The bottom line is a large percentage of pastors and church leaders are approaching retirement or other leadership transitions without a plan for identifying and developing the next generation of leaders. If church leaders neglect to make the investment of time and practical training required to create a leadership pipeline, where will the next generation of church leaders come from?
Research from The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) reports that the share of M.Div. (practical ministry) degrees at theological schools declined from 42.4% to 36.2% between 2019 and 2024 and almost 40% of seminary students plan to use their degrees to serve in contexts outside the local church. By all indications there is a diminishing number of candidates to fill a growing number of church vacancies.
Another barrier in creating a leadership pipeline is the high costs associated with theological training. Between 2004 and 2018, the expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student in evangelical schools affiliated with ATS rose by around $10,000. The costs of seminary vary widely by denomination, but a student at an evangelical school can expect to pay somewhere between $8,000 and $15,000 per year in tuition and fees according to 2023 data.
According to 2021 data the average educational debt brought to theological schools by students during the 2019–20 school year was $32,642, and the average debt incurred in seminary was $33,537. Compounding the problem, according to data circa 2016, less than 10% of students received help from denominations or congregations to pay off these loans. Faced with beginning their pastoral ministry already upside down, saddled with significant debt, freshly minted church leaders are often forced to find supplemental and/or higher-paying jobs.
In the end, these financial struggles on top of other growing demands on pastors are contributing to leaders burning out or switching careers at higher rates than previous generations. Mark Quanstrom, dean of the faculty and director for the Center of Theological Integrity at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois, writes, “The best and most conservative estimate is that 30% of those who go into ministry are not in ministry five years after they begin, and an even greater percentage will not end their vocational career in pastoral ministry.”
Rebuilding the Leadership Pipeline
These obstacles to helping develop emerging leaders—and keeping them healthy for the long haul—are real and urgent, but they are often symptoms obscuring a deeper issue: When local churches started outsourcing their pastoral training, they lost a degree of ownership and accountability to raise up the next generation and take responsibility for their continued success.
A pastor often becomes less someone you raise up and equip and more someone you hire once they are credentialed by a theological institution. This is no critique of theological institutions, which have created accredited degrees and standards for theological training and deeply formed generations of church leaders, but rather underscores the need for the local church to get back in the game.
“Sometimes people blame seminaries for not teaching them something about ministry, but seminaries are not equipped to teach students what only a church can and should teach them. The seminaries may provide the classroom, but the church provides the laboratory,” writes Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Most churches will opt to continue to staff at least part of their leadership team through the traditional Bible school or seminary avenues. If this model is to continue working as it’s designed to, local churches must make the time, invest the money, and create the opportunities to raise up the next generation of leaders.
1. Make the Time.
Dave Miller, co-author with his wife Kristen of Who’s the Next You? (independently published), spent the early part of his career in local church ministry, and then as a church consultant and headhunter. He realized that at every point along the leadership pipeline, the number of potential candidates was slowing to a trickle.
So, eight years ago, they formed Leadership Pathway to help churches identify, support and raise up leaders both from within and from outside sources by creating a two-year residency program modeled on the medical community. Leadership Pathway promotes and facilitates a two-year residency in each of the churches they work with because that gives residents two Christmases, two Easters and two summers—if they’re in student ministry.
“You have context to build upon [from] when you were new, what you observed and helped and started to do a little, leading to where the second year you’re trusted,” Kristen explains. “You’ve built this relational equity in addition to a buildup of skills and context of what worked last time and what didn’t, and what you’re going to try this time around.”
In addition to providing monthly training, coaching and support for leaders running residency programs, they offer two-day intensive trainings throughout the year for churches and first-steps coaching when a church hires a person in their first one to three years of ministry.
The common denominator in each of these aspects of the residency is time. It’s not a process that can be rushed, and there are no shortcuts. Gregory, who went through a Leadership Pathway residency when he was starting in ministry and now serves as a coach, sees time as one of the biggest obstacles for churches considering starting a residency program.
Recently he got a call from a pastor looking to hire for a youth pastor position requiring three to five years of ministry experience running a 50-plus person ministry, and they didn’t have time to train the candidate.