Ask a leader, “do you do leadership development?” and you’ll get a variety of answers that typically begins with “yes…” Then you’ll hear about books, or community, or devotions, or even mentoring programs.

Yet, today’s 20 to 25-year-old is unique and a challenge that will require a different approach.

What’s still going to be true in 2,000 years? One leader showing a new leader all the leadery-things.

A look at Lp’s Masterclass in Denver - October 2023.

Seth Godin calls these the REAL SKILLS for today’s workers.

We agree and it’s the basis of our coaching conversations.

Churches that launch a residency are looking to move towards a new reality of leadership development for their future.

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:

If you are a church leader looking to grow or replace staff, the hits just keep coming. Man…this is fatiguing. Our team feels your pain. I feel your pain.

Three Traps to Avoid That Will Just Waste Time:

1. The Over Engineered Trap. You think if you write the curriculum and iron out the process over the next year then you’ll be ready. THE TRUTH IS: No matter…

Is our church advancing?
Is our church a place where I believe someone could learn best practices for ministry?
Do I have a staff member who has proven they are a developer of people?

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?

What we believe in a baker’s dozen tweets.

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 and am challengd by the question: “Who’s the Next You”

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

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.

Leadership Pathway (Lp) matches potential ministry residents with churches that have committed to being a teaching church. We then coach the staff at the church in the best practices of equipping the resident for two years in 20Core Competencies in our coaching manual we’ve called a Guidebook.

About five years ago I did a series of roundtable lunches with senior leaders of churches. I asked them two questions:

What are you looking for in your next hire?
Why did you, or your executive pastor, have to fire someone on your staff?

After speaking with about 80 leaders across denominations, and from churches of all sizes we landed at about 150 general answers. I took this spreadsheet and had it printed at Fed Ex Kinkos (it was quite large) and hung one copy on a co-worker’s wall, and hung one copy on my office wall.

The title for this post could be “You Should Start a Residency Program at Your Church Even if You Aren’t Ready” because I know some great churches who keep putting off pulling the trigger.

I blogged here before about the importance of residency, and why churches should move beyond short internships. Recently, I’ve had a few conversations with church leaders that I know would be great providing oversight to a resident leader, but they simply couldn’t get approval from their executive teams. “We’re not quite ready,” is the typical response.