There’s no shortage of content on how to be a lead pastor. There are podcasts & conferences galore and even whole businesses built around leading from the top. 

But my experience as an associate/executive pastor and number two for the last eight years has shown me that there is minimal to virtually no instruction on leading from the middle. It’s a strange space: to have influence, but not full authority, to often work behind the scenes, to be one of the pastors but not the pastor. 

Yet, I have found my role over the years to be so crucial for the life of the church. I’ve learned (and am still learning) that leading from the middle isn’t about using it as a stepping stone to become a lead pastor. Rather, it’s learning to lead as a bridge to allow the church to become a more cohesive body. 

1. You Can’t Change the Church 

This one took me a while to digest. Every associate pastor or church staff member hits that moment when they think: “If I could just fix this one thing, everything here would be better…” 

But here’s the truth that will both humble and lead you to peace: you can’t change the church. An anecdotal observation: the lead always drives change in a church. The vision, tone, and pace all reverberate from the top. 

You can speak into it, shape it, maybe even push gently against it. But you yourself can’t redirect that current. If an associate becomes the primary driver of change, it’ll likely create bigger problems down the road for the congregation.

And that’s okay. Finding fulfillment in leading from the middle involves figuring out how best to bring the lead’s vision to a healthy reality, rather than trying to enact major change yourself.  

I think this rings even more true in Asian-American church spaces that I’ve found myself in all of my life. We always look to the top for direction; it’s in our blood.  

And this is where blunt questions need to be asked, looking at yourself in the mirror: Do you truly believe and trust in your lead? Are you actively rooting for their success? Are you personally captivated by their vision? 

If your answers lean more towards a no than yes to the above, perhaps this position and calling isn’t where you are meant to be. Your presence can eventually lead to frustration and at worse church fracture.  

So, if we are not called to change the church, what are we then to do? 

2. Protect the Lead 

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown” sounds poetic until you’ve watched that weight in real time. The noise, the exhaustion, the criticism can slowly harden the heart. It’s from seeing this up close that I realized I really don’t have a strong desire to plant or lead a church in the short term future. (And if you do, Godspeed.)  

If you find yourself leading from the middle, I’ve found one of our sacred callings is to protect the lead pastor from others and from themselves:

Protect what they hear. Not everything needs to reach their ears, try to put out fires early.
Protect their capacity. Not every meeting needs their presence.
Protect their credibility. Disagreement should be shared without going public.
Protect their vision. Create space for your lead to have the margin to cast vision.
Protect their sanity. The church will never be perfect, and doesn’t need to be.
Protect their ego. We should take what we do very seriously, not ourselves. 

Sometimes protection looks like shielding the lead; at other times, it involves honest confrontation. You might be the one to say, “You need to rest,” while also saying, “That tone isn’t landing.” When the lead trusts and listens to you, the ultimate protection you can give is by telling the truth when no one else will. 

The goal isn’t to hide their flaws, rather it’s to help them stay human. Even David needed both Jonathan’s protection and Nathan’s harsh truths to keep his leadership whole. 

And at times, it will feel invisible. In football, the left tackle on the offensive line is often seen as the most underrated position as it protects (right-handed) quarterbacks from their blind side as they turn their back to throw. So much of this can be applied to us as associates. We dig in, take hits no one sees coming, and when the touchdown is thrown, no one really knows you did your job.

And as we protect the lead, we should begin to translate on their behalf.

3. Decipher the Lead 

Most lead pastors are part visionary and part chaos; they dream and speak in fragments, leaving trails of ideas that can sound like commands. And to be honest it’s needed. Leads should be a little “wild”. A part of being a lead is to cast vision, taking risks and changes that can seem disorienting to the crowd. 

This is where you come in. You’re the translator, the Duolingo for the language of your lead. You learn their dreams, their rhythms, their moods. What truly sparks their vision and what burdens them. What season of life they are in and what painful patterns they carry from the past. You learn which statements are prophetic and which is just the book on their desk or recent podcast talking. 

You become the interpreter between the visionary and the church: between the statements that should start with “someday” but the staff who audibly heard “this Sunday.” What may look like conflicting messages to the congregation is really a vision being born. What some may see as assorted ideas that start and never finish is often the lead pastor experimenting, trying to discern what will truly work. Some lay elders may get frustrated by lack of direction, but you may be able to clarify what was never fully communicated amidst the busyness of ministry.

Let me be clear, this is not a call to be a PR agent. Translating for your lead isn’t “controlling the narrative” or better branding. In my experience, it’s simply ministry. It’s learning how to incarnate their vision, to make sure their words land in reality. 

I’ve found that this only happens from an honest, real relationship between the lead and the number two, one rooted in trust and hopefully even real friendship. When you genuinely celebrate each other’s wins and deepen empathy, you know you’re translating for your lead well. 

4. Decipher the Church

Just as you learn to translate your lead, you will have to learn to decipher the church for the lead. The congregation isn’t a single voice (as your lead can often hear it to be), rather it’s a complicated web of hopes, frustrations, and half-formed opinions. 

The lead might look out on Sunday and see tired, unhappy people, but it’s often more complex than that. As the associate, you have the ability to become the interpreter of the church’s heart. You are the one meeting with key congregants, who tend to be more honest with you than with the lead. You are also the one providing one-on-one pastoral care to those in need.  

As you begin to decipher the congregation, you will start realizing that most people don’t carry strong opinions about church…until they’re asked to have one. As Gurwinder Bhogal writes, “Many don’t have any opinion until they’re asked for it, at which point they cobble together a viewpoint from whim and half-remembered hearsay, before deciding that this two-minute-old makeshift opinion will be their new hill to die on.” 

It’s funny, but freeing: while your lead may obsess over every sermon, strategy, and ministry decision, you can often see most people are simply trying to survive their week. Church, for better or worse, is not the primary thing on their minds. Often their complaints aren’t directly from dissatisfaction with leadership, but rather a sign of something else amiss in life.

Deciphering the church means holding that tension, reading the room without overreacting, and reminding your lead to not see a complaining congregation, but broken people in need of God’s grace. 

Make no mistake, leading from the middle is a grind. You rarely get credit and at the same time you will feel like a hidden load-bearing bridge for the church. A bridge provides the important function of connection and safe passage, but it can often be unappreciated. If you are someone who leads from the middle, may you be encouraged that your labor is not in vain. In fact your role, though often unseen, is crucial to the health of the church. May the fruit of your leadership be in a church that truly is united and whole. 

Eugene Park is the executive pastor of True North Church in Palo Alto, California, and hosts a podcast, Off the Pulpit. He is married to Sylvia and is the father of Elijah and Sydney.