Pastor prepares to hand over

How do you prepare your church for when you step aside as pastor? By building a legacy leadership team, says Pastor Tony Peters.

When Tony Peters planted The King’s House (also known as London’s Alive Church) in 2000 he made a bargain with God: “I’ll lead this for 20 years then I’ll pass it on to the next generation.”

And so, true to his word, he has spent the past few years building a legacy team to take over the reins as he now gets set to step aside.

The church Tony’s team will take on was birthed from a call of God in 1999.

After leading elsewhere for several years, teaching in a secondary school for 13 years, starting a Bible school for his church and serving in financial and eldership positions, Tony sensed God calling him “to step out and father a people”.

“It felt like a pastoral responsibility and I didn’t much like it!” he admits. But a prophetic word from American speaker Cindy Jacobs – “God is calling you to start a new church and pastor it” – confirmed the call, as did two other prophecies. So The King’s House was planted.

Tony and his wife, Shola, led the independent church for the next 15 years, until the time came to make good on the aforementioned bargain with God.

“We heard a talk which said it can take up to five years for leadership to transition, so in 2015, my wife suggested we should start building our legacy team. That way they’d be ready to take over by 2020,” says Tony.

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