Section 2Section 2
The Senior Pastor’s Role
Senior Pastor is a big job
Pastor Henry Schorr has been our senior pastor for 40 years. In this role, he has provided three major areas of leadership:
1) Spiritual oversight – pastoral care and maintaining Biblical faithfulness in all ministries.
2) Executive leadership – leading our church’s staff and providing vision, planning and strategy.
3) Preaching – teaching us God’s word each week from the pulpit.
As the church has grown into five campuses, the job has become bigger and bigger, and Pastor Henry has grown and adapted to take on the challenge. However, as Pastor Henry himself has said, taking on a role like this is very challenging, takes a heavy toll on a person’s energy and carries a spiritual weight.
Pastor Henry will now pass off the spiritual oversight and executive leadership aspects of the senior pastor to Pastor Kent, and he will continue to serve as our lead preaching pastor. In this role he will report to Pastor Kent. Pastor Kent will take on spiritual oversight and leadership – overseeing the many ministry areas at Centre Street Church, casting vision, deciding on strategy and generally ensuring that ministry is getting done in a Spirit-led and Biblically faithful way.
Sharing the load
This model helps to ensure that some of the work is shared and it allows other people to exercise their gifts as preachers/teachers. This will allow Kent to focus more fully on spiritual oversight and leadership. Kent will certainly preach on a regular basis, but less often than Pastor Henry.
The senior pastor will oversee teaching
As with any ministry at CSC, the senior pastor will provide oversight and will be responsible for ensuring that preaching and teaching is Biblically based and theologically sound. He will set direction and ensure the ministry is done well.
A role for Pastor Henry
The fact that Pastor Henry will continue as lead preaching pastor means that we will continue to hear from him about as often as we have in the past as he unfolds and explains God’s word to us. Pastor Henry will also have the title of pastor emeritus, and he’ll be an ambassador for our church, finding ways to advance our mission and build our church.