Pastor John Piper recently sat down with fellow theologians D.A. Carson and Tim Keller for an important discussion – it was time to compare notes on their succession for their churches and ministries.

The two pastors and professor (Carson), all in their 60s, wanted to first set something straight about aging during a videoed discussion posted on The Gospel Coalitionwebsite this week.

“The Bible prizes age. It’s not a sad thing to get old,” said Piper, who at 65 is the lead pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. “The future for the Christian is always brighter. I feel as excited about Jesus as ever and as eager to preach as ever, but transition is huge.”

Piper updated his congregation about his succession plan last Sunday, saying that he proposed to the elders that he transition from pastor for preaching and vision to full-time writing, teaching, mentoring, and speaking on June 30, 2014. The plan has yet to be approved by the elders.

Since April, elders at Bethlehem Church have been praying every Thursday for six weeks about Piper’s succession, the church’s structure, and funding.

Meanwhile, friend D.A. Carson, who is also 65, shared in the video that he wants to plan for his departure from several leadership positions he holds at various ministries.
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The youngest of three, Keller, 60, said his church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, is already in the process of succession. Redeemer is being divided into four congregations with each having its own lead pastor. Over 10 years, the church will take on a “collegiate model,” with Keller as the senior pastor and the others serving as associate pastors.
Read More from Christian Post Article; Carl Trueman comment below

On Pastoral Succession
Carl Trueman

Over at The Gospel Coalition, various churchmen have been giving their views on preparation for pastoral succession.

A couple of thoughts come to mind: the problem of preparing for a successor is inevitably more acute in some senses in a smaller church without the resources to have more than one full-time pastor. Such churches may not have the problem of losing the big name draw, which is surely a difficulty for large churches, but they may also lack resources to have an obvious, internal successor. Preparation for succession means something very different there and is more likely to be focused on making sure that the session or elder board is competent to oversee an external search.

Second, the history of the church is littered with tales of congregations which went spectacularly bad in an incredibly short period of time because the wrong successor was chosen. Liam Goligher recently recounted to me a piece of advice that Richard Bewes had once given him: `Always appoint a successor who is more theologically conservative than you are because most pastors mellow and move a little to the left as they grow older.’ It does not take great subtlety of intellect to anticipate what will happen if the appointment is thus made to the left of a current incumbent.

The elite watchmaker, Patek Philippe had a slogan at one time that was something like this: `You never really own a Patek Philippe; you merely look after it for the next generation.’ Thus it is with churches, in terms of the vibrancy of their life and their orthodoxy. Those privileged enough to be involved in the appointment of their own successors, or those who can merely shape the nature of the session which will oversee the search, need to make sure they make the right choices. They do not own the church; they are merely looking after her for the next generation.

Carl R Trueman is Departmental Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has an MA in Classics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Church History from the University of Aberdeen. This article is reprinted from the Reformation 21 blog and is used with their permission. http://www.reformation21.org/blog/