“My honest response to him was, ‘Hey, do you have $80,000? Because the only place that person is coming from is stealing them from another church,’” Gregory says.
Churches that invest the time to train up the next generation will have a leg up when the time comes for the next leader to step up.
2. Invest the Money.
Like many church leaders, Brian Bennett’s path to pastoral ministry was long and arduous, but he was fortunate in that he was able to get an internship with a church that paid for his master’s degree. God’s grace throughout the process gave him a heart for making the path easier for those who would come after him in ministry.
Bennett has spent the past 20 years running internships/residencies for churches of all sizes and has been involved in coaching more than 75 interns. But he kept running into the same problem that most of the time he only had interns for a short period over the summer, which made it difficult to invest in them, and they were saddled with so much debt that it was hard to get them to complete their master’s and to stay in an internship or residency for long.
“If we do not figure out a way to eliminate student debt, many of these students are not going to be able to serve in the local church, regardless of size,” he says.
At the beginning of this year, Bennett, who is now lead pastor of Pathway Church in Vero Beach, Florida, became executive director of Trellis. This organization connects students, the local church and theological schools with the goal of training emerging church leaders and reducing their debt through partnerships.
For example, through an agreement with one partner school, Trellis was able to get the cost of a bachelor’s degree down from around $100,000 to $29,000, and also reduced the program from four years, followed by a three-year internship, down to three years for both the degree and internship. Then Trellis works with churches to provide scholarships of $10,000 per year toward a bachelor’s degree and $5,000 per year toward a master’s. Finally, the student pays a $9,000 student fee. This ensures that everyone has a skin in the game, and serves to make getting a degree and staying in ministry much more doable.
Though many leaders are already aware of the leadership pipeline problem and are eager to designate part of their budget to solving it, sometimes churches wonder where the money is going to come from. One solution is considering the scholarship as part of their mission budget. Other times, it’s as simple as running the math.
Bennett cites a recent conversation he had with a lead pastor: “He’s like, ‘There’s no way we could afford that.’ And I said, ‘OK, it’s $200 a week.’ And immediately he realized he was paying a 20-something $200 a week to do 10 hours of tech work. And he’s like, ‘Wait a minute. If I just shift this, I get them 20 hours a week, they get a bachelor’s degree, and it’s the same cost.’”
It’s a question of whether to invest the money up front in training that will reap benefits down the line, or wait and be forced into more difficult financial decisions in the future when the need for a staff member becomes urgent.
3. Create the Opportunities.
The final piece in the leadership pipeline puzzle is making space for leaders-in-training to learn by doing. An emerging leader can have all the head knowledge and theological training in the world, but there is simply no substitute for experience.
“There isn’t a teacher in the world who won’t tell you this: ‘I learned more in a year of student teaching than I learned in three-and-a-half years of sitting in a classroom,” Gregory says. “It’s that same thing [in ministry]. Even seasoned people in ministry will tell you, ‘Most of the things I do on a day-to-day basis, I didn’t learn sitting in a classroom. I learned getting the real-life, hands-on experience of doing ministry.”
LWhen he’s explaining the Leadership Pathway residency to pastors, they often will say they already have an internship program, but he tries to get them to see that a residency should be more elevated.
“This isn’t come sit and watch for six months, pick weeds, mop the floor a few times, then we’re going to send you on your way and tell you you’ve got ministry experience,” he clarifies. “How do you shift their mind[set] from We’ve got interns to This is intentional; you saying yes to being a teaching church; you saying yes to bringing people [along] in ministry?”
“It takes leadership to hand off and guide and give good challenge and support. Not just delegating and seeing how they go and do, but actually guiding them through it and developing them as they then develop others,” Kristen adds. “A church can’t afford to stop recruiting and stop developing. It has to be a continual drip that never ceases.”
Giving opportunities to emerging leaders can sometimes feel like giving up control or training your replacement, but the investment in the kingdom is well worth it.