How Executive Pastors Can Guide Their Teams Beyond Growth Barriers and Sustain Long-Term Health

In his influential book Predictable Success, Les McKeown provides leaders with a roadmap for understanding the life cycle of any organization. He describes how businesses, nonprofits, and churches alike move through identifiable stages—each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and challenges.

For executive pastors, Predictable Success offers both a mirror and a map. It shows why some churches thrive for decades while others plateau or decline, and it outlines how leaders can help their organizations move toward a stage of sustained, balanced growth that McKeown calls Predictable Success.

Understanding the Organizational Life Cycle

McKeown describes seven stages in the life of any organization:

1. Early Struggle – The launch stage, where survival is the only goal.

2. Fun – Energy is high, growth feels exciting, and momentum builds.

3. Whitewater – Complexity increases, and informal systems begin to break down.

4. Predictable Success – The “sweet spot” where vision, structure, and innovation align for sustainable growth.

5. Treadmill – Over-structuring begins to stifle creativity and responsiveness.

6. The Big Rut – Bureaucracy takes over; innovation and adaptability are gone.

7. Death Rattle – The organization is near the end of its life.

For churches, these stages can be seen clearly: the excitement of a church plant (Fun), the challenges of managing growth (Whitewater), and the balance of effectiveness and innovation in a mature ministry (Predictable Success). But just as in business, many churches unintentionally slide into Treadmill, where processes outweigh passion, and ministry loses vitality.

Why Predictable Success Matters for the Church

The stage of Predictable Success is not about numerical growth alone—it is about sustainable effectiveness. In this stage, the church has:

• Clear systems that support ministry without stifling it.

• Healthy accountability structures.

• The ability to innovate while staying aligned with mission.

• Leaders who know how to balance vision and execution.

For the church, reaching Predictable Success means being positioned to faithfully live out its mission over the long haul, not burning out during growth spurts or suffocating under bureaucracy.

The Executive Pastor’s Role in Leading Toward Predictable Success

Executive pastors are uniquely positioned to help their churches navigate the complexity of growth and arrive at Predictable Success. Their blend of strategic oversight, operational leadership, and relational influence makes them the steady hand guiding the ship through “Whitewater” and into stability.

Here are three ways the executive pastor can apply McKeown’s principles:

1. Balancing Vision and Structure

One of McKeown’s insights is that organizations succeed when they balance the visionary drive of entrepreneurs with the discipline of structured leadership. In the church, the lead pastor is the visionary, while the executive pastor provides the operational discipline to make vision happen.

The executive pastor ensures that:

• Systems support ministry instead of hindering it.

• Processes remain flexible enough to adapt as needs change.

• Staff and volunteers understand not only the “what” but also the “why” of the church’s mission.

By guarding against over-structuring, the executive pastor helps prevent the church from sliding into Treadmill.

2. Building a Healthy, Aligned Team

McKeown emphasizes that Predictable Success requires strong, aligned teams that can execute consistently. For the church, this means developing staff who are both spiritually grounded and organizationally effective.

The executive pastor plays a central role by:

• Recruiting and developing leaders who complement one another’s strengths.

• Building accountability into staff culture.

• Leading candid conversations to address dysfunction before it becomes a problem.

Healthy teams lead to healthy churches, and the executive pastor is the architect of that alignment.

3. Sustaining Innovation Without Chaos

Churches in “Fun” or “Whitewater” often have plenty of ideas but lack the systems to implement them consistently. Conversely, churches in Treadmill may have systems but have lost the creativity to innovate.

The executive pastor ensures that innovation remains alive while chaos is kept at bay by:

• Establishing clear decision-making processes.

• Testing new initiatives on a small scale before rolling them out widely.

• Keeping innovation tied directly to mission, not “the flavor of the month” or some other “silver bullet” solution.

This balance allows the church to stay dynamic without being disruptive.

Avoiding the Slide into Treadmill

McKeown warns that even organizations that achieve Predictable Success are vulnerable to drifting into Treadmill. For churches, this often shows up as:

• Prioritizing policies over people.

• Saying “we’ve always done it this way” rather than continuously working to improve in every area.

• Becoming risk-averse and slow to respond to cultural shifts.

The executive pastor helps guard against Treadmill by:

• Regularly reviewing systems to ensure they serve mission, not the other way around.

• Encouraging staff to evaluate ministries based on fruitfulness, not just longevity.

• Creating space for prayerful discernment and Spirit-led innovation.

In other words, the executive pastor acts as a cultural safeguard, ensuring that structure never eclipses creativity, innovation, and risk taking.

Final Thoughts

Predictable Success by Les McKeown is not just a book for business leaders—it is a guide for anyone seeking to lead an organization toward sustained effectiveness. For the church, the principles are very relevant.

The executive pastor, as both a steward of systems and a shepherd of people, is uniquely positioned to help the church not only reach Predictable Success but also remain there. By balancing vision with structure, cultivating healthy teams, and sustaining innovation, the executive pastor leads the church into a season where ministry thrives—not for a moment, but for the long run.

The great challenge is not just getting to Predictable Success—it is staying there. And that requires leaders who are as committed to faithfulness and health as they are to growth. The executive pastor is one of those leaders, guiding and ensuring the church is effective in accomplishing its mission.