The conservative Anabaptist office of bishop

[steve-in-kville]

In our congregational context - we use the term lead pastor interchangeably with bishop, although our model of leadership is slightly different. We have both pastors and deacons, but our lead pastor is selected from the pool of pastor/minister/elders and serves a 5 year term. We'll often select that as a renewable term (by congregational ballot/approval but recommended by our leadership team) unless we know that it is someones final term due to our mandatory retirement age of 65. At that point, we'll outline a 10 year plan, with the new lead pastor selected to serve 5 years before their term begins to avoid any significant upheaval as the position transitions to a younger generation.

How long has this model been used?

We use a similar model. Except ours serve for four years and retirement is 70.