Passing the Leadership Baton: A Winning Transition Plan for Your Ministry

by Tom Mullins

Overview

“A transition will be one of the greatest tests of your leadership, but it will also serve as one of the greatest rewards and testimonies of your legacy.” —Tom Mullins

Successfully handing off the leadership baton to the next leader is essential to give our organization the best opportunity to thrive after our time of service. A smooth handoff requires meticulous planning and forethought. Yet most leaders put off even thinking about leadership transition until they are faced with a situation where they have no choice but to make a change.

The results of not planning ahead can be devastating for both you and your beloved organization. Passing the Leadership Baton will help you manage the emotional transition yourself while fully supporting the next leader. Creating a seamless succession can be a challenge, but done successfully, it may very well be one of the greatest rewards you’ll experience as a leader.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780718031206
Publisher:	HarperCollins Christian Publishing
Publication date:	08/22/2023
Series:	Next Leadership Network
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	196
File size:	584 KB

About the Author

Tom Mullins is the founding pastor of Christ Fellowship, a multi-site church of more than 40,000 people meeting on seven campuses around South Florida and online around the world. Before founding Christ Fellowship, Tom was a successful football coach at both the high school and collegiate levels. Tom now travels and speaks nationally and internationally as the current president of EQUIP, diligently working to raise up Christian leaders around the world.

Read an Excerpt

Passing The Leadership Baton

A Winning Transition Plan for Your Ministry

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By Tom Mullins

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2015 Tom Mullins
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-3120-6

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CHAPTER 1

THE EXCHANGE ZONE

Leading Through Transition

God has given us two hands-one to receive with and the other to give with.

–BiLLY GRAHAM

I love the Olympics. I mean, I really love them. I'll even go so far as to admit that I'm an Olympic junkie. I can't get enough when they are on television. I stay up until all hours of the night and keep a TV on in my office to make sure I don't miss out on anything. It's pitiful how much time I spend watching, but I absolutely love seeing the best athletes in the world competing against one another, and I love rooting for my country!

I competed in track and field in high school before deciding to concentrate on football while in college, so I am most excited when Olympic track and field events are taking place. I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled I was to have the privilege of attending the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta and watching US track and field Hall of Famer Michael Johnson win the 200- and 400-meter races with record-setting performances. It was one of the greatest sporting events I've ever witnessed.

Those short sprint races that recognize the fastest men and women in the world are amazing, but the meticulous and calculated partnership between runners in relay races also keeps me riveted. It inspires me to see each runner running his best in his leg of the race and then making a flawless exchange of the baton to the runner who follows him.

At the 1996 games, the US men's 4x100 relay finished second to Canada, but the women's team won the gold. Fortunately, for the men's 4x400 relay, Michael Johnson ran anchor for the team, and the American men brought home the gold in that race.

When you look at the statistics, United States relay teams are unmatched in their success. According to New York Times sports reporter Sam Borden, "Since 1932, American women have won as many Olympic gold medals in the 4x100 relay (nine) as all other countries combined. Since 1920, the American men's relay team has won gold at 15 of the 21 Olympics held, with one of the six misses coming because of the 1980 United States boycott of the Moscow Games."

Borden went on to say, "A fluid exchange can make the difference between a successful race and disappointment. On a good pass, the baton spends about 1.8 seconds in the zone.... A bad pass might have the baton there for 2.0 seconds.... Poor passing can cost a team half a second or more—an eternity in a sport where finishes are often decided by hundredths of a second."

In high school, I ran every relay in which our track team participated. I know from experience that the key to victory in relay races is found in how well the runners pass the baton to their teammates. In every race, there are three exchanges, and each exchange must take place inside a 20-meter passing zone. Getting the baton safely from runner to runner within those exchange zones is the most crucial aspect of a relay.

And along with passing quickly within the zone, it is equally important that runners do everything possible to avoid disqualification. A team is automatically disqualified when a runner goes outside his or her lane or when a pass takes place outside the exchange area. Runners are also disqualified if the baton is dropped during the exchange.

Runners will obviously do whatever they can to keep that baton from falling to the ground, but if you've watched your share of Olympic relay races, as I have, you know it unfortunately does happen, including in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when the US men's 4x100 relay team dropped the baton during the preliminaries.

I remember that dreadful moment all too well. I was sitting on my couch with my family, feeling so confident that the US team was a sure bet. Rodney Martin took his mark on the starting block. The gun rang out and Rodney leapt ahead of the competition. He rounded the track and made a smooth exchange with Travis Padgett, who raced around to hand the baton off to Darvis Patton. I held my breath for the entire half a minute it took for the first three runners to make their way around the track. Patton entered the final exchange zone as we all slid to the edge of our seats in anticipation of a first-place seed for the finals. But as Patton attempted to hand the baton to Tyson Gay, it somehow slipped from between their grasps and fell to the ground, the sound of its tinging along the track reverberating throughout the arena. Medal hopes for the United States were gone in a flash.

That same day, the US women's 4x100 team lined up for the preliminaries with hopes of redemption for the United States. They, too, had a long history of victory and were favored to move on to the finals and take home the gold. Both Angela Williams and Mechelle Lewis made their runs and transitions flawlessly. But disaster struck once again when Torri Edwards tried to pass the baton to the team anchor, Lauryn Williams. The United States dropped the baton again. No one had expected either the men's or the women's team to lose in the preliminaries; it was inconceivable that it could happen to both on the same day. Everything was over in an instant, and every commentator said the same thing: the race is won and lost in the exchange zone.

CHURCHES ALSO HAVE AN EXCHANGE ZONE

A good pass of the baton of leadership is as crucial to any organization as it is in track and field relays. According to statistics presented at a Leadership Network Succession Conference on March 26, 2013, close to sixty thousand churches go through transitions in leadership each year. Many in my generation who founded churches thirty to forty years ago are now standing at the crossroads of transition. Successfully handing off the leadership baton to a successor is essential if we want our organizations to thrive in the years following our own investment. It requires meticulous planning and the right timing to ensure a smooth and seamless handoff in the exchange zone.

If we think of our own leadership as one leg in the long race ahead for our organization, it's easy to see the need to plan for transitions between us and those who will follow. Inevitably, a handoff will need to be made! And the more prepared we are for the future, the less of a surprise it will be when it's time to make a change. Everyone needs to be thinking about this passing of the baton, but the more I talk to men and women in prominent positions of leadership, the more I realize how few have planned for transition.

My friend Lance Witt and I were talking about this recently, and he remarked that transition planning seems like a fairly new discussion to many of the pastors he coaches through his ministry, Replenish. He said most don't think about it until they are faced with a situation where they have no choice but to make a change—perhaps because the organization is headed in a new direction or because they have outgrown their post. Very quickly, they find that they don't really know where to begin, so they need a coach like Lance to help them through the transition process.

Life is one big transition after another, and we need to be prepared to shift and adjust as needed. Unfortunately, because many leaders fail to think through the importance of planning for transitions, the outcomes can be devastating, not only for the leaders, but also for the organizations they lead. If you hire the wrong person or fail to prepare that individual adequately to take over his or her new role, the result can be catastrophic. And if you neglect to make sure the organization is strong and able to weather the changes needed to make a successful exchange, those costs can be high too. A poor baton pass can cost you everything.

Robert H. Schuller began preaching in 1955, standing on top of the concession stand at a drive-in theater. By 1970 he had launched his television program, Hour of Power, which at its peak had 1.3 million viewers in 156 countries. In 1980 he opened the famous Crystal Cathedral in Southern California. He served there as senior pastor for the next twenty-six years, until he passed the ministry to his son, Robert A. Schuller, in 2006.

The father-son duo had been in ministry together since 1976, when Robert A. began serving on his father's staff. The plan for him to succeed his father had been in motion for the better part of thirty years. Unfortunately, though, the transition was short-lived. In 2008, only two years after the baton had been passed to Robert A., Robert H. announced that he was removing his son as the senior pastor and severely limiting his responsibilities at both the church and the television ministry, due to differences in direction and vision. He said, "For this lack of shared vision and the jeopardy in which this is placing this entire ministry, it has become necessary for Robert and me to part ways."

When Robert A. was asked what he believed ultimately caused the failed transition between his father and him, he pointed to two issues. The first was that Robert H. never really took his hand off the ministry enough to allow him the space to lead. Robert A. believed that, for his dad, stepping away from a ministry that he had built and overseen for a quarter century was simply counterintuitive to everything he knew to do as a leader. As a result, Robert H. couldn't embrace the changes that his son was proposing. They also apparently never had a formal agreement about their transition roles and responsibilities. I think they believed that because they had worked together for so long, they would be fine in this new season. They were dead wrong.

The second issue Robert A. believed contributed to his dismissal was sibling squabbles. He believed that the fact that his three sisters were not encouraged to be ordained to take over the church, along with the fact that it was quite rare for the leadership of megachurches to be handed over to women, caused a lot of bitterness. Without official ordination, they were not able to take on senior leadership roles. Robert A. believed that this led them to stir up dissension, and in fact, they did cause their father to question Robert A.'s leadership and ultimately demand that he step down.

After one of the daughters got ordained and took over senior leadership, the financial stability of the ministry continued to steadily deteriorate. Membership declined dramatically with all the unsettling changes, the church board lost confidence in the family's ability to work through their differences, and soon, everything started falling apart.

The Schuller family and their ministries were on a path to failure. In just a few short years the board dismissed all Schuller family members from leadership positions on staff and on the board. They tried to rebound from all the problems that came from the transition, but unfortunately, nothing helped. The Crystal Cathedral finally had to file for bankruptcy. The reputation of one of the best-known megachurches in America had sadly been reduced to inter-familial squabbles, mounds of debt, and For Sale signs. The church was eventually sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese to help pay off the debts it had accrued in its latter years of ministry.

Today, the Schuller family is slowly rebuilding. Each member is pursuing individual ministry endeavors; and it appears that forgiveness and love are leading them as they work through their differences.

I truly believe so many of the issues the Schullers encountered could have been avoided if they had spent more time strategically planning for their transition. I think they left a lot unsaid as the time neared for Robert H. to step down. If they had addressed some of the concerns and questions head-on, perhaps they would have been able to work through the family issues more objectively. Maybe they also would have been able to anticipate some of the leadership differences so they could deal with them before the transition took place as well.

ANOTHER KIND OF HANDOFF

Like Robert H. Schuller, I too was blessed to have my son ministering at my side from nearly the beginning. My wife, Donna, and I started Christ Fellowship in our home in 1984 with about five families, who soon grew to forty people. Our son, Todd, and daughter, Noelle, were fully invested and actively involved in the growth and development of the church from day one because we were committed to a life in ministry as a family.

The church continued to grow, so we moved from our home to a nearby elementary schoolhouse where we cleaned peanut butter and jelly off cafeteria tables dutifully each week before holding services. We focused our ministry on loving God and loving people the best we knew how. As a church, we began regular outreach to the area nursing home and cared for the less fortunate in our community whenever we could. We simply looked for opportunities to express the love of God in practical ways. And as a family, we had a revolving door of people in need of a place to stay or a meal to eat. We just wanted to be faithful to whatever God asked of us, and all along the way, we prayed earnestly for God to expand our reach.

When we outgrew the schoolhouse, Todd found an old riding barn down the road that we were able to purchase and convert into a sanctuary with the help of our founding families. Each family sacrificed tremendously—taking out second mortgages, cashing out retirement funds, and giving their most precious possessions to expand our impact for the cause of Christ.

I truly believe that our unity and devotion to God's mission to reach this region is what He used to help us grow tremendously once we got into that building in 1992, which we now refer to as our Gardens South Campus. The first weekend we held services in our new building, we had 326 attendees. From that time on, we steadily grew to the point that we were running five services a weekend just to accommodate the four thousand people who were pulling into our parking lot! Traffic was often backed up so far that some people just came to see what the fuss was all about. The miracles came when they actually returned and gave their hearts to the Lord. It was a dynamic season of growth for our church as we watched people's lives being changed for eternity.

It wasn't long before we realized we would need to start praying about buying land to build a larger building. There was no way we could continue to grow at that speed and not outgrow our existing facility on four and a half acres. As it was, I was barely managing the toll of five services along with caring for a now huge church family with the help of a very small paid staff. We knew God had more in store and we desperately needed Him to come through in a big way.

As we prayed for clarity on what was next, Bill Groot, a man who owned forty acres of land directly across the street from our existing property, came to see me. As he entered my office I saw a roll of papers tucked under his arm. He flopped the papers down on my desk and slid them toward me. Then he pointed to the cash offer of $4 million from a developer for his land. I looked back up at him and said, "Bill, you can't take that offer. You and I both know that land is being saved for the Lord's work. You have to tell them no and sell us the land instead."

Even before that moment, I had been convinced that Christ Fellowship would eventually buy that land from Bill to build our new building. I used to attend cattle auctions with Bill just to get to know him. We eventually discussed the option for us to purchase his land, but he and I both knew that Christ Fellowship was in no position to buy it at that point because we had no financial reserves; everything we received went to underwrite the ministries of the church and to missions.

After we talked about it at length, he walked out of my office that day agreeing not only to refuse the developer's offer, but also to carry the mortgage note on the land until we were able to pay him for it. He generously passed up a full cash offer to hold that land for us and even ended up leaving $1 million of the $4 million we had agreed to pay him to the church in his will.

It was 2000 when we moved into our Gardens North Campus, which allowed us to greatly expand our ministry programs while providing us with the space we needed to accommodate our ever-growing church family.

In 1993, at the same time we were building our North Campus, Donna and I took a mission trip to Romania and Russia, where we toured several orphanages and saw the deplorable conditions of the refugee children left in their care. It absolutely broke our hearts, and we returned with a clear calling to do something to help children in need in our own community, so during a prayer service Donna wept and pleaded with God to open doors for us to somehow make a difference. That night I announced to our church family that we would be intentional about living out God's message from Isaiah 1:17: "Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless" (NIV). Our church family rallied around the vision, and in 2001 we opened the Place of Hope, a faith-based, state-licensed children's welfare organization that provides family-style foster care; maternity care for young, unwed mothers; housing and support services for victims of human trafficking; and state-approved adoption and foster care training and placements.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Passing The Leadership Baton by Tom Mullins. Copyright © 2015 Tom Mullins. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments, xi,
Foreword by John C. Maxwell, xiii,
CHAPTER 1: The Exchange Zone: Leading Through Transition, 1,
CHAPTER 2: The Baton Is Not Yours to Keep: Keeping the Right Perspective, 21,
CHAPTER 3: Every Team Needs a Game Plan: Preparing for the Win, 47,
CHAPTER 4: Every Race Needs the Right Anchor: Selecting and Preparing Your Successor, 71,
CHAPTER 5: Tips for Anchor Runners: Positioning Yourself for Success, 103,
CHAPTER 6: Tips for Runners Entering the Exchange Zone: Positioning Others for Success, 133,
CHAPTER 7: Running Through Storms: Leading Through Crisis-Driven Transitions, 153,
CHAPTER 8: Finishing Strong: Creating a Legacy, 185,
Afterword by Todd Mullins, 203,
Notes, 206,