Church Residency - We Don't Have a Choice Anymore
by Dave Miller
Leadership Pathway is in its fifth year of helping churches recruit, support and develop their next leaders through coaching and field experiences of a church residency. Over those five years of launching church residency programs my tune has changed…
2017“Somebody should help churches think about how to do leadership residency”
2018“Churches really need to take more intentional steps towards launching a church residency. I guess we’re going to do this.”
2019“Yes you need to hire a full time staff person, but you should also really try to launch a leadership residency.”
2020“You guys should do what that other church did with their church leadership program. You can do this. We will help you launch a church residency.”
2021“This is the best season ever to launch a church residency.”
Today“You really don’t have a choice anymore. It may not be with us, but you must launch an intentional church residency program.”
Leaders are faced daily with the pressures of ministry. It’s been here for two thousand years and will continue to be here.
An image of people not getting much done ;)
What’s new today is we still don’t have consistent and sustainable ways to develop future, qualified leaders. The Big Quit is not new. It’s just the current clickbait in your social feeds. Hurry up and click that. You can fix last year’s problem over the next 9-18 months. Last year’s problem was you couldn’t find a staff leader.
You must get ahead of this problem. You must grow more than you think you’ll need.
If your church is advancing and you do not have a clear plan to launch residency you are behind. Since before Lp began we’ve talked about the role of the teaching church like a teaching hospital. Reality is today we need a thousand churches to take up this call. When I google up “church residency programs” on my Google-er, I think there appear to be a couple hundred. I could be wrong. Is that what you see? That’s great. We are on our way, but is the needle moving yet? It is not.
If you are reading this on a Friday, or a weekend, or during the summer…don’t sweat it…just forward this to someone who wants to get traction and tell them “please go make this happen for our future.”
If you want to do this with us click the magic button below.