LILR 049 | Tommy Politz on How to Lead Different Seasons of Ministry

Leaders in Living Rooms

ABOUT THE EPISODE

“Change is painful, but it's better than death.” Meet Tommy Politz, Senior Pastor of Hillside Christian Church, who has served as pastor, church planter, and transitional leader in his 30+ years of ministry. In this episode, Tommy shares with us his own personal journey of transitional leadership and the wisdom he’s gained along the way. Transitional leaders will face high resistance in their quest for high impact. Paying attention to the rate, pace, and acceleration of decision making will be a critical element to a successful transition.

Welcome to Episode 049 of the Leaders in Living Rooms Podcast with Sean Morgan.

INSIGHTS FROM TOMMY

Compare and contrast being a church planter and a transitional leader:

• When you plant, there is no history, and there is no expectation. It’s a blank page. Resistance is low, adoption is high. When you inherit a church, you might have the resources, but you have deeply entrenched high resistance.
• There is no comparison game when you’re a planter. There is nothing but a comparison game when you’re a transitional leader.
• “The status quo is precisely the status quo because of its pervasive ability to stick around.” As a transition leader, when you change the status quo you quickly find out why it’s the status quo.

Keys to successful transitional leadership:

• Change is painful, but it’s better than death.
• Grid of impact and resistance: High impact decisions get high resistance – those are the best ones to make because they are going to really move the needle most. High impact, low resistance decisions are rare.
• A church will flourish because of the Word of God. The Word of God is where life is. Where life change happens. It’s not our ingenuity or our creativity, it’s getting people to open up the holy scriptures and let it feed their souls.

The rate of decision making:

• Pay attention to rate, pace, and acceleration of decision making.
• Even if you feel good about making the right decisions, and you think it's what is best, finding that Holy Spirit moment and gap in which to insert that change is so critical that it does not outpace the relational currency that you have. Because it doesn’t matter if that’s what God wants, or how gifted you are, there is just only so far that you can push the sheep before you are really working against the macro goals of reintegrating an unhealthy church.
• Leadership is making changes at a rate that people can tolerate.

Examining, developing, and sending your staff off well:

• Operate equally in the same three offices that Christ exemplified for us: Prophet, Priest, and King.
• Will I actually give away power and opportunity? It’s one thing to train someone up to do something at a high level of leadership. It’s another thing when you give them part of your own pie. When you say, I don’t want to give this away, but I’m going to because I love this church and this leader.

EPISODE LINKS

For pastors navigating transition into a new leadership role, checkout The Ascent Leader’s transitions cohorts at: https://theascentleader.org/cohorts/

Find Tommy Politz, Senior Pastor of Hillside Christian Church at: https://hillsideonline.com

WHO IS TOMMY POLITZ?

Since 2005, Tommy Politz has served as the Senior Pastor of Hillside Christian Church. In 2009, he led Hillside to become a multisite church. He has served as a pastor, church planter, and speaker for over 30 years. He grew up in Dallas, Texas, where he gave his life to Christ at 17 years old as a junior in high school. He is a graduate of Baylor University, Southwestern Seminary, and Duke University. Tommy and his wife, Donna, have three children--Grant, Rebekah, and Cole. They also have a son-in-law, Matthew, and a daughter-in-law, Jessi. They are excited to welcome their first grandchild in the Spring. Hillside Christian Church has twelve campuses--ten campuses located throughout the Texas Panhandle, one campus in New Mexico, and an online campus.

SPONSORS

Thanks to our sponsors: CDF Capital and Food For The Hungry.

Hear directly from our friend, Jordan Gustafson, Director of Organizational Partnerships, at Food for the Hungry. Jordan personally walks us through how the goal at FH is to combine your church's desire to grow disciples, with their heart for the poor, by partnering with Food for the Hungry for the opportunity to do so with a global mission and outreach experience. Learn more at fh.org/churches.

CDF Capital is hosting the 2022 Executive Pastors Summit taking place May 24th and 25th in Manchester, NH. Check out Xpsummit.org for more information.