May 15, 2025
The days of Baptist pastors changing churches every 18 months are long gone. Many pastors and ministry leaders now stay 10 years or more in their assigned place of ministry.
I was recently in a week of revival services with a pastor who has had long tenures in growing churches. He has been with two churches for 13 years each, and during that time, those churches have enjoyed some of their greatest growth and local ministry impact.
But how do pastors stay a long time in a healthy ministry context? Here are seven things I observed in this pastor that can be helpful to others in ministry leadership.
1. Stay fresh in your preaching: The best preachers are those who continue to read and study deeply, listen to other preachers and faithfully deliver God’s word. All preachers are susceptible to focusing on their favorite subjects or preaching against what they see as the most egregious sins of the day. The preachers who can help a congregation long term do so because they never stop growing and learning.
2. Stay close to the people: Personal pastoral care still matters in local church ministry. The pastor who lives out his days in a dimly lit study surrounded by his books and seldom gets out among the people will struggle in the average rural Baptist church. Preaching feeds one’s pastoral care and pastoral care feeds one’s preaching. Spending time with sick and dying church members, elderly shut-in members, grieving families and struggling teenagers will ingratiate a congregation to the leadership of their pastor.
3. Stay faithful to your spouse and family: The first responsibility of all married ministry leaders is to our family. We cannot have a ministry worth emulating if we are not leading well in the home. Every ministry leader must determine before God, and together with their spouse, how to assure the family is given priority. You will not regret carving out space each week, month and year to be together as a family.
4. Stay focused on the mission: We have one mission—the Great Commission—and it is the responsibility of the senior leader to help the church or organization remain resolute in its focus on that mission. Pastors must continually remind the congregation of the mission Jesus gave us so that the church can spend its financial and human resources on that mission. A speaker at the 2025 REACH Conference reminded us that, “If evangelism is not the heartbeat of the pulpit, then it will never become the heartbeat of the pew.”
5. Stay humble in your leadership: Leaders get into relational trouble with those they lead when they start thinking more of themselves and less about the well-being of those they are called to lead. C.S. Lewis described humility not as having a low opinion of oneself but rather as self-forgetfulness. Someone has said that humility is not thinking less of oneself but of thinking of oneself less. Leaders who enjoy healthy long-tenured ministries are those who remain mindful of the needs and desires of those they lead.
6. Stay dependent in your walk with God: Dr. Justin Irving, leadership professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes, “Wise leaders go about their work understanding that dependence on God is our necessary posture.” Many of us would like to reach a place where we feel more secure in ourselves and less dependent on God, but that place will never fully come for a Christian leader. Our peace and security will come from knowing deeply that the God who called us will ultimately lead us and care for us.
7. Stay intentional in your self-care: If a leader hopes to stay faithful for a long time, then he or she must determine their own plan for self-care and then strive to work that plan. People who love their work and care for other people tend to put self-care last. Often our needed downtime gets pushed off the calendar entirely. We must determine to find time to shut down the work and care for ourselves. That practice honors the God who made us and makes us more effective for those we lead.
In most cases, longer ministry tenures are more helpful than shorter ones. Leaders who hope to stay faithful in one place over a long time must continually evaluate their work and return to healthy ministry practices.
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Todd Gray is executive director-treasurer of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. This commentary first appeared in Kentucky Today.
