looking for a place to start over. It may be that some pastors who say they’ve been in the ministry for 50 years, have really only been in the minstry for two years 25 times!
4. Opportunity for a larger ministry. Some people might take a dim view of this and think the pastor an opportunist. But, when a pastor is faithful in his service, why should the Lord not move him to a level of greater opportunity and responsibility? No pastor should intentionally use one church as a mere stepping stone to get to another, but as the pastor’s skills develop and his service is proven, there is nothing wrong with moving to a larger ministry. There are also instances, under this same category, where the pastor’s present place of service has not adequately provided for his needs financially, and he sees the new door of opportunity as an answer to prayer for the meeting of his family’s needs.
5. A sense of God’s leading. A pastor may be experiencing a great ministry at his place of service and suddenly, the Lord begins to deal with his heart about moving. He may not know why, or where, but he just knows God is putting it in his heart. What generally happens in such cases, is the Lord begins to remove the burden from the pastor’s heart for the church he is serving. He will still love the people, and he will want to see the church prosper, but he will no longer have the burden to be the one to take them where they need to go.
A study of the healthiest, fasting growing churches, will reveal a common thread: they keep their pastors, long-term, and when they leave, it is under good circumstances.