PASTORS AND THE PETER PRINCIPLE - Christianity Today

I sat alone on the sofa in the basement, my feet pulled under me and a pillow crunched against my stomach to somehow loosen the knot of dread. After just five months in the church, I was living my worst fear: one of my elders had questioned my ability to pastor this church.

I’d moved from blue-collar Michigan to the sophisticated business culture of Toronto. My one fear, expressed secretly to my wife during the candidating process, centered on the administrative expectations the church would have of me. I felt somewhat incompetent in administration and had browbeat myself about it throughout my ten years in Michigan. Now the words of the elder, though expressed as concern and not criticism, made me think I had run up against the “Peter Principle.”

Lawrence Peter wrote his book The Peter Principle in 1969 as a tongue-in-cheek analysis of, as the book is subtitled, “why things go wrong.” The Peter Principle states: “Every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Two corollaries fill out this principle: (1) In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties, and (2) work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The premise is that a worker will be promoted until the job requires more than his or her talents, training, and capabilities can give it. An outstanding employee in middle management may become incompetent in upper management, according to the Peter Principle.

Several unpleasant scenarios face people who have reached their level of incompetence. They may become entrenched at that level with no more promotions. Sometimes they are fired, since they can’t handle the increased responsibility. Or the stress of continually trying to achieve impossible expectations may drive them to quit.

Ministers face the situation described by Lawrence Peter. Although the apostle Paul spoke of “adequacy from God” being given to those who serve him, that adequacy may have little to do with the factors parishioners often use to evaluate them. A minister’s spiritual strengths may not save him from the repercussions of perceived professional incompetence.

Three Areas of Expected Competence

Most churches assume ministerial competence in three primary areas. First, a pastor is supposed to be competent in dealing with people, able to get along with the chairman of the board, the transient, and everyone in between.

I remember preaching for my first call, giving the best sermon in my limited repertoire. As we went out afterward, my wife whispered, “Honey, that was terrific!” Later, when we met with the pulpit committee, they were stony-faced. No one even mentioned my sermon. Every question revolved around how I got along with people. The reason, I later learned, was that the former pastor, although great in the pulpit, was considered weak with people. He’d managed to offend all but a few, so the committee wanted to make certain I was different.

When I candidated for my present ministry, the search committee grilled me thoroughly about counseling. They wanted to make sure I was adequate, at least.

Second, pastors are supposed to be competent in proclamation. “Nice guys” strong in people skills but weak in preaching are tolerated in many churches, but people want the pastor to say something significant on Sunday, and say it tolerably well. Pastors today compete with first-class communicators from television, radio, and even video (which brings teachers like Swindoll into the Sunday school right before the pastor preaches). Fewer parishioners will tolerate boredom during what one of my elders sweetly calls “the inevitable” on Sunday.

Third, pastors are expected to be competent in production. They must have the ability to get things done and make things happen, whether numerical growth, greater financial contributions, a successful building program, or flowers on the altar every Sunday.

The importance of pastoral production is in direct proportion to the number of Type-A, task-oriented individuals in the church. Production’s importance increases exponentially to the number of such personalities on the boards. These people tend to measure the pastor quantitatively based on their own drivenness. They want their pastor to set measurable goals, and competence is measured by the ability to attain these goals.

Few Omnicompetent Pastors

Pastors may have great strengths in one of the three areas and be adequate to strong in another, but few are strong in all three. And we generally know the names of the thrice strong.

Most of us have one area in which we quickly find ourselves out of our depth. When people think that area is crucial to ministry, tension and stress mount. We begin to believe we have crashed head-on into the Peter Principle.

Several factors can compound this problem.

The present pastor suffers in an area in which the former pastor excelled. Most churches swing in their view of what they need in a pastor. Say the former pastor excelled in administration, was somewhat strong in proclamation, but showed weakness in people skills. As a result, the search committee tends to look for a pastor strong in people skills and at least adequate in proclamation. Strength in administration is not as important, probably because it has been done so well.

In both churches I’ve pastored, that has been the scenario. People enjoy having someone more people oriented, but unrest grows when weakness begins to appear in a previously strong area. Few pastors have escaped hearing, “But Pastor Fleeble did it this way!”

A woman declared something similar to me once when I was emotionally vulnerable, and I fought back tears as I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not Pastor Fleeble and can never be what Pastor Fleeble was.”

The pastor is insecure or defensive about areas of weakness. A pastor may have grown up insecure about the abilities he possesses. Perhaps nothing he did as a child was good enough for a perfectionist father. Such a home atmosphere can make a person driven, hypersensitive to criticism, and quick to quit. Put in ministry, where criticism is as common as pollen, such a pastor rapidly believes he is in over his head.

The pastor previously has experienced a major embarrassment in the area. Some pastors are pressured to leave their churches because of perceived weaknesses. And since no one enjoys licking a finger and placing it in a light socket a second time, a previous failure can color the pastor’s next ministry. At the first hint of criticism, the pastor may conclude he is incompetent and quit before he is hurt.

A friend in ministry has endured several forced exits. He now fears pastoring, concluding-wrongly, I believe-that he is not cut out for pastoral ministry. “Whatever it takes for pastoral ministry,” he told me, “I haven’t got.”

Candidates sell themselves as competent in areas in which they aren’t. More and more in the candidating process, pastors are forced into the business practice of selling themselves to search committees. They must convince the committee that they are competent in all areas, since search committees appear to be looking for the pastor who can do everything. The search committee then sells their congregation on all the candidate’s abilities, to prove their own competence at finding the perfect person.

That sets the stage for pastoral failure, for no pastor can live up to this false billing. The greater the build-up, the higher the expectations, and the less likely a pastor can fulfill them.

I read the document one search committee produced about the candidate they were presenting: “We have gotten the man John MacArthur said we’d never get. He is one of the top Bible expositors in the United States. Every church he has been in has grown and prospered.”

I thought, This guy doesn’t have a chance. If I were a member of this church, I’d think I could sit back and watch this man do everything automatically. That is what occurred. In six months that pastor resigned, citing a lack of support.

What actually happened wasn’t a lack of support, but a presumption of omnicompetence. The search committee had given the impression this man would single-handedly solve the church’s problems.

Unprincipled Coping Mechanisms

How a pastor deals with ministry shortcomings becomes key. I’ve noticed some unprincipled coping mechanisms that cause greater harm to the church.

Making scapegoats. This practice is known as “covering one’s tail.” I knew one pastor who went through a series of youth pastors. He managed to blame each one for all that was going wrong in the church, most of which resulted from the pastor’s inability to administer the church program. Actually, anyone can become a scapegoat, even former ministers: “Things are a mess because he left them that way.”

Hiring incompetent staff. One of the best ways to look good is to have someone else who looks worse next to you. Thus, the presence of someone more incompetent than the minister makes people overlook the pastor’s failings.

Hiring a sweet but bungling secretary may provide a twisted sense of security for a struggling pastor, who thinks, At least I’m not as bad as she is.

Magnifying side issues. In this common diversionary tactic, the pastor, when confronted with his incompetence, raises a side issue, often of a personal nature.

When constructively confronted by several board members about his interpersonal problems, one pastor went on the attack about the board members’ children not being under control. The next week he preached on “The Qualifications of Board Members,” with heavy emphasis on children being under control. Board members’ families became the flaming issue, effectively taking the heat off the pastor’s weakness. He made few friends by this tactic, however, and underscored his interpersonal incompetence to those aware of what had happened.

Demonstrating abject humility but changing nothing. I confess, this is my favorite. I cultivated this technique through childhood. When confronted with my inability to perform up to expectations, it’s easy to be contrite and emotional, promising to do better but never doing anything to change, secretly hoping never to fail in the area again, that by some magic the weakness will be transformed.

None of these coping mechanisms works for long, and each is employed at the cost of personal integrity. If these tactics are wrong, which are right?

Getting the Best of Peter

Fear of the Peter Principle can be overcome, but not easily. We must renew our view of ourselves, change the way we candidate, and integrate new attitudes and actions in our ministries.

Since our struggle with personal inadequacies often occurs because we have faulty expectations for ourselves, overcoming requires that we rightly judge our abilities. If we can discern our strengths and weaknesses, and learn to discuss them openly, we’ll learn how to rest easy under the shadow of the Peter Principle.

But if we expect to be capable in all areas of ministry, always making everything seem under control, we’ll be killed by the effort. It’s murder to think that anyone ordained for ministry ought to be able to do what we can’t.

When we insist on conforming to the image of the omnicompetent pastor, we become our own worst enemies, filled with self-doubt and the stress of looming failure. Unable to handle the rising tide of insecurity, we tend to build defenses against those who would criticize. Leaks quickly form in such dikes, however, and numerous pastors have been swept away when there are no longer enough excuses to plug all the holes.

Freedom begins with an honest assessment of our ministry strengths and spiritual gifts. Pastors who feel unable to assess themselves accurately can seek the services of those they trust to help them. A number of consultants provide just such a service: The Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth (P. O. Box 91990, Pasadena, CA 91109) and the Center for Christian Leadership (3909 Swiss Avenue, Dallas, TX, 75204), to name two.

When I sat reeling from the insecurity brought on by the elder’s criticism, my wife came to my rescue, as she has done many times. She put her arms around me and began to talk about my strengths-what they were and how God had used them in her life and others’. She was specific, factual, and honest. “Yes,” she said, “you’re not the world’s best administrator, but right now this church doesn’t need a top-notch manager as much as it needs your gifts and strengths.” When she was finished, perspective was mine once again.

Overcoming fear of the Peter Principle begins when I understand that God called me to do what he has uniquely gifted me to do. This understanding isn’t part of a scheme to avoid unpleasant ministry tasks. Rather, it means I know how to evaluate situations honestly so I can call for reinforcements when necessary.

I’ve learned a second strategy: to discuss with search committees and prospective congregations the fallacy of omnicompetence.

Candidating, however, is a minefield that unfortunately keeps many of us from feeling we can be open. Search committees tend to focus on incompetencies they perceive. Instead of contemplating where a candidate’s strengths could take their church or how their church can compensate for the candidate’s weaknesses, many committees simply seek to assure themselves that any apparent weaknesses in the candidate aren’t debilitating. Not facing and dealing with these weaknesses, however, only exacerbates problems later.

Peter Drucker, in The Effective Executive, puts into words what search committees might want to make their motto: “The effective executive knows that to get strength one has to put up with weakness.” Avoiding weakness (rather than maximizing strengths), Drucker goes on to say, is the best way to create a mediocre organization.

I find Drucker’s insight encouraging. The best executives aren’t omnicompetent, nor do they hire omnicompetent people. The only omnicompetent Executive chose Simon Peter-a man of great strengths and glaring weaknesses-to lead his fledgling church.

Therefore, as pastors, we need to be honest with search committees about our strengths. But we also need to confirm the reality of our weaknesses. With concerted effort, maybe we can shake the image of the omnicompetent pastor, and then the church can get around to using our real strengths.

At the same time, we need to make certain the church doesn’t suffer because of our weaknesses. When we’ve been open during candidating about our deficiencies, we can present strategies to the search committees: “I’m weak in counseling, but here are some plans to compensate.”

I’ve noticed several avenues open to honest candidates and committees:

1. They can bring in other leaders who are strong where the candidate is weak, which is just the opposite of hiring staff as scapegoats. In this case, the church looks for people with strengths complementary to the pastor’s to round out the ministry.

This plan needs to be discussed thoroughly with prospective staff members so they understand how they and their strengths will fit on the team. I’ve also found it wise to affirm the staff member regularly for his or her unique strengths and how they contribute to the church.

Recently our church hired a new staff person. We applied some of the common analytical tools to assess our strengths and weaknesses to find the holes in our ministry. Then we used that information for our search to find someone with appropriate strengths. When we narrowed our choice to two outstanding candidates, we noted that one of the candidates was similar to the present staff in strengths, where the other was radically different. We chose the different one.

2. They can utilize capable lay persons to compensate for known weaknesses. Although we may not like to admit weakness in an area in which people expect us to be competent, few lay persons turn aside from a cry for help. Most appreciate our honesty when we concede we need help, and they feel flattered that we respect them enough to ask them for it.

A former pastor of my church took direct charge over many church programs. This frustrated some lay people who likewise were strong in leadership and administration. They felt he allowed few opportunities to use their abilities. They are not frustrated now.

3. They can arrange training to bring the pastor’s weakness up to a level of adequacy. We can take courses, read books, or attend seminars offered in the areas of our weaknesses. A trusted lay person, strong in our area of weakness, can provide remedial training. Some pastors who have done this have reciprocated, offering the lay person help in an area in which the pastor is strong.

I’ve done this with the elder whose concerns about my administrative skills created such dread in me. We’ve worked on several projects together, and I’ve learned what makes for effective administration. On the other hand, he’s let me teach him how to be patient with people and how best to utilize their strengths.

But What If . . .

“Yes,” I can hear some frustrated pastor saying, “but what if I really am in over my head? What if I’m a flannel-shirt man in a Gucci-shoe church?” Sometimes the Peter Principle has kicked in, and there’s no getting around it.

Our newly hired associate had experienced something similar in a former church. He was converted later in life and then went to seminary. After seminary, he spent five years in a small-town pastorate. While there, he became convinced his strengths were in administration and working with people, but not in proclamation. Moreover, he’d lived in urban areas all his life.

This man had the courage-at 50 years of age, I might add-to acknowledge his skills could be better used as an urban associate pastor. He didn’t reckon this as a failure but as a learning process to determine how to be best used by God.

So the final way to understand and use the Peter Principle is to have the courage to admit when we’re in the wrong place-or the right place at the wrong time-and move on. And to know why we were in the wrong place so we won’t make the same mistake again.

The Peter Principle may well be the spark that helps us admit the myth of omnicompetence and strive wisely to compensate for our weaknesses. Then we won’t spend the rest of our working life at the level of our incompetence.