Chip Bernhard Talks About His Succession Experience

Summary

In this episode of the Church Talk podcast, hosts Jason Allison and Rob Paterson engage in a deep conversation with Chip Bernhardt, a recently retired lead pastor. They discuss the importance of church growth, succession planning, and the challenges of transitioning leadership. Chip shares his personal journey into ministry, the significance of engaging outside help for succession planning, and the need for humility in leadership. The conversation also touches on the creation of supportive communities for pastors and introduces Chip's new venture, The Church Hub, aimed at coaching and encouraging pastors in their ministry.

Reach out to Jason or Rob to find out more about succession planning. 

Jason@churchtalkproject.com

Rob@churchtalkproject.com

Connect with Chip at The Church Hub

https://www.thechurchhub.org/

Follow us on Insta @churchtalkproject. www.churchtalkproject.com

Transcript

Jason Allison (00:00)
Welcome to the Church Talk podcast with Rob and Jason. I am so glad Rob that I get to see you again. This is, I just feel like hours are like days, days are like weeks between our, ⁓ man. No, it's good to see you. How, how are things going way up there in the jungle of Loudonville, Ohio?

Rob Paterson (00:14)
Ha ha ha!

You know, Jason, it's interesting, you know, you know this, like at my church, our kind of mission, you know, is the idea that we wanna multiply spaces where people can come as they are, encounter Jesus and leave different. And, you know, for, I would say, I don't know, like the last five or so years as we were getting ready to retire our mortgage and be debt-free and all that stuff.

we kind of shifted gears a little bit to start thinking about what are the long overdue capital improvements we need to focus on? How do we kind of take care of the things that are gonna help us, especially in a small town, continue to grow if we really wanna sustain a multiplication movement and plant more churches? So we've been sort of in the weeds and we really in a lot of ways still are in all of those weeds, still trying to figure out like those things. But here in the last couple of weeks, I've had a couple people reach out to me

about planting churches in our region. And so to go from, you know, that sort of being the ultimate goal, but wanting to kind of secure the home front to now having those, like some of those conversations, we got an elders meeting this weekend. We're gonna like really begin to talk seriously about these potential connections. ⁓ you know, that has me.

Jason Allison (01:18)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Rob Paterson (01:42)
really energized in this season, even though there's things, I got a funeral in a couple days, like all the things, right? But man, I am energized and fired up to think that there are people who are far from Jesus that may know about Jesus because of some cool things we might get to do and partner with others to accomplish.

Jason Allison (01:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm anxious to hear more as all those things unfold and develop. But yeah, well, I'm excited. I've been on the road so much lately. Like I literally went from I think I spent eight of the last nine weeks I've been on the road somewhere, even if it's just a day or two. And, you know, tomorrow I hop on a plane, head to Philadelphia and straight from there to Denver and then Denver back home and then to.

Chip Bernhard (02:04)
Thank

you

Jason Allison (02:28)
Eastern Pennsylvania. So lots going on. But in the midst of it, I'm just seeing the ups and downs of ministry, right? People who are having things like, you know, energized like you. And then I'm talking to other people who are really discouraged and some weird things are happening. And so I just think today is a good day to bring in somebody and talk about some stuff that is not about here and now, like right this minute, you know, because a lot of people are, you know,

thinking about all this other stuff and trying to basically put the fires out, right? That's all they're doing. And I want to give everybody permission for the next 35, 40 minutes to hit pause on the world and start thinking in a bigger picture, thinking long-term and really diving into that. Because we have with us a guy that I met at the Small Church USA retreat and

The irony is he does not come from a small church at all. It's an extremely large church actually. But we got to know each other because he's now, he has graduated or retired or whatever you want to call and is involved in some more network stuff and bigger picture stuff. And so we got to talk in and I said, man, we got to have this guy on the podcast because he navigated a succession process for his position.

It's still fresh, so I don't want to say successfully completely yet because you know time will tell. But we have with us Chip Bernhardt. Did I say that right? my gosh, it's just one of those days. Well, well, yeah. Yeah, OK, alright, well you are, you know, a recently retired lead pastor, but now you're the pastor emeritus of Spring Creek Church in.

Chip Bernhard (03:58)
Yes, yep, yep. You're one of the few that actually say it right. Sometimes it's ⁓ butchered, so it's burned hard, yes, just like you said it.

Rob Paterson (04:03)
Woof.

Jason Allison (04:17)
Kewokie, Wisconsin. I just love the name. Yeah. And, and you, we were talking beforehand, you've been a long time trustee at Cedarville university. And we know some, we know some of the same people you've even shared, served as the chairman there. And you know, you, I know that, that university over the last, I mean, I was there for a year back in 1990. So, you know, a hundred years ago.

Chip Bernhard (04:19)
Perfectly pronounced, yeah.

Jason Allison (04:43)
and you were there like 200 years ago. like, we've seen that thing grow. But I know it is a completely different campus now. And you were there for a lot of that growth and all of that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I just want to welcome you, first of all, to the Church Talk podcast, man. Welcome in.

Chip Bernhard (04:45)
Yeah, yeah.

It's been fun.

Hey, thank you. I'm happy to chat about this stuff.

Jason Allison (05:02)
Yeah, well, I mean, maybe let's get started. Just tell us. mean, I gave the highlights, but maybe tell us a little bit about you. Like, when did you get into ministry? That kind of stuff. What you know, let's just open up the hood. Who is Chip?

Chip Bernhard (05:19)
You don't have enough time to go too deep here. But yeah, I came to know the Lord through the influence of my parents who I watched as a very young boy come to know the Lord. And I could see the changes taking place in our home. And we went from a very church that didn't really, couldn't spell the Bible, trying to figure out, the only thing we knew as a family was we got to find someplace that teaches the Bible.

That's all we knew. And my dad was a tool and die maker. My mom and dad never went to college. But they knew we got to a church that teaches the Bible. So we went around a year just about trying to find a church and ended up driving about 20 miles to a church in Toledo, Ohio. I grew up in Monroe, Michigan. And there we heard sermons about the Bible. And it wasn't long after that, I started asking questions about my faith.

One more one evening as I sat there in bed. I realized Well, actually it was during the Cuban Miss missile crisis. If you Google it, you'll find out about that And the rumor was you know, we could go into a war and I'm a little kid and I'm thinking they bombed my house I'm in trouble because I've never made peace with God and I mean literally that was the thought in a little boy's mind and

Jason Allison (06:16)
Ha ha.

Chip Bernhard (06:34)
I called my parents in and with tears running down my cheeks, I turned from his sin, asked the Lord to take it away and become my savior. And that day, of course, changed my life. In high school, we moved to Toledo in Ohio so I could be closer to a really good youth group. That youth group was a blast and it really helped my spiritual journey. And somewhere in there, two things happened that spurred me on into ministry. I had a Jewish speech teacher.

whom after I gave my final exam speech, I tried to, it was a persuasive speech and it was 12 minutes and you had to use the chalkboard. I know there's no such thing anymore, ⁓ and yes, yes, and they're whiteboards now, but I tried to convince the class to trust Jesus as their savior.

Jason Allison (07:14)
I remember them.

Wow.

Chip Bernhard (07:24)
I was scared. And afterwards, you know, the class kind of critiqued me and his opening line was, how many of you were offended? And he goes, well, I was, I'm Jewish. And I thought, I just flunked this speech. I flunked the class, like he's going to flunk me. And I was scared out of my mind. He said, I'll stay after class. Well, I did. And I literally was.

Jason Allison (07:39)
Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (07:49)
sick to my stomach. And he said, I want you to know you did a really good job. He says, you didn't convince me, but you did a really good job. And secondly, I think you need to think about doing something in public speaking for your future. And I went, well, that's not where I thought this was going at all. And I breathe deep and I mean,

Jason Allison (07:50)
Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Hahaha.

Chip Bernhard (08:15)
I went from thinking I was flunking to I got an A to you might, you might, now he didn't know this, but maybe you have some gifts here, spiritual gifts. Not long after that, my lead pastor at the time, we were friends with, I think we were out fishing in a boat and we were friends with the whole family. he said, Chip, have you ever thought about being a pastor? I said, yeah, yeah.

But he said, I think you need to pray about it. And I said, he goes, I think you have gifts that might, well, I'm not real smart, but when you have a speech teacher telling you this and you have a pastor telling you this, I started to think there might be a calling on my life. And so several months later, I made a public commitment that if God wanted me, I would do it.

Went to Cedarville, went to Grand Rapids Seminary, met my wife, Margie, at Cedarville. And right out of seminary, went to New Jersey, was an associate pastor of youth ministries and whatever else, and a church plant of about 300 people. During those almost seven years, church just about more than doubled. And I loved it. They were wonderful people. And then a church here in Wisconsin.

suburb of Milwaukee, Pee-wocky, and came calling. Their pastor had moved to another church and I was 31, didn't really want to live in a cold climate. They offered me to come and pulp a supply. I did. I thought that would be the end of it. They would never call me back and

I think when they ran out of names and candidates and they didn't know where else to go, they said, well, we always got this guy we can call back. And they did. truly God made it clear we were supposed to come here. And I'm not a mystical person. I don't get visions and dreams, but I do believe God directs people and prompts people. And he did. And he used his word. He used circumstances and all of that. And so

Jason Allison (10:05)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (10:11)
38 years ago, well 39 years ago this month I candidated to be the lead pastor here. And it's been a wonderful, wonderful, we were running about 500 at the time I came, Church I Left was running a little more than that. And so I was in over my head early as I started, had to build a staff. I didn't know a lot about that but

I think the story of my life is I'm not real smart, but I'm smart enough to know when I don't know, go find somebody who does. Really, I want to give that tip to any pastor who's watching. It's okay you don't know. We can't know everything and there's only one who does. But, and I had a professor who told me, whenever you're at a conference or when, go up and meet the speaker, ask him a question. You always can learn something from somebody somewhere.

Jason Allison (10:48)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Rob Paterson (10:48)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (10:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Paterson (11:09)
Mm.

Chip Bernhard (11:09)
And so

I've just had that in my head that whenever I don't know what to do, I find somebody who's a play ahead of me and I go try to find them and learn from them. virtually every challenge, problem, that's what I've tried to do. God has brought the right people in my life at the right time. And if I were to name them, we'd be out of time. ⁓ We've had a wonderful run. We outgrew our church, sold it, moved to 99 acres, about eight miles.

Jason Allison (11:28)
you

Chip Bernhard (11:38)
down the road, remodeled an existing building and have built about 130,000 square feet since. Five major capital campaigns that are exhausting but exhilarating all at the same time as, ⁓ sounds like Rob, you have just come through. And it's just a wonderful group of people. I love them deeply. They know I do.

Jason Allison (11:50)
yeah.

Chip Bernhard (12:00)
built staff, had great, great teams. I love our team. And somewhere along the way, I started to use M.L. Moore out of Minneapolis to help us find a couple of pastors. And they did a really good job for us. And I told the principal of the group, Nancy Moore, I said, someday I may come call you back and you can help guide me through.

Jason Allison (12:10)
Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (12:26)
The day when I need a transition. So I told her eat your vitamins stay healthy. I'll be back and and Somewhere in About three years ago. I had an executive pastor who's five years older than me had an administrative assistant who's three years older than me and then there's me

Jason Allison (12:30)
Ha ha.

Chip Bernhard (12:45)
And to all of us go out at the same time would be probably more than ⁓ would be wise. So the executive pastor retired first, replaced him with some amazing God things. And then our executive assistant retired, brought in somebody that was already there. Fantastic woman that retired and I'll...

Jason Allison (12:49)
Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (13:05)
wonderful gal that replaced her. And then it was kind of my turn. so, Margie and I prayed a long time about the timing of it all. Of course, I was working with the NC behind the scenes. I wanted to announce this when I thought in the calendar of the church, would set the church. My goal has always been how can we set the church up to win and set my successor up to win. so February of

Jason Allison (13:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (13:30)
2024, I announced it first to my pastors, other lay leaders, eventually the congregation. We employed Enel Moore and started the journey.

Jason Allison (13:40)
Yeah. Well,

yeah, I mean, that's the thing is that there are, well, I think Carrie Newhoff came out with a statement, a podcast, whatever we said, you know, something to the effect of 160,000 pastors will be retiring over the next 10 years. And, you know, if you think there are 300,000 churches, that's half, right? ⁓ There is a large percentage of pastors

Rob Paterson (14:03)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (14:06)
Who will be retiring? And let's be honest, we don't have a bunch of young bucks in the, know, sitting on the bench waiting. And I, so I was talking with my boss yesterday about all this and here's my theory. It's purely untested and there's absolutely no data behind it. Okay, this is just me thinking out loud, but you know, I'm looking around and I think that succession planning as a concept is extremely new.

in America, mainly because, first of all, the baby boomer generation, right? They're still hanging on to a lot of the senior pet, but there's a whole bunch of them and they're all going to retire in a very short window of time. And, you know, in the, in the nineties, especially, mean, Rob and I are gen Xers, you know, a lot of us were looking around going.

Well, I'll never, can't be a senior pastor because all these boomers are taking over everything and they're never going to retire and I'm going to be forgotten. So we started our own churches and because we were Gen Xers and kind of rebellious, you know, jerks at times, we said, screw the denominations. We're doing our own thing. Right. So we started all these independent non-denom type situations. And, you know, before that, if you're part of a denomination,

you're going to retire, there's a system in place that already tells you what to do. mean, especially Methodist, Episcopal, Anglican, Presbyterian, you know, there are systems that are already there and it's kind of top down. But now we're in a time where there's so many non-denominational or, you know, I'm part of Converge, which is Baptistic, and so it's very, the Church is the highest authority, each individual Church is independent.

Chip Bernhard (15:24)
yeah. ⁓

which is similar to what our church is, yeah.

Jason Allison (15:46)
Exactly.

so now of a sudden, boomers are at the age where they're starting to retire. And us Gen Xers aren't the associate pastors, you know, like they were to step into that role. We started our own thing and probably already burned it down and then built another one, by the way we operate. but like, you know, we're at this, we're looking around going, there's not a next next wave of pastors. And we're thinking about this succession planning, but

Really in the church world, that's not a concept that we've really wrestled with until the last five to 10 years. And so this is new. This is new ground. Rob, you and I were sitting in a meeting last year and we had 10 of the kind of largest churches in our region. The pastors were there and we were talking through just stuff and we looked around and we realized of the 10 pastors, and this represents churches of.

Chip Bernhard (16:20)
I agree. I agree.

Jason Allison (16:38)
6,000, 15,000, 8,000, you know, these are big churches of the 10 pastors in the room. Five or six of them will be retiring within the next eight years. And, that's like, that's pretty significant. And so I feel like this idea of planning for your succession, uh, is, mean, it's a major deal right now. Uh, and I don't care if you're a church of a hundred or a church of 10,000.

Rob Paterson (16:49)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (17:06)
Anytime there's transition and change, it's hard, but it just gets tricky when the pastor is going to retire. They're not called to another church, right? It's it's because that's kind of like, you know, you rip a bandaid off really fast, right? Well, they kind of announce it two months later. They're gone.

Chip Bernhard (17:21)
It's a completely different animal to be called to another church and to have a succession where a guy retires. Completely different.

Jason Allison (17:24)
Yeah!

Yeah, so I'm just curious. Like, let's just get this conversation going with where did you guys start when you first had that idea? You know what you called the animal more person and you start what? Where'd you start and what help us walk through that?

Chip Bernhard (17:45)
Well, I had to kind of layer it out in terms of communicating it to the congregation. then, you know, our board that I strongly suggested NL Moore be our

consultant in this journey. so we had to vote to do that, brought her in. she just kind of started to lay out best practices for what. And then of course, every church has their own flavors and can certainly speak to that. Part of the journey then was a all church survey. What does the church, what's the health of the church and what do they want?

Jason Allison (18:20)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (18:23)
to be the key characteristics of a new shepherd. That was in this very comprehensive, I think it was 85 or 90 questions. It was a private, anonymous, emailed out survey. And that got mailed to...

Jason Allison (18:34)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (18:46)
I don't know, 1500 or 2000 homes. I think we had over 1100 or 1200 turned in. They then compile that and then they came back and put a written report together and then actually came back and, and with all of our professional paid staff and all of our lay leaders in a room, kind of walked through what the survey said. And I was scared spitless.

Jason Allison (18:50)
Mm-hmm.

I bet.

Chip Bernhard (19:17)
It was basically my final report.

Jason Allison (19:19)
Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (19:20)
And

Jason Allison (19:20)
Did you feel a little bit like you did when that Jewish speech teacher called you and said, stay after class?

Chip Bernhard (19:24)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

I kind of wanted to sit in the back corner in case I needed to get out or they decided to vote me out because they realized how bad it really was. I wasn't that insecure, but know, crazier things have happened. And so then, you know, they explained, she explained the results. The results were not negative. It was very, very, very positive. And,

I breathed deeper and described a theological fit. They wanted somebody that was theologically compatible and somebody who was a good preacher, but also a leader and someone with warmth and shepherding skills. And that's probably not unlike every church in America would want, but. ⁓

Jason Allison (20:08)
Yeah, but

I want to hit pause here for a second. I mean, this was not a small church. Like the, the, the gift set that a person would need to lead a church, the size, right? That, that, that your church had reached is a different set of skills than just a guy that has a pulpit and, 70 people. And, and, you know, like, it's a different, I don't mean one's better or I just mean, it's just different.

Rob Paterson (20:31)
Mm.

Chip Bernhard (20:35)
It's

just different, right, right.

Jason Allison (20:37)
And I also want to say, hey, that idea of doing the assessment, the evaluation, whatever, you know, the survey, I agree. I think churches need to engage things like that more often. Like instead of waiting until a succession is happening, you know, getting in that routine every three to five years. Man, I think that might help. And there are different ones out there. I'm working on one myself just to help with our churches.

Chip Bernhard (20:49)
I did.

Jason Allison (21:03)
But anyway, I didn't mean, I just felt like that we got a highlight.

Rob Paterson (21:06)
Yeah, yeah. And guys, yeah. And just this is such a simple thing, but I'm sure most, you know, churches, staffs, whatever, do things like this where with my staff, I mean, we're constantly reading a book together and we like books that like give information, help us understand our personality, our wirings, our whatever. And so at least once a year we're reading a book like that that has some kind of assessment tool.

Chip Bernhard (21:07)
I think it was very helpful.

Jason Allison (21:09)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (21:36)
And a question that we just ask all the time, so at least once a year, is for every role on our paid staff, you know, what does the person who comes after you in your role need to have that you have, right? Like, so what gift or skill do you possess that is absolutely essential to doing that job in this church? And then what's a deficiency that all of us have that the next person

who follows us ought to have so that our church can be better served. And just two simple questions, but again, it provides so much helpful information, especially when you start asking things like that before you're in the thick of I'm getting really close to the end and I've got to find someone quick.

Chip Bernhard (22:24)
Those are great. Wish I'd have done that for 38 years. It's too late for me now.

Jason Allison (22:25)
Yeah.

⁓

Well, so you do this survey assessment at Allchurch, and this is Allchurch. You compile the data. It helps you see areas that were strong, maybe areas that weren't necessarily bad, but you

Chip Bernhard (22:35)
Yep. Yep.

Yep. And then what else,

like, and what that becomes, excuse me, Jason, for interrupting you, but what that becomes is really low hanging fruit for the next guy to come in. He has instant wins. He can address. So one of the things that came up, I'm not embarrassed to tell you that we weren't perfect. And, we didn't have a well-written pathway of discipleship. I was pretty clear in my head.

Jason Allison (22:52)
Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

Chip Bernhard (23:08)
Like if you just could get in my head, you know, you could have found that out, but it, and so, that'll be something he's working on. And, and I think it will be an instant win for him to, help put that together and go out. That congregation said they wanted it. It wasn't on a huge, we hate the church because of it. It was just a, a simply, something that the survey actually helped the new guy. And I liked that. mean, I,

Jason Allison (23:15)
Mm.

Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (23:31)
Getting an instant win early is a really good thing. So the survey was really important. Then they, I mean, it took forever to forever meaning a couple of months, but when you're, don't know the timeframes of these things, but then they went shopping and looking for names. they have people who spend all day looking for

Jason Allison (23:41)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (23:53)
lead pastors in our situation who might fit our theological grid. have databases. have thousands of literally tens of thousands of people that they go networking with and, um, and then try to get a batch of names. And they said they would basically take the summer to do that. It came back in the fall with, I think, four names for us to process, um, or late summer, somewhere in the end of August, early September.

we had a search team that was elected by the congregation. I got to have some input into who was on there, but ultimately it was the congregation, who had to affirm them. They were the no brainers kind of everybody knew these would be the people on the team. no staff were on our team. No paid employees were on our team. and, and then I think the next big thing is.

The awkward role of what does the outgoing guy, what role should the outgoing guy have in picking his successor? And I didn't want to pick my successor. And I've seen that happen. That didn't go well. And I will say, I didn't ever hear, I did read books on it. I want it, I want to do this well. We have area churches that have done it poorly.

Many churches do it poorly. I really wanted to do it well. And so the story of my life is go read and ask some other people who've done it. So I interviewed people that had done it. I want to learn how to do this. so I knew I shouldn't pick them, but I also was surprised and I know this sounds stupid, but at the end of the thing, do you know what the number one question was by our congregation? What does Chip think?

Rob Paterson (25:20)
No.

Jason Allison (25:21)
Mm-hmm.

38 years!

Rob Paterson (25:38)
Mmm.

Chip Bernhard (25:40)
I wasn't anticipating.

I know you see it. I didn't see it. I know. it just shows you, you know, but I, and so because of that, I had to have some role in this because I had to endorse him. so, the, the, our journey was those four names did not work out. Not one. They brought one to campus. It was not a fit.

Jason Allison (25:44)
Ha

Chip Bernhard (26:03)
I didn't have to kill it. It was killed, before I, you know, but I agreed it just was not the right one. And I think everybody at that point was discouraged. if we're failures, especially our late team, like we didn't do it. We apparently we didn't bring the right one here. What's wrong with us? And, and I.

Jason Allison (26:10)
Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (26:24)
I was involved in, think, one Zoom call where we talked doctor. So basically my role, we all agreed would be a theological ⁓ compatibility role. When you're an independent church and you don't have the denomination from the top down, it became clear I needed to do that. And so that was my role. was theologically and both from a systematic theology standpoint of the doctoral statement kind of a thing.

Jason Allison (26:32)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (26:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (26:51)
as well as just kind of a philosophy of ministry and theological implications of things. And so that became my role that first of all it didn't work out. They brought one in. It was a wash. We were discouraged. somehow we met and we just looked at 142 years. I think we're 143 years old this year now. God has never failed us.

Jason Allison (26:56)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (27:18)
He's not going to fail us now. And we needed to regroup and tell ourselves the truth of what God said to us. our timeframes are not God's timeframes. We learned during the journey and we needed to pick ourselves up and trust the living God to, in his time, bring us to the right one. And I had to give that speech to myself first and then to the rest of the team after that.

Rob Paterson (27:20)
That's right.

Jason Allison (27:37)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (27:43)
And we did, and I think that was like September-ish. And in November, we got a notification of a man that the search team had found that bubbled up and sure looked like a theological fit and had the experience that level that we felt would be appropriate. And that is the one then eventually that we went through the journey.

brought him here, I think three times. I think our team went to visit him once, actually went in his home. It was quite a, it was a very thorough journey. And again, my role was theological. I wasn't in most of the meetings. I was in one meeting with several of the search team, not all, and a couple of pastors, another meeting with a few of the other pastors.

and I, Margie and I got to take them out to dinner. So it's a somewhat limited role but at least I could say I've done my best to quiz the theological perspectives of this guy and as far as we can humanly tell he's one of us.

Jason Allison (28:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rob Paterson (28:46)
That's great. Chip, I really appreciate your humility. mean, you've said multiple times, even in just this short conversation, you know, like I'm not the smartest guy, you know, when I, I, well, you know, and even just when I don't know something, I want to look for someone, find someone who does know so that I can learn from them. That, that, that, I mean, I just think that's what a beautiful kind of posture of humility that God can, can use, right?

Chip Bernhard (28:58)
Well, it's true.

I hope that...

I hope that encourages guys, I really do. It's okay not to know. And it's okay to find somebody who does.

Jason Allison (29:18)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (29:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think so many people in ministry feel that stress and pressure. I need to hear from God. I need to know. I need to figure it out. And so just you're right. That encouragement just a lot of times we don't know and that's okay. It's so good. So I wonder, you know, having gone through this, you know, maybe someone's listening in and they're like, yeah, like I'm getting to that point where I need to start looking for someone because I'm not doing this forever.

Or maybe someone's, you know, in their 30s or 40s and they're like, that's so far in the future. I don't need to, you know, to do any of that. What would you say to someone listening who, you know, might be in either one of those places? Like, obviously you've learned some things going through this process. when should, when should somebody start this process? How should they like, you know, begin, even if they're maybe a couple of decades away from the end of their ministry?

Chip Bernhard (30:20)
I think you need to tell yourself when you're 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, I want the church to be better after I leave than when I was there. Start telling yourself that. Because subtly, you kind of think nobody's as good as me. And I'm sorry. You do start to think that. And you have to tell yourself now.

A really good transition means he's going to come in and take it to another gear. And I said that to the congregation. And I said, if you think I'll be discouraged when this guy comes in and you grow quicker than when I was here or whatever it is, spiritually, we see the spiritual. mean, he's my pastor and I want this to go well. And so I would say that, first of all. Secondly, I would say.

Jason Allison (31:05)
Mm.

Chip Bernhard (31:08)
I think the attitude of the outgoing guy is the most important thing in setting up the new guy to win. I've learned it. I was taught it. It's more true than what I was told. It's really right. ⁓ My attitude, my words, my tones, my conversations.

Jason Allison (31:25)
Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (31:31)
with people and from the pulpit when I would speak, would, had to be, I want him to win. want to set the church up to be better than it is today. the best days of our church are in front of us, behind us. And I think I stood up the day of the vote.

I was asked if to, know, I didn't push myself in, but they said, you know, we'd like you to speak to this. And I said, I'm going to say something. I suppose it could be controversial. I don't know. But we have prayed like crazy for almost two years. have. We know this guy's belly button and underwear size, for goodness sakes. I mean, we know we know as much as we can know. I don't know what else we would need to know.

Rob Paterson (32:12)
No.

Jason Allison (32:16)
Yeah.

Chip Bernhard (32:19)
Wouldn't it be amazing if God gave us a unanimous vote? Now in a big church, that's probably impossible. And it was, it was 99 point something percent. I think we had six no votes out of all the votes that were cast, figure out the numbers. no, here's the truth. Those were people who really didn't like me anyway. So that was their way of getting back to me.

Jason Allison (32:24)
Yeah.

And you're probably going to have that many people who just didn't read the thing right and check the wrong box.

Chip Bernhard (32:46)
That really wasn't a reflection on the new guy at all. But it was, let's say it another way though, a 99 point something percent call. I believe the, and he interviewed great, okay, fantastic. But because,

They knew I was ready to receive a new guy, that it was the time to do it, and that I had endorsed him and checked his doctor now. The outgoing attitude matters. And I don't have any regrets about that part of this journey. And I would say that to guys getting ready to do it. You got to get ready to hand it over. And you know, I'm six months out now.

My last Sunday was April 27th, which was a Sunday after Easter. By the way, P.S., that's a great Sunday to retire. The Sunday after Easter. mean, that's Super Bowl Sunday for us, right? I mean, that's the best day of the year. And that's the way I remember my last Sunday at the church. It was fantastic. We had record attendance.

Rob Paterson (33:40)
Yes, that's a great idea.

Jason Allison (33:40)
Hahaha

Chip Bernhard (33:56)
In Wisconsin, had 4,000, 3,900 and almost 4,000 people here on three services on Easter Sunday morning. It was crazy exciting. Next Sunday we retired. I miss the people. So for six months, we're not attending. We're giving the new pastor space and they don't need me annoying. You know, people say, oh, how's Pastor Chip and Margie doing?

Jason Allison (34:16)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (34:25)
They don't need that. that's best practice. And at six months, I'm going to check in. I already have checked in. And if it's, we're going to be gone, some in Florida this winter, but eventually in the spring, we want to attend back at the church. And maybe there's some small role I can play.

Jason Allison (34:27)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (34:44)
But I have in my mindset now, there's our pastor. That's my pastor, that's your pastor, and we need to pray that he does well, and he's gonna do things differently than I did. And I want him to. And I think those things help set it up for the new guy.

Jason Allison (34:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I think, you know, a couple of common themes I'm hearing just as you're telling your story, you know, I'm hearing, hey, look for some kind of assessment to help gauge, you know, what needs to come next. I'm hearing you say get outside help, right? I mean, you used in a more.

Rob Paterson (35:01)
So good.

Chip Bernhard (35:18)
⁓ I,

we could not have done it with outside help. unless you have a denominational leader that can walk you through these steps. There were, I would say every couple of weeks I had a question. I could call the consultant and, get help for what's my role. Hey, I want to stay in my lane, but I want to lead too. You know, how do you do this? And I, and having somebody who's walked through that with multiple churches.

Jason Allison (35:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (35:46)
⁓

made me look good.

Jason Allison (35:50)
Well, yeah, yeah. And here's the thing, like I want to make it clear to our listeners, you know, used in Elmore. I've had some dealings with them over the years and great, great organization. You know, I happen to work with Matt Steen at chemistry staffing and I know Matt does that. Yeah. And so, and I know a couple of, so my, my point in this is if you are a church of your pastor and you're saying, Hey, this is

Rob Paterson (35:58)
They're great.

Chip Bernhard (36:05)
And I know them and they're good people too. Yep. Yep.

Jason Allison (36:16)
I see this in the future, the near future, and you just want a connection to a resource. Send us a note. We will connect you to someone. We don't get commissioned. We're not doing it because we're making it. We literally will just help you find someone to work with. so, yeah.

Chip Bernhard (36:27)
No, no.

If you only

get that from the takeaway of this, and they said, well, can you afford them? No, you can't afford not to. right. To be honest with you, it really wasn't that expensive. considering, I think, this costs in the business world, it's dirt cheap. But it's really important for independent churches, I think, to get coaching through that journey.

Jason Allison (36:40)
Right.

Rob Paterson (36:40)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Allison (36:46)
Mm. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. One other theme that I'm hearing you talk about is, you know, communication was really important. And even the order in which you communicated to people, like you started with the board. And I'm sure in that process, you guys pulled out the, you know, the bylaws, the constitution to say, okay, what do we need to make sure is up to speed? What do we need to make sure we need to do? Am I right?

Rob Paterson (37:13)
You

Chip Bernhard (37:15)
Well, I did that, I did that a year or two before, to be honest with you. And, and, and I had it memorized and, we followed it and, and the congregation just felt comfortable because we knew what the rules said we were supposed to do. We followed it. did it. They knew we had thought this through well, and that gave them peace that, you know, this was being done decently.

Jason Allison (37:18)
Exactly.

Yes.

Chip Bernhard (37:41)
And in order and I you know, haven't said this but I want to add this just as a PS My wife played a big role in this thing You know, she's by my side all of these years many many nights. I'm gone. She's home, you know, schlepping it out with the kids and and lonely and and We prayed a lot together. We Cried some together in this journey. I this was hard

emotionally hard for me to let go. having her and she and I on the same page feeling clearly called of God to do this at the right time, gave me real peace of mind and strength of character that this was the right thing to do. And my PSS is one of the great benefits of retirement has been, I never even thought of it, I'd never read this in a book. The book I write, maybe this will be included.

Spending extra time when you're retired with your spouse where you can say your prayer and read scripture and read a devotional together and not have to hurry off to work or get to a meeting. My wife and I have enjoyed some of the most precious moments in devotional prayer for our grandkids, for our church, for the new pastor. I don't have to worry and rush off. I had nothing to do. We can pray an extra 10, 15 minutes, you know. That has been...

Rob Paterson (38:37)
Hmm.

Chip Bernhard (38:54)
It's so special. It's a bonus in retirement I wasn't expecting.

Jason Allison (39:00)
I love that.

Rob Paterson (39:00)
Yeah, Chip is,

as you've shared with us today and I just, love your story and really appreciate, know, your time and willingness to share it, not just with us, but with our listeners. But the one thing I'm really going to take away from this is the importance of just us preparing our own mind and hearts for like this season, because like you said, you know, we can have those thoughts of, of, Hey, like nobody's going to be quite as good as me because God sort of.

uniquely gifted and called me for this place and I've been here for a long time and I have all these relationships and there's that part of so many people that it's like, I don't want it to be harmed but if it takes a little dip for a while, man that could be good for ego. Man, we gotta prepare and pray that stuff out of us before we get to those transition points so like you said, the church can just be better, go to a new level.

benefit and be blessed by like the next season of leadership. Just that idea of us needing to do that work so we can really celebrate fully what God is doing through this next leader. It's just unbelievably important. And I just thank you for that encouragement and emphasis.

Chip Bernhard (40:12)
welcome.

Rob, a proud pastor is really ugly. It's really ugly. I mean, you've seen it. It's, it's not good. And, and that's not to say I'm not a proud pastor. Trust me, I, I'm as normal and human as anybody in as you guys are. But you gotta, you gotta do business with that stuff if you're going to go through this.

Jason Allison (40:16)
Mm.

Mm.

So, yeah.

Chip Bernhard (40:39)
And so, yeah, that's a great lesson.

Jason Allison (40:41)
Yeah. Hey, so we got a just a minute or so left, but you are kind of moving into a new venture as well. And we could probably do a whole nother podcast on this new venture. And we probably will at some point, but maybe give us just a little taste of kind of what you're doing, because I think this is another resource that would be a huge blessing to the pastors and leaders that that listen to this podcast.

Chip Bernhard (41:05)
Well, I'm a shepherd at heart. I like, I love it. I love, care for the sheep and I think God has given me those gifts to do that. So through supernatural circumstances that only God could put together, I am going to be a part of a group called The Church Hub, thechurchhub.org. And it's just getting started and it's going to offer coaching.

for pastors, worship pastors, student ministry pastors. And I'm going to be the coach for lead pastors. not only I will do some coaching specifically with lead pastors, but then I'm going to also help coach other pastors who will be coaches of lead pastors. And I've kind of just developed as a mission statement for me that I want to encourage and equip pastors to be faithful.

Jason Allison (41:46)
Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (41:53)
and fruitful. Encourage and equip pastors to be faithful and fruitful. I've called our cohort the Barnabas Room. Any pastor should know what that means.

Jason Allison (41:54)
Mm, love that.

you

Chip Bernhard (42:05)
Son of encouragement, it's a room, it's a safe place. It's a place where you can ask questions. It's a place where you can vent a little. It's a place where you can say, how do I deal with this situation? I have some ideas to kind of generically start us off, but it will be a monthly cohort call as well as a second.

More personal kind of approach to both prayer and encouragement. I find you guys may There's a lot of discouragement in pastoral ministry today it is hard and While I went out, you know Sunday after Easter You could do another 16 podcasts with all the discouraging moments of my life and talking about how hard it was and the in the days I felt like an idiot and I thought I should quit and

Jason Allison (42:38)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chip Bernhard (42:55)
It wasn't all perfect. It never is. No. And so we all, sometimes you need somebody in your corner. If you use the boxing illustration, right? Where you got the guy, he cleans out your cut, he gives you a little water, he's rubbing your shoulders. Come on, you can go in another round. I want to do that for pastors. And so the Barnabas Room,

Jason Allison (42:56)
Right. Wasn't all unicorns and rainbows, ⁓

Rob Paterson (43:21)
Hmm.

Chip Bernhard (43:23)
is going to kind of be a place where I can do that. And I've got a lot of excitement and energy. I think God has given me kind of the next chapter for Chip to do. So it's the churchhub.org. You can probably just go there and find out more. And I'd love to talk to anybody interested in that.

Jason Allison (43:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I'll, of course, put that in the show notes and stuff and that'll be great. But Chip, thank you for your time. I mean, obviously you've now got tons of time because you're retired and just sitting around, but.

Chip Bernhard (43:52)
you know, grandkids have, have eight grandkids. So they've taken up a little of that time and I'm, I'm loving every second of it.

Jason Allison (44:00)
That's awesome. Well, man, I appreciate you. I've really enjoyed, you know, got to know you a couple of months ago and I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. So I'm sure we'll stay in touch and maybe we'll have to do a follow-up, you know, a year in. Are you still as pleased with the process or, or is there something else, you know, or who knows? God does what God does. And our job is to respond in faithfulness.

Rob Paterson (44:00)
Hmm.

Chip Bernhard (44:25)
Exactly. And I know, you know, I'm in the center of God's will right now and, you know, the world will change 16 times in 12 more months.

Jason Allison (44:34)
Yeah, well, thank you for your time and to our listeners. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well to our listeners, if you want to find out more, please reach out. We will obviously put you in touch with Chip through the new website and all the stuff and we appreciate you. Hey, everybody out there, we love you. We are cheering for you and we can't wait to hear more stories. So take a moment and.

Chip Bernhard (44:37)
Hey, you're welcome. to chat with you guys. God bless you.

Jason Allison (44:57)
Hit do a comment or review, like and subscribe, send us a note. can, there's all the ways you can connect with us. We appreciate you. Have an amazing week.