The phone call came at twenty minutes past five on a Sunday morning. Pastor Ogundipe had collapsed in his bathroom in Akure, and his wife had found him on the floor, unable to speak properly. By the time the first service was due to begin, he was in the intensive care unit of the teaching hospital and the church he had founded thirty-four years earlier was full of people who did not yet know.
Chukwudumebi, the associate pastor, heard the news in the vestry. He had served beside Pastor Ogundipe for nine years. He preached perhaps one Sunday in six. He was loved by the young people and trusted by many of the elders. But as he stood there with the phone still in his hand, he realised how little he actually knew about running the church. He had never chaired a meeting of the board. He did not know which bank held the building fund, or who the signatories were. He did not know where the land documents were kept. He did not even know the password to the church’s social media pages, because the pastor’s personal assistant handled them and she reported only to the pastor.
He led the service that morning with a trembling voice, and the congregation wept and prayed. That part went well. It was the following months that were hard.
Pastor Ogundipe survived, but his speech and his right side were badly affected, and it was clear he would not return to the pulpit for a long time, if ever. Within weeks, there were three groups in the church. One wanted Chukwudumebi to be confirmed as senior pastor. One insisted that the founder’s eldest son, a successful engineer in Houston who had never been in ministry, should come home and “take his father’s place”. And a third, quieter group simply drifted away to other churches, unsettled by the uncertainty.
The tragedy was that the subject had been raised many times before. The elders had suggested a succession plan at least four times in ten years. Each time, Pastor Ogundipe had smiled and said, “When God tells me, I will know.” Perhaps God had been telling him through those elders all along.
Why the question gets avoided
Founders find succession difficult for understandable reasons. A man who planted a church with fourteen people in a rented classroom, who prayed it through its first building project and buried its first members, often feels about the church the way a father feels about a child. Talking about his replacement can feel like talking about his own death.
There are other reasons too. Some leaders genuinely fear that a successor will drift from sound doctrine. Some have seen other ministries collapse after a founder’s departure and do not want to risk it. Some have no pension, no house of their own and no income outside the church, so stepping back feels like stepping off a cliff. And some, if they are honest, have allowed their identity to become so bound up with the ministry that they no longer know who they would be without it.
In parts of our Nigerian church culture, there is an added pressure. Churches founded by an individual can come to be treated almost as family property, to be passed from father to son or from husband to wife regardless of calling or gifting. Sometimes a founder’s child is genuinely called and qualified, and there is no shame in that. But where the assumption is simply that the work belongs to the family, the church has quietly confused a ministry with an estate.
Scripture speaks into every one of these fears. And its consistent message is that a work intended to outlast its founder needs deliberate preparation for changed leadership. Waiting until a crisis forces the matter is rarely faith. More often it is postponement.
PunchlineThe goal of succession is the continuity of faithful service to Christ’s people, not the preservation of one personality’s control.
Be strong in the grace
Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy from a Roman prison, knowing that his own death was near. It is, in many ways, a succession letter. Paul is handing on the work to a younger man, and he tells him how to hand it on again:
Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.
Start with the first verse, because everything else rests on it. “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Paul does not tell Timothy to be strong in Paul’s reputation, or in his own gifting, or in the support of the congregation. A successor’s strength must come from the same source as the founder’s: the grace of God in Christ. If a ministry has been running on the founder’s charisma rather than on grace, the transition will expose it.
Then look at what is being passed on: “the things that thou hast heard of me.” The content of succession is the truth, the apostolic teaching Timothy had received. Paul is not primarily handing over a building, a brand or a following. He is handing over the gospel and the pattern of sound teaching. In the previous chapter he urged Timothy, “Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me” (2 Timothy 1:13), and “That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us” (2 Timothy 1:14). The word behind committed in that verse describes a deposit placed in someone’s safekeeping. The verb Paul uses in 2:2, “commit thou to faithful men,” comes from the same family. Timothy was a trustee of a deposit, and he was to place it in other trustworthy hands.
Notice the phrase “among many witnesses.” What Timothy received was not secret knowledge, passed privately from one favourite to another. It was taught publicly and tested openly. Healthy succession is transparent. The church should be able to see who is being prepared and why.
And notice the order of the qualities: “faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” Faithfulness comes before ability. A gifted preacher who is not reliable will not hold a deposit safely. But faithfulness alone is not quite enough either. The successor must also be able to pass the truth on. Paul’s vision reaches past Timothy, past the faithful men, to “others also”. He is thinking beyond his own lifetime and beyond Timothy’s.
In the verses that follow, Paul describes the kind of person who can carry that deposit: a soldier who will “endure hardness” (2 Timothy 2:3), an athlete who must “strive lawfully” (2 Timothy 2:5) and a farmer who labours patiently before he sees fruit (2 Timothy 2:6). Succession, in other words, is the long, patient formation of people who can endure, obey and labour.
Moses asks for a shepherd
When God told Moses that he would not enter the promised land, Moses’ first prayer was not for himself. It was for the people: “Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation... that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd” (Numbers 27:16-17). He had led Israel for forty years. Now he was thinking about who would lead them when he was gone.
God named Joshua and told Moses to lay his hand upon him and share his honour with him while he was still alive. Then God added something that is easy to overlook:
And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the LORD : at his word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation. And Moses did as the LORD commanded him: and he took Joshua, and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation: And he laid his hands upon him, and gave him a charge, as the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses.
Joshua’s leadership would not be identical to Moses’. Moses had spoken with God “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11). Joshua would stand before Eleazar the priest, who would seek the Lord’s counsel on his behalf. The structure of authority around the new leader was different. Joshua would lead within a shared arrangement, with the priest alongside him and the elders of Israel around him.
That is a wise lesson for every founder. Your successor does not need to be a copy of you. In fact, he probably should not be. The gifts that were needed to plant a church in a rented classroom may not be the gifts needed to shepherd a congregation of two thousand. A successor may lead with more consultation, or more structure, or a different temperament altogether. Continuity lies in the faithful service of Christ and His people, and that can be expressed through a very different personality.
Notice also the public nature of the transfer. Moses set Joshua “before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation.” He laid his hands upon him “and gave him a charge.” Everyone saw it. There was no ambiguity about who was now responsible. A private understanding between a founder and his chosen successor, known to no one else, is almost guaranteed to produce confusion when the moment comes.
Forty years of preparation
NuggetJoshua’s commissioning in Numbers 27 did not come out of nowhere. Scripture traces his preparation over decades.
He first appears in battle. When Amalek attacked Israel, “Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek” (Exodus 17:9). Moses gave him real responsibility early, and in a dangerous setting. Joshua led the army while Moses prayed on the hill.
He went with Moses up the mountain. “And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God” (Exodus 24:13). He was close to the leader in the moments that mattered most.
He was formed in the presence of God. After Moses had spoken with the Lord in the tabernacle, “his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle” (Exodus 33:11). Moses returned to the camp. Joshua stayed. His own walk with God was developing, not just his skill as Moses’ assistant.
He was corrected. When two men began prophesying in the camp, Joshua urged Moses to stop them. Moses answered, “Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets” (Numbers 11:29). Joshua was learning that leadership is not about guarding a leader’s position.
And he was tested in faith. As one of the twelve spies, he and Caleb alone urged Israel to trust God and enter the land (Numbers 14:6-9).
Then, near the end of Moses’ life, came this public moment:
And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with this people unto the land which the LORD hath sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it. And the LORD , he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.
“In the sight of all Israel.” Moses publicly declared his confidence in Joshua and gave him the encouragement he would need. And Moses pointed him past himself: “the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee.” A good founder does not leave his successor depending on the founder’s continued approval. He commits him to God.
The result, recorded at the end of Deuteronomy, was that “Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the children of Israel hearkened unto him” (Deuteronomy 34:9). The people accepted the new leader, partly because they had watched him prepared for so long.
That is the pattern Pastor Ogundipe never followed. Chukwudumebi preached, but he was never given a battle to fight, a board to chair or a decision to make. He was never publicly commended. When the crisis came, the church had seen him in the pulpit but had never seen him lead.
The generation that knew not the Lord
Joshua led Israel faithfully for many years. But Scripture records a painful sequel to his leadership:
And the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the LORD , that he did for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD , died, being an hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD , nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.
The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived him. And then “there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.”
Joshua himself had been carefully prepared by Moses. But we read of no Joshua prepared by Joshua. Israel had the land, the cities and the law. What they lost, within a generation, was a living knowledge of the God who had given them those things. The structures continued for a time. The faith did not.
That is a warning for every ministry. Succession is not finished when one leader has handed over to another. The deeper task is to ensure that each new generation knows the Lord for itself. The psalmist describes the goal: “That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God” (Psalm 78:6-7).
A church can have an excellent new senior pastor and still be failing at succession, if its teenagers are entertained but not discipled, if its young adults are given tasks but not taught the Scriptures, and if its testimony of God’s works is told only by the old. Succession planning therefore reaches well below the top role. It means raising, at every level, people who know God and can teach others.
Paul hands the Ephesians to God
On his last journey to Jerusalem, Paul called the elders of Ephesus to meet him at Miletus. He had spent three years among them, and he believed he would never see them again. What he said to them is one of the clearest pictures of a leader preparing a church for his absence:
And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more. Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men . For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
“I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” Paul held nothing back. Earlier in the same speech he says that he “kept back nothing that was profitable unto you” (Acts 20:20). Some founders guard knowledge as a source of power. They alone know the history, the finances, the relationships, the reasons behind decisions. Paul did the opposite. He shared everything the church needed so that it could stand without him.
Then he gave the elders a charge: “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). Notice that he entrusted the church to a body of elders, plural, and that he named the Holy Spirit as the One who had made them overseers. The church did not belong to Paul, and its leaders did not hold their office from Paul. They held it from God.
He also warned them honestly about what would come: “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30). Look carefully at that phrase: “to draw away disciples after them.” The danger Paul foresaw was leaders building followings around themselves. Personality cults can grow around a founder who clings to power, and just as easily around a successor, or a rival, who gathers people to himself rather than to Christ.
And then, finally, Paul did the most important thing of all: “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up” (Acts 20:32). He handed them over to God and to God’s word. Paul knew he could not hold the Ephesian church together from a distance. He did not try. He entrusted it to the One who could.
Continuity or control?
There is an important distinction at the heart of healthy succession: the continuity of faithful service to Christ and His people on one hand, and the preservation of one personality’s control on the other. Many succession arrangements fail because they confuse the two.
Here are some signs that control, rather than continuity, is driving the process.
The founder names a successor but keeps every decision, so that the successor holds the title without the authority. Or the founder steps down from the pulpit but continues to run the church from behind the scenes, overruling the new leader by phone. Or the successor is chosen mainly for loyalty and family connection, while more qualified people are passed over. Or the church is expected to remain frozen exactly as it was, so that every change by the new leader is treated as betrayal.
Sometimes the problem lies on the other side. A successor can arrive with contempt for what came before, eager to erase the founder’s memory and impose his own personality. The story of Rehoboam is a sobering example. When he became king, he consulted the older advisers who had served his father:
And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men, that stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How do ye advise that I may answer this people? And they spake unto him, saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever. But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him, and which stood before him.
The old men told him to be a servant to the people. He rejected their counsel, listened to his peers instead, and within days the kingdom split in two. A successor who despises the wisdom of those who served before him can destroy in a season what took a generation to build.
Healthy succession honours the past without being imprisoned by it. The writer to the Hebrews says, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow” (Hebrews 13:7). We follow the faith of faithful leaders. We do not need to preserve every one of their methods.
It is worth saying that churches organise leadership in different ways. Some appoint pastors through a denominational hierarchy. Some have elders or a board that select a successor. Some involve the whole congregation in a vote. Scripture gives principles rather than one fixed procedure, and sincere believers practise these differently. Whatever your structure, the same values apply: prayer, proven character, public recognition, shared oversight and the good of the flock.
Building a plan before you need it
PunchlineWhat does deliberate succession planning look like in practice? Here are some steps that any ministry can take, whatever its size.
Make an emergency plan now. If the senior leader were incapacitated tomorrow, who would lead on Sunday? Who would chair meetings? Who can access the bank accounts, the property documents and the communication channels? Write it down, and make sure the right people know.
Identify and develop potential leaders deliberately. Give them real responsibility early, as Moses did with Joshua. Let them chair meetings, manage budgets and handle difficult pastoral situations under supervision. Let the church see them lead, not only preach.
Share knowledge widely. Keep good records of decisions, finances, property and history. Avoid a situation where one person holds everything in his head or his phone.
Agree on a timeline. Many healthy transitions happen over two to five years, with the successor gradually taking on more authority while the founder is still present to support him.
Define the founder’s role after the transition. Will he remain as a mentor, a preacher on occasion, or step away entirely for a season? Clarity protects both leaders and spares the congregation from divided loyalties.
Care for the founder. Many leaders cling to their position because they have nothing to fall back on. Churches that want healthy succession should make proper provision for those who have given their lives to the work: a pension, housing arrangements, medical care. That is a matter of honour and justice. Paul says, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour” (1 Timothy 5:17).
Ensure the church’s governance documents and trustees reflect how the transition will work. Where there are legal and constitutional requirements, take advice from people who understand them.
And pray throughout. The process is spiritual from beginning to end. It should be carried by prayer, sought in the Scriptures and tested by the counsel of mature believers.
I visited Pastor Ogundipe about eighteen months after his stroke. His speech had improved, though it was still slow. He was sitting in his garden with his Bible on his lap.
He told me that the hardest thing he had ever done was to call the board to his house, eight months after the stroke, and tell them that he would not be coming back as senior pastor. “I held the church too tightly,” he said. “I told everyone I was waiting for God, but I was waiting for myself.” He had asked his son, on a long video call, to support Chukwudumebi publicly, and the son had agreed. “My son said, ‘Daddy, this church is not my inheritance. It is God’s.’ I should have said that to him twenty years ago.”
The following month, Pastor Ogundipe was brought to the church in a wheelchair. In front of the congregation, he laid his trembling left hand on Chukwudumebi’s head and prayed for him. He gave him a charge, in halting words, to feed the flock. Then he asked the church to follow their new pastor as they had followed him.
Some members had already left. Some of the damage could not be undone. But the church held together, and it has slowly begun to grow again. Chukwudumebi leads differently from his predecessor: more meetings, more listening, a stronger team of elders. And every few months, he drives to the old pastor’s house to sit in the garden and ask his counsel.
Do not wait for the phone call at twenty past five. Prepare those who will come after you while you still have the strength to train them and the voice to commend them. Commit the things you have heard to faithful people. And then commend them, and the church, to God and to the word of His grace.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- If you lead a ministry, what would happen if you were unable to lead from tomorrow? Who would know what to do?
- Which of the fears described here, about identity, provision, doctrine or family, makes succession difficult for you or your leaders?
- Who are you preparing, and what real responsibility have you given them?
- Where in your church is the next generation being taught to know the Lord for itself, and where are they only being kept busy?
- How can your church honour its founders and past leaders while freeing successors to lead in their own way?
This Week
Write a one-page emergency succession note for the ministry or department you lead. List who would lead in your absence, who holds key information, where important documents are, and who has access to accounts and communication channels. Share it with the appropriate people this week. Then choose one person you are developing and give them a real leadership responsibility, with your support, in the coming month.
A Prayer
Lord, the work You have given me is Yours and not mine. Forgive me for any way I have held it too tightly. Give me grace to prepare those who will come after me, to share what I know, to give real responsibility, and to commend others publicly. Raise up faithful people who will be able to teach others also. Keep the next generation from forgetting You. And when my season ends, help me to place the work into Your hands and into the hands of those You have chosen, trusting in Your word, which is able to build them up. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.