Meet David Schomer, Student Ministry Worship Leader at Willow Creek North Shore Campus. This is his story on the impact residency had on his ministry training.

When I began in ministry there was this thing that churches did called, “summer internships.” I started in ministry the year Bill Clinton began his first term. Many of you reading this are too young to remember Bill Clinton as President, and yet, churches are still doing summer internships.

Ways in which summer internships work:

- Cheap (yet questionable) labor
- Keeps the college student out of his parents’ basement

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.

Over the last eleven years I’ve been in a church leadership conversation that sounds something like, “We’re looking for someone who is probably 29 – 32 years of age, and has built a ministry and ready to take their next step. Know anyone like that?”

No matter the role in a church, this seems to be the center of the target when it comes to looking outside for the next team member. When churches have depleted their internal pipelines, and connections, it’s time to go out and hunt.

An Open Letter to the Recent Grad who Desires to Be in Vocational Ministry,

Congrats on the accomplishment of your education!  

After 14 years of ministry, I have soaked on this question for the last eleven years, both inside and outside of Christian higher education, primarily on the practitioner side.  

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.