It’s that time of year…summer…heading towards fall and their internship or leadership residency is coming to a close and it’s time to make an offer for full-time ministry on to your team. Is this a finish line or a starting line? It’s both! And we should honor both of those milestones in this new leader's life. Congratulations! They did it. You did it. What are the questions to ask to avoid the pitfalls of making a great situation potentially bad?

We’re thrilled to have completed a companion product to our coaching book. It’s the same topics written from the residency point of view. It’s a game-changer.

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.

One tool we use to help young leaders get perspective we call Data Points. It’s a non-scientific way for a young leader to look back twelve or eighteen months and see objectively how they’ve been doing in key areas.

We mark the data against the timeline (across the bottom) as well as a grading scale of 0-100 vertically.

This is the first in a four-part series on helping young leaders get through the first year of ministry and helping them take the healthiest steps.

I learned from my long-time friend & Lp board member, Bart Rendel of Intentional Churches, that the best planning is done when in perspective.

Being overwhelmed with a pile of work can be daunting. It is especially troublesome early in a career of ministry. Potentially someone on your team is in their first “real” job. This could be a resident or the youngest and greenest among you.

“I can’t do it. I can’t keep up. Will this ever slow down? Maybe ministry isn’t for me,” began a coaching conversation I recently had. I’ve had a version of this conversation many times as a coach. And I admit I’ve had it many times in my head with myself, too!

I think we’d all agree that self-awareness coupled with an understanding of our own shortcomings is paramount in understanding how to set goals and strive for the next milestone of leadership.

If in your coaching & developmental conversation time you’ve hit a road block, and when you ask “How are you this week?” you are getting a predictable blank stare or the same old “fine" then perhaps this could help.

Leadership development is the ‘how’ to a young leader’s ‘why’ and ‘what.’

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.