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I am halfway through year 3 of my present call, having started in the fall of 2020 in the midst of COVID. By now he has seen and experienced the faithfulness of God who called him. The pastor’s role becomes more of a coach, spiritual leader, and loving encourager. The pastor should have equipped a fair number of members to do the work of the ministry by now. All of this results in a maturity of knowledge and faith of the body. Once the confirmation to stay is received, new ministries are birthed, greater commitments from church leaders are received, and the decision processes are mature. The mystery point would be characterized by soul searching, asking God if he should continue or move on, and upon His answer-a recommitment. I’d say that during this phase evangelism should now be carried out primarily by the church members as the pastor should have equipped them by this point.

Systems and activities manage to be stablized. The church feels like it will actually stay. There are many highs and lows during this phase. The acceptance and stability phase applies to the church plant. The pastor has to work and pray harder than ever to overcome the challenges. Challenges and conflicts is when reality sets in and the pastor has to take stock of what is working and what isn’t. It tests the commitment and endurance of the pastor to the ministry. Even so, having passed the 10 year mark on a church plant and reaching the mystery stage, I offer these thoughts: The honeymoon phase is marked by enthusiasm and dreams for the church. The article seems to apply to existing churches that call a pastor rather than a church plant. With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America. How closely aligned do these stages match what you have seen or experienced? What are some differences in your ministry? If you are a pastor, or if you have observed pastors closely, I welcome your perspectives. The efficacy of a pastor’s ministry after the 10 th year of tenure remains a mystery. And any attempt to define it seems futile because we just don’t see any consistent patterns. We still don’t have sufficient data to name this stage. Such is the reason we call it an inflection point: the growth and health of the church moves clearly positive or clearly negative. This reality can become pronounced if the pastor is moving toward retirement. But it is also possible for the pastor to cease leading the church toward Great Commission growth. It is possible for the church to have a growth stage at this point. This stage becomes the defining point for a long-term pastor. Growth is not as common for churches during this era as it was in years past. Today, we simply say it’s a time of acceptance and stability after a period of conflict. Until the pandemic, it was common for the pastor to lead the church to growth during this time more than any other point. For many years, we referred to this stage as the growth era of a pastor’s life cycle.

Acceptance and stability: Year 4 to year 7.

Obviously, this period is the most common era for pastors to resign or get fired. Now the pastor can expect it to last over three years. For two decades, this difficult period of a pastor’s tenure only lasted two years. The honeymoon period is shorter, and the era of challenges and conflict is longer.

Challenges and conflict: 6 months to 4 years.

It does not take long before many members realize that the expectations will not be met. They frequently call pastors with unrealistic expectations. Church members are often fearful about their church’s future. When we first started reporting the life cycle of pastors, the period lasted up to three years. This era is becoming shorter and shorter. Here is where we see the life cycle of a pastor today. There will always be exceptions and outliers.

Of course, these cycles are generalizations. We are now in a post-pandemic, post-Christian era.

Though some of the categories are the same, the time periods and the descriptions of the periods continue to evolve. For almost 30 years, we have tracked the tenure of pastors.

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