Pastor as CEO

Post Author: Krystal Leedy

As we watch Twitter tumble under the leadership of its new CEO Elon Musk, it is interesting to hear pastors called CEOs as well. Who are our role models if senior pastors are called CEOs? If we treat churches like a corporation, are we looking critically at the ethical problems exhibited by CEOs and corporate culture?

When I was in my first call in a large church, for the first few years, I wasn’t given regular personnel reviews. The form they did use were very binary in nature: “What are your strengths? Weaknesses? What went well? What was bad? Explain a time when you did something good. Explain a time when you did something bad.” And then it all culminated with, “How would you rate your performance on a scale of one to ten?” There were no real questions about faith or interest in where I saw the Spirit at work or where the Spirit was leading- perhaps because it was a form modeled on evaluation forms for corporate employees. 

The Senior Pastor I worked with was referred to as “the head of the organization” and the “Chief of Staff.” Now, technically, I understand that these titles are true. However, the further we got into the depths of corporate HR, the more I began to raise my eyebrows a bit. 

In books and in denominational and ecumenical gatherings, I have noticed many people talking about the pastor as the CEO of the church. A Chief Executive Officer runs a company in order to make money and to spend as little as possible. If we run a church with capitalist principles, we are more concerned about getting “butts in the seats” than we are about the transformation of people’s hearts because we are afraid of losing money. We are more concerned with marketing than liturgy. We are more concerned with what sells rather than the truth. We are also not going to be paying our workers fairly. The less you can pay people who work for you, the more profit the company gets. There is no incentive to practice ethics. Also, in a corporation, as I have learned from TikTok, HR is not your friend. These are often not people that can be trusted. HR is there to protect the interests of the organization rather than about the workers as people. 

Instead, perhaps Jesus Christ would be a better model of behavior for pastors than CEOs. As John Calvin honed: Jesus holds a threefold office—prophet, priest, and king. Being a prophet means saying things that people don’t want to hear. CEOs cannot do that with their shareholders. Being a priest for Jesus is also being an empath as well as a mediator. Empathy and mediation are not often qualities of CEOs. Being a king means ruling over a kin-dom that has no end, a kin-dom that we talk about lions lying with lambs and the last becoming first. In the dog-eat-dog world of corporations, I’m not sure that a CEO is ruling over a peaceable kin-dom.

Metaphors are important because they drive thoughts. Thought leads to behavior, and behavior leads to action. As a pastor, don’t be a CEO. You are not the leader of a capitalist entity.