A commitment to being this type of church is at the core of all we do. Perhaps you could evaluate your church or organization through these six criteria that have now become values that we try to live in to with our partner churches.

How would you rate your church in owning these six values:

At the end of a leadership pathway is not a nirvana where young twenty-somethings “finally get it right.” We should think of a leadership pathway more like a two-way street of influence where the student may at times becomes the teacher.

While we get asked to do summer-long or year-long engagements, we have chosen to let those go and focus on two years. We get asked by churches as well as candidates about the two-year thing.

We led a series of round table discussion with dozens of church leaders with over 800 years of combined leadership experience in small and large churches in a variety of settings. We asked two questions: a.) what are you looking for in your next hire? and b.) why didn’t that last hire work out like you thought it was going to?

I think a lot of pastors were thrown in the deep end of the pool during their early years in full-time ministry. I get it, ministry is hard when you get started. You have to learn how to swim while getting some water up your nose. I think that kind of development has surely produced some grit in this generation of church leaders, but I think it’s also produced a false assumption that young leaders should be taught the same way.

A commitment to being this type of church is at the core of all we do. Perhaps you could evaluate your church or organization through these six criteria that have now become values that we try to live in to with our partner churches.

How would you rate your church in owning these six values:

This is a picture of a simple coaster that sits on my desk. Every morning I walk to my desk and typically set my coffee cup down on it.

Senior and Executive Pastors tend to say one of three things when the topic of residency comes up:

What we believe, and the stuff we say over and over…in 13 tweets. Or a baker’s dozen. By the way…can bakers not count or are they just nice? We’re not sure.

It’s going to take a new kind of leader to lead in the local church. And we need them now more than ever before. This is what drives our passion for creating church leaders at Leadership Pathway. What we do is fueled by a passion to see a new generation of leaders prepared for ministry through the local church.

We are always trying to find ways to succinctly say what we care deeply about. We hold six shared values with the churches which we partner with: Coaching, Obligation, Endgame, Filling the Gaps, Best Practices, and Leadership Development.

Leadership Pathway (Lp) is thrilled to partner with Perimeter Church of Atlanta. We are searching for their next worship resident. You can read more about that opportunity here. We thought we’d pick the brain of Leah Sowell, the Director of the Residency program and learn all we could about their journey doing residency at Perimeter.