When Steve Scoggins stepped behind the pulpit of the 180-year-old First Baptist Church of Hendersonville on July 14, it wasn’t his first time. In fact, he’d likely preached a thousand or more sermons at the church in nearly 20 years during two separate stints as the church’s lead pastor since the early 1990s.

But it was the last time he would preach to First Baptist as its senior pastor, making his sermon on “Finishing Well” particularly poignant. 

“If you get into serving God because of love for people, you will quit,” Scoggins said. “If love for the sheep is what keeps you in the ministry, you’re going to quit because … sometimes the sheep aren’t lovable. The question is, do you love Jesus? And when you answer that, then you’ll love His sheep; then you’ll feed His sheep.”

For years, that’s what Scoggins had done at First Baptist. He’d loved the sheep. He’d fed the sheep. Now, as Scoggins stepped off the stage that Sunday, he passed the role of the church’s undershepherd to Justin Alexander, a familiar and trusted figure within First Baptist. Having served on staff for nine years, Alexander had been preparing for this moment since the congregation officially elected him as its next senior pastor in December 2023.

Three-plus years in the making, the transition between Scoggins and Alexander was hardly abrupt. Both Scoggins and Alexander, along with the entire First Baptist Hendersonville community, were well-prepared and poised for this significant change in leadership.

“God puts a sell-by date on every pastor,” Scoggins said. “We don’t last forever. I think that’s good because a church should never depend upon a pastor. The church should depend upon Jesus.”

That scene from First Baptist in July is playing out in churches throughout North Carolina — and beyond. Pulpits have been graying for more than a decade. The next three years will see the highest number of people turning 65 in American history, making 2024 a potential turning point for this transition in many churches. 

Last year’s “The State of Pastors (Volume 2)” report by Barna Research highlighted the aging of America’s pastors. Only 17% of the country’s pastors are under the age of 40 (with an average age of 52). A quarter of American pastors say they plan on retiring in the next seven years.

But as these Baby Boomer pastors step off the stage of active church leadership, the nagging question is: What’s next?

“As a generation of clergy ages and prepares to step down, it is not clear that churches are prepared for the transition,” Barna Research said in the report. “If this trend goes unaddressed, the Church in the U.S. will face a real succession crisis, one that could be compounded by younger pastors’ more frequent struggle with burnout.”

But First Baptist Hendersonville and other N.C. Baptist churches are pushing back on this concerning trend in evangelical life through clear, strategic succession plans. And Barna Research also shows pastoral transitions that are planned in advance tend to result in more positive outcomes for everyone involved.

About five years ago, Scoggins started thinking about his own retirement. As Scoggins explored other churches’ experiences with pastoral transitions, he discovered 19 cases where churches had successfully transitioned leadership internally. This research reassured him that he could hand over leadership of his church — now averaging about 1,700 attendees — to a younger pastor without compromising its ministry.

But it wasn’t just what Scoggins saw elsewhere that gave him hope, it was what he saw inside his church, specifically in his young youth minister, Alexander.

“God has used him in a great way as the youth minister here; lives were being changed,” Scoggins said. “I always try to pour my life into my staff, so I’m always trying to pass on what I’ve learned to him so he can be a great pastor of the future. He’s really my son in the faith. When he’s preaching, I’m on the front row just beaming.”

A transition in a church of transitions

Fayetteville’s Arran Lake Baptist Church is well-acquainted with transitions. Near Fort Liberty, one of the largest military bases in the world, the church frequently welcomes soldiers who join the community for a few years before moving on to their next assignment.

“It’s a church where the people leave and the pastor stays,” said Jeff Isenhour, the church’s pastor for the last 35 years.

As he approached the 35-year-mark at the church, Isenhour started considering retirement, but he didn’t want to leave the church without a clear plan for what’s next.

On average, the typical pastor search process takes 12-24 months. In his book “Pastor Search,” the late Paul Powell, retired former dean of Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, wrote that a good rule of thumb is to allow one month for every year of the previous pastor’s tenure to find his successor.

Based on the law of averages and his long tenure at Arran Lake, Isenhour desired to take a more proactive approach as he contemplated retirement for the good of the church.

“I was looking at Arran Lake being without a pastor for at least three years or something,” Isenhour said. “I’ve invested too much time in that church to just walk away.”

A few years earlier, the church had hired Andrew Clark as its youth pastor. Isenhour quickly saw that the young leader had plenty of potential. After letting him preach a few times, Isenhour noticed the church responded to his preaching. He was also connecting with the young families the church needed to reach. Over time, Isenhour began to see Clark “like a son.”

Isenhour saw God was at work and the timing couldn’t have been better for the future of the church. In January 2023, he took the church’s chairman of deacons out for lunch to talk about his intention to retire and recommend the church tap Clark to succeed him. When they relayed the news to the rest of the deacons, all agreed with the plan.

Isenhour made it clear in April 2023, as he told the congregation of his decision, that he doesn’t have the power to name his replacement. They had to vote on it.

“I told the church that I feel it’s very biblical to have a successor,” Isenhour said. “We have Moses and Joshua, David and Solomon, Elijah and Elisha, and Paul and Timothy. So, it’s very biblical, even though it’s somewhat unusual in a church to have a pastor with a successor. But we’re praying it becomes more common.”

Soon after the announcement, the church formed a succession team from a diverse set of congregants. 

“The team went through a rigorous vetting process to ensure that Andrew was the right person for the job,” Isenhour said. “We involved the entire congregation in the decision-making process, holding town hall meetings and Q&A sessions to keep everyone informed and engaged.”

When Arran Lake’s executive pastor left, Clark stepped into that role after previously serving as the church’s student pastor and then as discipleship pastor. In August 2023, the church officially voted to make Clark the next pastor by June 2025. However, because of the smooth transition so far, the church moved the date up to March 2025.

During this period of transition, where both men share the title of co-pastor, Isenhour continues to mentor Clark and do what he can to pass on what he has learned.

“Jeff has been pastoring this church longer than I’ve been alive, literally,” Clark said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of experience there. I also want to learn from that, and I’ve told a lot of our older church members how much I want to learn from them…. That’s just who I am. I’m passionate about disciple-making, and I think this illustrates it well — from one person living their life and pouring it into another.”

Building a clear succession plan 

Garry Baldwin, the pastor of Midwood Baptist Church near Charlotte from 2004 to 2023, first thought about transitioning the leadership of the church when he attended a 2017 Lifeway conference on pastoral succession. 

At the conference, Baldwin thought deeply about how to pass on leadership to the next generation. Through prayer and research on ministry succession, he felt God guiding him to find the right leader to take over and help prepare the new leader for the transition. He then shared this vision with his deacons and the church body, and together they started the search for the right man to follow him.

Eventually, the church found John Maiden, who had been serving as an associate pastor at The Church at Perry Creek in Raleigh. 

Baldwin laid out a detailed plan of how the church would transition from his leadership to Maiden’s. Before Maiden had even decided to come, Baldwin described the process on paper, including key milestones along the way.

According to that plan, Maiden would spend the first few months simply getting to know the church and community. Then he’d gradually preach more often and take on more responsibility within the church. Eventually, Maiden and Baldwin would serve as co-pastors before Maiden officially became the lead pastor in August of 2023.

Maiden believes the plan’s clarity helped to ensure the transition’s success. Without the written plan ahead of time, he might not have even taken the position.

“One of the key ways Pastor Garry led through the effort was through prayer and preparation,” Maiden said. “He prayed for God’s wisdom and the right person and prepared the congregation for what the transition would look like and what would be needed. For me, as a young pastor about to take on my first lead pastor role and move from Raleigh, where we had family, it was important to have a clear plan in place before making the move and planting our roots.”

Since Maiden became the church’s lead pastor last August, the church has continued to reach people and grow. Many young families, including 20 adults, have joined the church during that period.

Ready for an exciting future

As Scoggins concluded his final sermon as the pastor of First Baptist Hendersonville, he focused on gratitude, thanking the people who had been a part of his ministry for the nearly two decades he had served as the church’s pastor. 

“I especially am grateful for Pastor Justin who God has raised up, who’s so visionary,” Scoggins told the congregation in his last sermon as senior pastor. 

“Y’all got the best days ahead for you.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Tobin Perry is a freelance writer with more than 20 years of experience writing about faith and ministry. This article originally appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of the Biblical Recorder magazine.)