How Senior Pastors Can Build a Healthy Relationship With Their Executive Pastor
The relationship between a senior pastor and executive pastor can become one of the greatest strengths of a healthy church.
It can also become one of the greatest sources of tension.
Last week, we looked at the SP/XP relationship from the executive pastor’s perspective. This week, Holly sat down with David Whiting, my longtime friend, former senior pastor, and now a LeadingSmart senior consultant, to flip the conversation.
One idea rose to the surface pretty quickly:
If you hire an executive pastor, you have to give them real authority.
That sounds obvious. In practice, it’s much harder.
Give Your XP Real Authority
You hire an executive pastor because you need someone to lead.
Then they make a decision differently than you would have made it.
That’s usually where the real test begins.
If the decision falls within the responsibilities you’ve given your XP, that decision needs to carry your support, even when you would have handled it differently.
Otherwise, you haven’t really delegated authority. You’ve delegated tasks.
And your staff will figure out the difference very quickly.
If they learn that they can go around the XP and get another answer from the senior pastor, they’ll keep doing it. Before long, you’ve unintentionally undercut the leader you hired to help carry the organization.
Sometimes the healthiest response a senior pastor can give is simply:
“That’s an XP decision. Go talk to them.”
Even when you know the answer.
Even when you have an opinion.
You can always process the decision privately with your XP afterward. But publicly, you have to protect the authority you’ve asked them to carry.
Don’t Create Triangulation
This is one of the easiest mistakes for senior pastors to make.
Someone brings you an idea. You like it. You’re wired to move quickly, so you say, “Sounds great. Let’s do it.”
Then you find out your XP had already told them no.
Or they were still working through the decision together.
Now your staff member has learned an important lesson: if they don’t like the first answer, go find the senior pastor.
A simple question can prevent a lot of this:
“Have you talked to the XP about this?”
The same principle applies when someone comes to complain about your executive pastor.
Send people back to one another.
Healthy leadership teams don’t build trust through side conversations. They build it by dealing directly with the people involved.
Make It Safe for Your XP to Tell You the Truth
There’s a built-in power difference in the senior pastor/executive pastor relationship.
The XP knows that.
That means senior pastors have an added responsibility to make honest feedback safe.
Your executive pastor may need to tell you:
“You’re moving too fast.”
“The staff didn’t understand what you meant.”
“You need to have that conversation yourself.”
That feedback can be incredibly valuable, but only if your XP believes they can give it without damaging the relationship.
Senior pastors have to invite that kind of honesty.
Ask for feedback. Create regular space for hard conversations. And when your XP tells you something difficult, resist the urge to immediately defend yourself.
The strongest SP/XP relationships aren’t the ones where both leaders always agree.
They’re the ones where both leaders know they can tell each other the truth and still trust each other afterward.
Healthy SP/XP Relationships Require Trust
Every senior pastor and executive pastor relationship looks a little different.
But healthy ones tend to share a few things:
Clear roles.
Real authority.
Public unity.
Private honesty.
When those things are present, the relationship becomes a tremendous source of strength for the entire church.
When they’re missing, the entire organization feels that too.
Listen to the Full Conversation
In this episode of The LeadingSmart Podcast, Holly and David go deeper into the senior pastor’s role in building a healthy SP/XP relationship, including triangulation, giving real authority, creating space for honest feedback, and lessons David learned from years in the senior pastor seat.
And if you missed Part 1, Holly and I talked about the relationship from the executive pastor’s perspective. Listen to Part 1 here.
How We Help
At LeadingSmart, we help senior pastors, executive pastors, leadership teams, and church boards build healthier leadership relationships and clearer organizational systems.
That can mean clarifying roles and decision rights, strengthening the SP/XP partnership, navigating conflict, or simply getting an outside perspective on what’s keeping your team stuck.
Through consulting, executive coaching, and LeadingSmart Gatherings, we come alongside church leaders who want healthier teams and greater clarity for what’s next.