Southeast Christian Church — with more than 20,000 members — is one of the ten largest congregations in America. Recently senior pastor Bob Russell handed over the reins of leadership to his long-time preaching associate Dave Stone, bringing to a close a five-year leadership transition. Preaching editor Michael Duduit recently sat down with Bob and Dave (both of them Preaching Contributing Editors, we’re pleased to say), and spoke with them about the leadership transition and the role preaching has played in the process.
Preaching: Bob, you have been senior pastor at Southeast for forty years. This church had 140 members when you first came here, and it’s incredible to see how God has blessed. In January you officially stepped out of the senior pastor position, though I understand there’s a six-month period in which you are still a member of the preaching team here. I watched your statement to the church online, and it was a wonderfully gracious handoff to your successor. Tell me about your vision for the leadership transition that has taken place, and how that whole process has taken place.
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Russell: Five or six years ago, the elders asked me to come up with some kind of a transition plan and felt like that we needed to nail down in advance what were going to do. I think it was easier because of the long term plan, as opposed to just being something I decided to do in six months time. The people had responded so well to Dave and loved Dave, and he has such a terrific work ethic and love for the church, it was obvious that he should be the successor. Also, about that time I read Jim Collins book Good to Great, and also One Built to Last, in which he said the best succession plans are usually with those who came from within and knew the culture. I certainly agreed with that and thought that it applied to the church too. So I came back with a transition plan.
There were several pieces of that and the first was that Dave Stone would be the successor. The second was that somewhere around the year 2006 I would step aside permanently. And the third was we would find a third person to be on the preaching team so that when I left there would still be two guys here and the whole load wouldn’t be on Dave. The fourth would be that when it was over I would step aside and get out of the way. I think there are a few preachers who can stay in the church and be there in some supportive capacity, but I don’t think that was the wise thing for me for a lot of different reasons. Having been here forty years, I think that’s tough to do.
So we announced that to the congregation five years ago and now we are just doing what we said we were going to do. I held in my hip pocket for a couple of years the idea of officially turning over the reigns to Dave six months early. I thought that as we got down to this point and I’d be a lame duck, with Dave sitting out there just waiting, chomping at the bit — the staff ready to go with a new plan, we’re just going to sit and wait until Bob retires.