If there’s one aspect of the Purpose model of church structure that you really need to get, it’s that you need to resign as a single Congregation Pastor before you do it.

I don’t mean resign in the sense that you hand in your notice. Rather I mean in your heart you have to stop thinking of yourselves as only responsible for “that” congregation at St Something Church. To move to something like the Ms model of a church staff team, you need to start seeing yourself as the pastor of the whole church. Everyone. No matter what congregation they go to. Even if you’ve been the 8am silver-haired pastor for 20 years… if you’re going to take on the Membership M, you have to choose which role is going to come first. Either you’re going to be the 8am pastor who happens to try and get people to welcome well so people join well, or, you’re going to pastor every single soul at all 4 congregations towards being welcoming and loving to their brothers and sisters in Christ and help them invite people to join whatever congregation well.

This shouldn’t put us off… it’s exactly what the senior pastor has to deal with as any church grows and as there are several congregations… He has to see himself as the pastor of all those people, not of those congregations.

To put it another way, the Ms structure of church stops staff teams from thinking so structurally about ministry.