Christian Standard | January/February 2022 by Christian Standard Media

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The Ministry Pipeline Restoration Movement colleges struggle to produce enough ministry graduates to meet the growing need for pastors. College presidents explain why.

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The Invisible Renaissance What Independent Christian Churches Have to Celebrate . . . and the Challenges Ahead

e live in a world of polls describing a hopelessly postChristian culture in which the church is constantly losing ground. A 2020 Gallup Poll found the number of Americans now affiliated with a church is just 47 percent, a sub-50 percent number for the first time in 80 years. Cary Nieuwhof shared a recent Barna/Stadia Poll that stated 30 percent fewer people in Generation Z (those born 1999 to 2015) attend church than baby boomers (those born 1946 to 1964). Another Barna study informed us that the number of practicing Christians dropped from 43 percent to 35 percent from 2000 to 2020. Lifeway Research reported that while 3,000 churches were planted in 2019, 4,500 closed. This list could go on and on. There is dismal news in just about every available category. Now add to this data information about the damage COVID-19 has inflicted on the church, while also considering the “new normal” pundits are presenting. I agree that coronavirus sped up a lot of things that were already happening and that the church must respond with agility, but I still believe the church is alive, well, and ready

to take new ground without giving up what had already been gained. Some would look back at all the polling and dismiss that kind of optimism. But what if I could show you a different picture, something to celebrate rather than mourn over? While I can’t look at the entire landscape of churches in America, I do have a good vantage point from which to assess the health of independent Christian churches.

20 years of growth Christian Standard has been chronicling attendance data of our megachurches for almost 25 years, and in the process of archiving the magazine, my attention was drawn to our first megachurch list. It was published in 1998 and reported 1997 numbers; however, it didn’t report total baptisms for each church. The next year the megachurch issue reported 1998 numbers, and it included baptism and transfer numbers. So, I thought it would be interesting to take the reports with 1998 and 2018 data, and

CHURCH

Southeast Christian

L O C AT I O N

2018

1998

2018

Louisville, KY

10,865

25,940

885

1,197

Mesa, AZ

4,188

8,795

222

750

Nicholasville, KY

Crossroads Christian

Corona, CA

Eastview Christian Shepherd Church

Central Christian*

Christ’s Church of the Valley Crossroads Christian Eastside Christian

Christ’s Church of the Valley/ONE&ALL Church

Normal, IL

Porter Ranch, CA Wichita, KS

Phoenix, AZ

Newburgh, IN

Anaheim, CA

San Dimas, CA

East 91st Street Christian

Indianapolis, IN

Mandarin Christian/Christ’s Church**

Jacksonville, FL

Canyon Ridge Christian

First Christian/LifeBridge Church Kingsway Christian Central Christian

First/Generations Christian Sherwood Oaks Christian

Rocky Mountain Christian West Side Christian First Church

Las Vegas, NV

Longmont, CO Avon, IN

Lancaster, CA Trinity, FL

Bloomington, IN Niwot, CO

Springfield, IL

Burlington, KY

Connection Pointe Christian

Brownsburg, IN

Mount Pleasant Christian

Greenwood, IN

Traders Point Christian Northshore Christian Harvester Christian

Owensboro Christian

Highland Meadows/Compass Christian Indian Creek Christian/The Creek Greenwood Christian* First Christian

Maryland Community Church Pantano Christian First Christian

Arlington/Crossroads Christian Northeast Christian

Plainfield Christian**

Christ’s Church of Oronogo

Westlink Christian/Pathway Church Mountain Christian

Northside Christian

Whitestown, IN Everett, WA

St. Charles, MO Owensboro, KY

Colleyville, TX

Indianapolis, IN Greenwood, IN

Huntington Beach, CA

Terre Haute, IN Tucson, AZ

Canton, OH

Grand Prairie, TX Louisville, KY

Plainfield, IN

Oronogo, MO

Wichita, KS Joppa, MD

New Albany, IN

Chapel Rock Christian

Indianapolis, IN

First Christian

Springfield, OH

Jackson/RiverTree Christian Central Christian

BAPTISMS

1998

Southland Christian* Central Christian

AT T E N DA N C E

Massillon, OH

TOTALS * Did not report in 2018. Numbers provided are from 2017. ** Did not report in 2018. Numbers provided are from 2016.

Beloit, WI

5,930 3,720 2,755

11,928 7,830 6,238

2,751

10,586

2,639

32,065

2,642

2,701 2,607 2,397 2,393 2,348 2,307 2,263 1,776 1,736 1,721 1,707 1,700 1,666 1,642 1,637 1,560 1,550 1,520 1,516 1,452 1,425 1,365 1,361 1,359 1,330 1,304 1,300 1,264 1,258 1,251 1,250 1,237 1,174 1,070 1,063

3,174

205 290 111

689 290 986

3,729

7,976

DNR

890

1,137

150

2,992 6,687 6,700 5,236 2,775 1,729 1,408 2,800

141 165 269

DNR

199

146

115

4,018

160

4,582

109

1,031

142

8,334

558

135

3,556 2,543

527

DNR

126

105

2,278

157

175

2,878

103 45

213 365 532 101

2,517

109

178

5,537

356

1,846

4,092

111

2,558

116

DNR

3,231

170

401

6,785

174

532

1,287 2,314 1,768 3,700

93 32

123 98

202

45 59

120 87

1,729

106

DNR

3,308

204

310

2,600

6,276

112

979

5,384 3,039

1,004

2,052

95,806

408

825

166

1,055 1,047

352

1,375 237,593

604 29

168

132

58 6,648

16,110

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22

Of the 57 churches on that comprehensive list that averaged more than 1,000 for weekly worship during 1998, 46 reported their average attendance for 2018 (though in some cases we relied on 2016 or 2017

numbers), along with total number of baptisms and other data. Considering all the negative polling we leaders constantly hear, I found something very illuminating. Below is that list of the 46 churches (some have changed their names during the past two decades) along with attendance and baptism data so as to create a 20-year snapshot:

compare the numbers from churches that reported in both issues over that 20-year span to see how they fared.

I saw this and was amazed at what God has done! Attendance for these 46 churches has grown by 148 percent during this period! And the number of baptisms for these churches grew 146 percent over these 20 years (factoring out churches that did not report baptisms one year or the other). But there’s more to this story. Twenty-four independent Christian churches started below the 1,000 threshold in 1998 but skyrocketed in attendance to more than 2,000 by 2018, greatly increasing their total number of yearly baptisms in the process.

CHURCH

The Crossing

2018 AT T E N DA N C E

2018 BAPTISMS

Quincy, IL

10,156

791

Savannah, GA

8,201

692

L O C AT I O N

Parkview Christian

Orland Park, IL

Real Life Christian*

Clermont, FL

Compassion Christian 2|42 Community Church*** Real Life

Community Christian*

The Crossing, a Christian Church Real Life Ministries

SouthBrook Christian* CrossCity Christian

Manchester Christian Community Christian Tomoka Christian Pathway Church Eagle Christian

White River Christian Southeast Christian Journey Christian Central Christian Abundant Life**

Summit Christian Valley Real Life

StoneBridge Christian

Brighton, MI

Valencia, CA

Naperville, IL

Las Vegas, NV

Post Falls, ID Dayton, OH Fresno, CA

Manchester, NH

Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Ormond Beach, FL Wichita, KS Eagle, ID

Noblesville, IN Parker, CO

Apopka, FL

Mt. Vernon, IL

Damascus, OH Sparks, NV

Greenacres, WA Omaha, NE

TOTALS

8,942 6,606 7,075 6,606 5,904 5,438

688 632 424 632 228 608

4,668

DNR

3,800

277

4,004 3,634 3,498 3,386 3,308 3,297 2,722 2,512

255 215 287 206 204 160 173

2,500

145

2,377

DNR

2,274

158

2,408 2,291 2,147 107,754

235 110

7,294

* Did not report in 2018. Numbers provided are from 2017. ** Did not report in 2018. Numbers provided are from 2016. *** Planted in 2004.

These 24 churches now account for an average attendance of 107,754 and an additional 7,294 baptisms! That means a total of 345,347 people on average attend these 70 churches and that they grew their baptisms to more than 23,400 per year (even with some churches not reporting their baptism numbers). Note that these lists don’t include churches that no longer report their numbers to Christian Standard (and

haven’t for some time)—churches like Central in Las Vegas, Hillside in Amarillo, Texas, New Hope in Houston, and others. The lists also don’t include churches that have grown incredibly since 1998 but had not yet crossed the 2,000 threshold in 2018. With all that in mind, I think it’s fair to say that in this 20-year period, while many other churches and denominations have been in decline, a large segment of

independent Christian churches were increasing and experiencing nothing short of a renaissance in growth and evangelism. I don’t think there has been a time in our movement when we have experienced anything quite like this; the only era that might be comparable was the start of the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening (the early 1800s). We have been experiencing an invisible renaissance in our movement, truly a movement of God, and it flies in the face of all the pollsters, forecasters, and fortune-tellers whose work might make us think we’re faltering or failing. Jesus said the gates of Hades itself would not overcome the church he would build (Matthew 16:18). In a time when the church is trying to determine how to respond to the chaos of the last couple of years, it’s good to know the church is built on a firm foundation.

t h e c h a l l e n g e r e n a i s s a n c e c r e at e s The real challenge our churches face isn’t numerical growth or evangelism, but how to develop its leadership. The issue is how to identify, develop, and improve our leadership pipelines so this thriving movement has enough shepherds. I see four main vehicles for achieving this: 1. Our Bible colleges and Christian colleges 2. Hiring from within our own churches 3. Hiring staff from other churches within our movement 4. Hiring with the help of headhunters in the greater evangelical movement An investigative report in this issue examines the pipeline of leaders that come from the colleges and universities that identify with independent Christian churches. As I was researching this issue, I found that the total number of Christian ministry graduates from the top 16 schools offering these majors was very small. (By “Christian ministry graduates,” I mean students who earned a bachelor’s degree in preaching, theology, church leadership, Christian education, youth ministry, worship ministry, and/or church counseling.) The total amount of nondistance learning bachelor’s degrees (not master’s degrees or doctorates) from those top 16 schools for the 2019-20 school year was 406. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the great need; the added concerns of educational costs and the debt students incur only compound the situation. The largest pipeline of hiring in our movement today is from within the church; in some ways, that makes perfect sense. These new workers transition from volunteer roles within the church into paid full- and part-time staff positions, and from the secular world straight into ministry. The DNA of each church is baked into the new

hire—which is great—but there is potentially a problem with the new paid church worker’s depth of biblical understanding, and with whether the church will offer any mechanism to compensate for that. The possibility of biblical drift is great. Hiring from other churches within our movement is nothing new, but it doesn’t increase the number of leaders; it’s more like a game of musical chairs, with leaders moving from one location and ministry to another. It might help a leader realize their potential by moving to a new setting, but it does nothing to address the problem of too few leaders. Finally, a growing number of churches now contract with headhunters like Slingshot or Vanderbloemen to fill their positional needs. These agencies perform a great service, but there is danger in widening the search base to evangelical churches and leaders who may not share or even know the distinctives of our movement. In our desire for talent, we might drift away from sound doctrine to something that sounds “close enough,” but which leaves much to be desired. We in the independent Christian church are living in a time of great possibility, and while God has given us an incredible harvest in growth and evangelism over the last 20 years, we have never had a greater need for biblically literate practitioners to tend the flock and manage the harvest. Jesus taught us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his field (Luke 10:2). Through Paul, he taught us to entrust the things we’ve learned into others who will also lead (2 Timothy 2:2). He told us to raise up and send out preachers (Romans 10:14-15). The challenge before us now is to raise up “people of the Book,” people who know and rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), people who sacrifice the oxen and burn the plow (1 Kings 19:21), people who say, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8). We must be the generation that figures out a way to respond to the increasing width of our movement with a balance of not only more leaders but also leaders with spiritual depth. Only then will we become the good and faithful servants who are prepared to hear the Father say, “Well done.”

Jerry Harris is publisher of Christian Standard Media and senior pastor of The Crossing, a multisite church located in three states across the Midwest. @_jerryharris

/jerrydharris

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CHRIS MOON

In Every Issue

THE MINISTRY PIPELINE

2-5

from the publisher

8-9

from the Editor

10-11

BOLD

12-13

E2: EFFECTIVE ELDERS

H OW TO P R E V E N T M E S SAG E D R I F T

W h e n Yo u C a l l Yo u r N e x t P r e a c h e r

Delighting Dad Megan Rawlings

MARK SCOTT

The Leadership Pipeline Crisis Gar y L. Johnson

54 62

PAS TO R S A R E Q U I T T I N G

W h a t We C a n D o t o H e l p

14-16

ENGAGE

18-19

HEAL

SEANA SCOTT

WHERE DO CHURCH PLANTERS COME FROM?

T H E A L T E R N AT I V E S J O H N WH I T TA K E R

LOOKING BACK

How Christian Colleges Have Responded to the Need for Preachers Over the Past Century

22-23

INTENTIONAL

24-25

METRICS

A Caseload of One: Keep Seeking to Know Her Rudy Hagood

The Preacher Pipeline Problem Kent E. Fillinger

JIM NIEMAN

HORIZONS A Bright Future for Resident in Intercultural Ministr y Laura McKillip Wood

26-27

PREACH

94-96

interact

RECRUITMENT:

What They Didn’t Teach Me in Bible College Chris Philbeck

How Do Restoration Movement Churches Find Talented L e a d e r s to Fu e l G r o w t h? KEVIN STONE

*new c ol u mn!

‘Lead Like You Are the Colorado River ’ Wes Beavis

JUSTIN HOREY

20-21

Wrestling with Deconstruction and Doubt Tyler McKenzie

f r o m th e edi to r

The Pipeline Problem: What Each of Us Can Do to Get It Moving Again

very day you and I face many challenges, and biggest of them all may be how we choose to perceive them. As the apostle Paul put it, we can fix our eyes on what is seen or what is unseen, on what is temporary or what is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18). Our perspective makes an incalculable difference in our lives and, by extension, the lives of those around us. Jesus said much about the church’s leadership pipeline. In fact, he initiated it. Without it, the church’s proliferation from “Jerusalem . . . to the ends of the earth” would be impossible. And while we have few examples of how the original 12 apostles developed future leaders, we know they must have by how quickly the church expanded. The Bible describes in much greater detail the apostle Paul’s leadership pipeline—the individuals he discovered, developed, and deployed as well as the instructions he gave them to do the same.

Two millennia later, however, Jesus’ church is facing a leadership pipeline problem. Some would say it’s dire. I’d like to provide some biblical ideas for finding solutions.

W h at W o n’ t H e l p First, it won’t help to ignore this dilemma or just try to wish it away. This is a real problem in the church today. To help reveal the concerns at hand, we include stories and statistics about different aspects of leadership development in this issue of Christian Standard. We include an investigative report that asks, Are our Bible colleges turning out tomorrow’s church leaders? We also look at alternatives for educating leaders, how we can best recruit new leaders, the health of our current leaders, the leadership pipeline for church planters, and the problem of message drift when we don’t get this right.

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22 9

Second, it won’t help to just continue doing what we’ve always done, expecting different results. We need people with wisdom to help us find innovative solutions. Third, pointing fingers won’t help at all. “Bible colleges are failing to turn out enough leaders,” some say. “We can only train people that churches send us,” say others. Let’s seek unified ways to resolve this problem . . . before it’s too late.

W h at E a c h o f U s C a n D o

I spent with people, the more opportunities I had to find potential leaders. So, I visited our groups, prayerfully looking for folks with leadership character traits. I spent time before and after every weekend service talking with people (focusing on those I didn’t know well). I went to other church activities to prayerfully scout for leaders. I made the discovery, development, and sometimes even the deployment of new leaders a part of every small group leader’s role. (By the way, I never had a supply deficit. Demand was another story.)

The following list includes just a few ideas for what we can individually do to help fill the church’s leadership pipeline with the right people. I’d love to hear your ideas as well.

Regardless of your church ministry position, part of your role, I believe, is to spend time with people— especially young people. Our youth pastors do a tremendous job, but they can use our help. Encourage students in whom you see potential. Tell them you see something in them that God can use for his kingdom.

1. Be aware of the problem. Jesus was astutely aware of the leadership pipeline problem: supply wasn’t meeting demand. (Our country has faced this problem economically lately!) As Jesus put it, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37). He spoke these words to the leaders he was training to help them become more aware. So . . . yes, be aware of the problem, but also discuss it with others (without casting blame or arguing).

5. Be the kind of leader who can say, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). We don’t just want to fill our leadership pipeline; we must fill it with people who, like King David, are men and women after God’s own heart. You are influencing people you lead, and they are very likely to follow your example as a leader someday. So be a leader of high moral character and integrity. Spend time with God. Abide in him.

2. Recognize your power source to resolve the problem. Answers won’t come primarily from your own brilliance, your methods, programs, opinions, or theories. Every pipeline has a “supply station,” and ours is God himself. To ignore where Christian leaders come from (who calls, gifts, and strengthens them) is to greatly restrain the flow of new leaders all down the line. (It’s like trying to grow fruit on a branch not connected to the vine.) Jesus’ solution: “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (v. 38). Before you do anything else, ask God to send workers. Make this a spiritual discipline that you practice every day. 3. Partner with God. Once we have prayed, we must be prepared for God to move. As his ambassador, he will use you in this vital assignment. He may send future leaders to you. You may be his “sending agent” to a particular person or group of people. Keep watch for how he will use you. 4. Invest in people (especially young people). As a small groups minister, I learned that the more time

One more thing, leader. I want to encourage you to not give up. Christ’s church needs you; God’s kingdom needs you. Perhaps you can find renewed purpose and passion in teaming with God to discover and develop more new leaders. Remain in Christ so you can remain in the ministry he has called you to. You will bear fruit . . . fruit that will last.

@michaelc.mack @michaelcmack @michaelcmack /authormichaelcmack

BOLD

hey were turning off the lights and beginning to lock the doors after worship at church this past Sunday. The crowd stuck around longer than usual because, well, I’m not really sure why, but I know it’s a sign of healthy and growing churches, so I was not upset. Anyway, my niece, Carter, knocked on the office door where I help count the offering so she could say goodbye before she made a trip with her parents to the next town over. “Bye, Mimi. I just really miss you,” she said. “Well, Bug, why don’t I come along so we can spend time together in the car?” “Seriously? Are you serious?” she asked, growing excited. Of course, I was serious, but this 8-year-old girl is always shocked when something is added or taken away from the “plan.” So, the four of us—her dad (Nathan), her mom (my sister, Kayla), Carter, and I—piled into my car and began our voyage to the great city of Ashland, Kentucky.

Delighting Dad by Megan Rawlings

(Side note: For the record, I introduced Carter’s parents. I want that published so one day, when it is very important, I have proof. Nathan was one of my best friends and, of course, Kayla is my sister. It was an obvious and simple match with little to no effort. I’m still taking credit though.) As we were driving, I looked at my niece and said, “Carter, you’re a very kind girl and I am so glad you are my niece.” I’m trying to help shape this future world-changer, so I often drench her in encouragement, but only if it’s true. I won’t tell her she is the best bike rider since she still rides with training wheels, because that’s flattery. It’s a lie. I thoughtfully come up with the things I think she is good at or the characteristics I like about her and offer praise for those. She looked at me with a straight face, crooked smile, and matter-of-fact eyes and simply said, “K.”

“

After just a few seconds, Nathan started chuckling. Then, he chuckled so hard Laughter often means the other person is it became a belly delighted in us. Also, it amplifies our confidence laugh! When Nathan b e c a u s e , f r a n k ly, i t m e a n s w e s u c c e s s f u l ly laughs, he’s like Santa. He’s jolly and e n t e r ta i n e d a n ‘a u d i e n c e .’ his laugh is contagious. The whole car suddenly erupted in laughter, except from me. Don’t misunderstand. I thought it was funny; I just didn’t want to encourage behavior that was certainly at my expense. (Who am I kidding? I laughed, too.)

Today, dare to step outside of your box and please your Father. 

She loved the fact that she made her dad laugh. Laughter often means the other person is delighted in us. Also, it amplifies our confidence because, frankly, it means we successfully entertained an “audience.” Carter asked me to repeat the scene with her because (1) she knew it worked and (2) it was easy. She found a formula: “Listen to Mimi compliment me, answer with ‘K,’ get all the laughs.” Boom-boom-boom. Here’s the thing: Although it might get another chuckle, it wouldn’t get the same belly laugh from her dad she wanted, because it was easy . . . cheap in some regards. Then it hit me like a comet falling from the sky. I am just like Carter! She wanted to make her dad happy and laugh, and I also want to bring joy to my heavenly Father! I do my best to make it happen, but I’m not always on target. I started thinking, What if the things that please God most aren’t the things that come easily to us? Hear me out. I am an extrovert to the millionth degree. After conferences or social gatherings, I genuinely feel like I could run five miles . . . and I am not a runner. Talking to people about Jesus, teaching other women about God and his nature, sharing the gospel—these things come very easy for me. They come naturally. I am the loathed seat partner on the plane who asks, “Where are you from?”

abou t the au thor

Pleasing God from Out of Our Comfort Zones Starting up conversations and asking questions, although pleasing to God, are not the only ways I can please him. I might do these constantly, but then neglect any spiritual discipline requiring me to be alone. I often wonder if God is just as pleased with me when I am making the extra effort to come out of my comfort zone and be alone with him. What does this mean for you? I did a little research, and apparently, as an extrovert, I’m in the minority in this world. Most people are the opposite. They thrive in their prayer closets or anything they can do alone. However, I don’t necessarily think that is where God is most pleased. I do believe he wants us to do those things that bring out our natural gifts and talents, but I think he is more proud of us when we step out of our comfort zones, whatever they might be, and share the gospel with someone else—that was his last command to us.

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22

After a few minutes, when everyone had regained composure, Carter leaned over to me (as much as her bulky booster seat would allow) and whispered, “Mimi, can you say that stuff to me again so I can say ‘K’ and make my daddy laugh again?”

Can you imagine what the world would be like if more Christians did this? It could be life changing!

Finding the Formula

Megan Rawlings serves as vice president of planned giving with The Solomon Foundation. She is the founder and CEO of The Bold Movement. She is an extrovert, pastor’s wife, and lover of the Scriptures. /tbmministry @tbm_ministry @tbm_ministry @theboldmovement theboldmovement.com

e 2:e ffe ct i v e e ld e r s

lyeska . . . Keystone XL . . . Colonial. Each is a commercial pipeline, and each has a unique crisis in its story.

Alyeska is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which now transports less oil than in years past. Keystone XL is the pipeline that was once under construction from Alberta, Canada, south to Nebraska; it has now been officially shut down. The Colonial Pipeline made news recently when it was the victim of a ransomware attack that completely shut down its oil flow. Similarly, we face a crisis in the local church, and it has everything to do with a pipeline—the leadership pipeline. When it comes to our leadership pipeline crisis, we face three unique challenges.

Dwindling Numbers

The Leadership Pipeline Crisis By Gary L. Johnson

There was a time when the Trans-Alaska Pipeline moved millions of barrels of oil every day. The amount of oil— or throughput—passing through the pipeline reached an all-time high in 1988, when it “put through” more than 2 million barrels in a single day. Today, throughput averages just above 400,000 barrels per day, an 80 percent decrease. This is a crisis in the making. Less oil means slower, colder oil. The Alyeska pipeline originates on the North Slope at Prudhoe Bay and terminates in Valdez, covering some 800 miles. Permanently frozen ground along with air temperatures that can plunge to 60 degrees below zero (or colder) can freeze smaller amounts of slowmoving oil, causing a stoppage that can potentially rupture the pipeline. Less oil creates a potential crisis. In working closely with churches across the country, we have observed this same critical situation. Far too many churches have far too few people in their leadership pipeline. At e2, we help the local church locate potential future leaders and assist them in equipping these individuals so they can be onboarded into leadership. In baseball, the next batter is always on deck, and in the local church, the next leader must always be ready to step up to the leadership plate. Moses prepared Joshua. Elijah prepared Elisha. Jesus prepared his disciples. Paul prepared Timothy and Titus. So, who are we preparing? Be intentional and deliberate. Work to refill the leadership pipeline.

Shutting Down The $9 billion Keystone XL pipeline was mired in controversy for more than a decade. People on both sides of the political aisle have fought over the pipeline. The opposition to the pipeline was so strong and unrelenting that

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22

Disputes can also shut down the church’s leadership pipeline. Opposition within the church is nothing new. Conflict abounds between staff and elders, between young and old, between people with varying ministry philosophies, and between other factions. Moreover, when leaders are opposed by people within the congregation, the church struggles to move forward in its mission.

“

Think of the opposition Moses experienced. Soon after leaving Egypt, Moses faced constant criticism from his fellow Israelites. They opposed his leadership time and again. Even when God led his people to the boundary of the Promised Land, two and one-half tribes did not want to live there. They preferred to live east of the Jordan River. Not only did that weary Moses’ spirit, but it must have broken God’s heart. Such is our human nature. Opposition to authority is rampant in our culture, even in the local church. Scripture commands us, however, to submit to the authority of our leaders, for God has them watching over us (Hebrews 13:17). When we joyfully and willingly obey godly leaders in the church, we will not shut down the mission of the church. We will spur it on to love and good deeds, both among people in Christ and those who have not yet come to faith in him.

U n d e r At ta c k Last spring, cybercriminals used ransomware to attack the Colonial Pipeline, considered the largest pipeline for refined oil products in the United States. To keep the malware from doing further damage to their computer systems, the company shut down the entire pipeline and paid a $5 million ransom to the alleged Russia-based cybercriminals known as DarkSide. Similarly, the church’s leadership pipeline struggles to operate because we are under attack from the dark side. Our struggle is not with people so much as with the kingdom of darkness . . . “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). With every step we take to advance the kingdom of God, the enemy attacks us to thwart our progress. Every time we lead people in prayer, in the Word, in worship, we deliberately turn to God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. In those moments, we are doing the very thing Satan works against. “[He] leads the whole world astray” (Revelation 12:9), away from God. It should not surprise us, then, that he relentlessly attacks leaders in the church to hinder their pursuit of God.

I n b a s e b a l l , t h e n e x t b at t e r i s a lway s o n d e c k , a n d i n t h e l o c a l c h u r c h , t h e n e x t l e a d e r m u s t a lway s b e r e a d y t o s t e p u p t o t h e l e a d e r s h i p p l at e .

Pipeline Response Each of the three oil pipelines has taken decisive, deliberate action in the face of its unique crisis. The local church must do the same. With fewer leaders, and during a time when we are facing increasing opposition fueled by the evil one, we must respond in a God-honoring way to our crisis in the leadership pipeline, particularly as it relates to elders. Here are three ways you can respond: 1. Develop and onboard an elder-recruiting process. Provide training that explains who an elder is and what an elder does, and then carefully select these leaders through a vetting process. Avoid random selection at all costs. 2. Teach principles and practices of conflict resolution, which includes humbly submitting to godly leaders. 3. Fight the real enemy. The evil one leads a spiritual kingdom of darkness, and we must resist him in the power of the Spirit, using both Scripture and prayer, for “greater is He abou t the au thor who is in [us] than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4, New American Standard Bible). Our leadership pipeline crisis can be solved if we simply respond to it. 

Dr. Gary Johnson served 30 years with Indian Creek Christian Church (The Creek) in Indianapolis. He is a cofounder of e2: effective elders, which he now serves as executive director.

/e2elders @e2elders

construction came to a halt when President Joe Biden canceled the pipeline’s building permit on his first day in office. A few months later, TC Energy abandoned the project.

engage

recently read a book on the deconstruction of one’s faith called After Doubt by A.J. Swoboda. I’d highly recommend it. In it, he suggests everyone goes through three phases in their faith journey: Construction to Deconstruction to Reconstruction.

The Construction Phase The construction phase is when we first come to faith (usually as kids) and receive what Swoboda calls precritical beliefs. We don’t ask questions, we don’t wonder why, we simply accept what adults teach us.

Wrestling with Deconstruction and Doubt by Tyler McKenzie

When I was a kid, I was told that Jesus rose, and I believed even though I knew dead people stay dead. I was told that God is triune (1 + 1 + 1 = 1) and I didn’t question the math. I was told the Bible was inspired and I believed, even though there’s difficult material to swallow. My upbringing was complementarian, cessationist, premillennial, young earth, and much more. I embraced it all. But as I grew older, I reached a point where I had to put my precritical beliefs under the microscope.

The Deconstruction Phase In the second phase, called the deconstruction phase, we come of age and start to ask, “What do I actually believe?” There are all sorts of triggers here: • You meet people who practice a different religion but seem nice and happy. • You take a class from an intelligent professor who asks hard questions. • A pastor you respect experiences a moral failure. • You realize low-key racism exists in your church. • You recognize you were taught a theology that leverages shame, guilt, and fear. • Something awful happens, and you wonder how a God of love could let you or others suffer like this. • You have questions about the Bible’s historicity or its supernatural parts. • You discover the sweet old ladies who taught your Sunday school classes are wild on Facebook, politically compromised, and into all the conspiracies. Cultural scorn and disparagement are among the most powerful triggers for deconstruction. When we realize people will think less of us for our beliefs, we rethink them (no matter how old we are at the time). Even if our beliefs are biblical, we don’t want to see friends leave (or attendance wane if we happen to be the pastor!). We don’t want to be shamed by popular culture.

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D e c o n s t r u c t i o n d o n e r i g h t c a n b e d i s c i p l e s h i p. I t can lead to the reconstruction phase—something more beautiful and biblical than any of us p r e v i o u s ly i m a g i n e d .

We struggle most when it comes to our kids. Young people have more access to diverse perspectives than ever thanks to social media and the internet. They want answers. But confronting them or trying to coerce them in conversation rarely ends well. And because of what’s said in a heated moment, we often blow our opportunity to walk through the issue with our kids. Look, if your kids are bringing their struggles to you, take a moment, step into the other room, and thank God they have this sort of trust! Then take a deep breath and try to keep a level head. If you don’t, kids will eventually stop bringing their questions to you. They will turn to other places for truth (YouTube, peers, TikTok, etc.). If you are a student . . . let me speak on your parents’ behalf for a moment. Hear me out. It’s unnerving to raise a child in an age of deconstruction. If your parents love Jesus with all their heart and love you as well, one of their great fears will be the possibility of you rejecting Jesus. Here’s what I’m saying: A lot is on the line for them when it comes to your faith. Cut them a little slack if they get squirrely, snippy, or irrational when you have hard questions. They really want you to get this right. Back to the parents . . . we must overcome this fear and engage well. If you think you can protect your kids forever by sheltering them from outside influences, ignoring hard questions, or shutting it down, you’re wrong. This is an established principle of identity theory. At some point your kids are going to test the faith and values they inherit from you. Deconstruction is inevitable. Deconstruction also is essential as young adults develop a distinct sense of personal identity, psychologists say. One author used the metaphor of fence building to describe the process. When children are young and lack independence, you build a fence to protect them. Each fence post is a value, belief, or behavior you consider important. At first, children don’t even notice the fence. They blissfully play inside it. As they grow older, though, they start to notice. They may ask about the fence. They may push on the posts or test some of the beams. Eventually, they may climb over the fence or break right through it. You build it, but eventually they will either tear it down or grow old enough to move out and build their own. You probably hope their new fence is as close to yours as possible.

You can develop two key strategies to engage with your child as they walk through doubt. First, be a believable person. Live an authentic life. You can’t control what your kids believe about God, but you can control what they believe about you. You can’t control if they question God, but you can control if they question the sincerity and integrity of your faith. Second, walk with them through their doubts. Welcome them to test the fence. For the record, I don’t want to romanticize doubt. I don’t think we can doubt too much, but I do think we can doubt from an unhealthy place. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. When the problems of our childhood faith or church emerge, we are tempted to lash out in anger. We are embarrassed to have been duped for so long. We are appalled those who raised us won’t even listen to our concerns. We want vengeance. We want those people who hurt us to hurt. So, from a place of vengeance and vindictiveness many swing to the opposite ideological extreme. The well-worn path today is the road out of churches “on the right” to communities “on the left.” Young people leave their theologically conservative churches because they are compromised by right-leaning politics. Sadly, they swing straight past Jesus into theologically progressive expressions of Christianity equally compromised by left-leaning politics or out of the faith altogether. Why? Often, it’s spite. For the record, that’s not deconstruction. That’s demolition. The goal isn’t to build something truer, it’s to tear their house down, burn the wreckage, then dance on the ashes. It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you love someone in deconstruction . . . I want to pause for a second and talk to you. Maybe it’s your kid, friend, spouse, or sibling. Here’s my advice. Let it happen . . . but don’t let them deconstruct alone. I say this because it doesn’t feel natural to watch those we love deconstruct their faith. When we have any level of spiritual authority or influence over someone who starts to doubt, we tend to want to shut it down! The last thing we desire is to see loved ones lose their faith, so we say irrational things or use coercive measures.

c hristia n sta nda rd

The Reconstruction Phase

Deconstruction done right can be discipleship. It can lead to the reconstruction phase—something more beautiful and biblical than any of us previously imagined. This is why a hospitable posture toward doubt is critical. It’s important to say that, though it may sound a bit provocative because many were raised in churches where faith was likened to psychological certainty . . . where faith meant trying our hardest to believe, even it if meant popping a blood vessel to convince ourself. The thought was, the higher your degree of psychological certainty, the stronger your faith. I don’t think this approach always jives with Scripture. If God wanted faith to be certainty, he would’ve called it certainty. Instead, he called it faith, which implies an element of uncertainty. This is what I see in many biblical heroes. Heroic faith is not the presence of total certainty but the willingness to be faithful in the face of great uncertainty. Christianity is the only major world religion that recognizes acknowledging our own wrongness as spiritual. We are literally told to habituate confession, repentance, and reconciliation. It’s called sanctification. You are being a good Christian if you hold your convictions with humility, acknowledging we all have room to grow. In John’s Upper Room Discourse, Jesus told his disciples the Holy Spirit would be their teacher. I like that. Great teachers often create cognitive dissonance and doubt in the mind of their students to bring them to a higher state of truth. I wonder if sometimes our doubts and questions aren’t the prompting of the Spirit. 

a b ou t th e au th o r

Tyler McKenzie serves as lead pastor at Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

He a l

f not for the obstacles standing in the way of the Colorado River, there would be no Grand Canyon. Without these natural barriers, the river would not have created dramatic ravines, horseshoe bends, and whitewater rapids. Instead of a Grand Canyon, we would have a “Grand Trench.” How awe-inspiring would that be? Not very. If I could give any counsel to Christians and ministry leaders in today’s world, it would be this: Lead like you are the Colorado River. Anticipate impediments to your progress. Don’t expect the way to be free and clear of obstacles. No matter what the barrier, try to find your way around it. The route may seem tortured, but given enough time, you will make progress.

‘Lead Like You Are the Colorado River’ by Wes Beavis

Sometimes I wonder how young ministers will do as they start their church leadership journey in this socially divided and digitally distracted world. Frankly, I think they are going to be brilliant. Sure, some won’t stay in ministry for long. They will serve solidly for a season and then decide to do something else. That has always been the case. Some do ministry for life and some only for a season. There is much value in both. Those ministry leaders who serve for a season are incredibly valuable. But I’m not sure we give them their proper honor.

An Example from the Marines In my training to become a mental health clinician, I spent years counseling U.S. Marines. Some of them stayed in the military until retirement. Others served for a season of their life and then reentered the civilian world. In all my time with military personnel, there was never a hint that you were less of a Marine for wanting to go back to civilian life after a typical six-year enlistment. Never have I heard anyone ask, “How long did you serve?” as a prerequisite for, “Thank you for your service.” We are just grateful for their service, no matter how many years they served. Another virtue of military veterans who reenter civilian life is that they often leverage the leadership skills and personal resiliency forged in the service to start businesses and organizations that benefit our communities. The same happens in the ministry world.

M i n i s t r y i n t h e W o r kplace

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W h e t h e r s e r v i n g i n a v o c at i o n a l m i n i s t r y u n t i l r e t i r em e n t o r f o r a s e a s o n , o n c e a pa s t o r , a lway s a pa s t o r !

One pastor I see in my counseling practice went into full-time vocational ministry without any thought of ever doing anything else, but then his “tour of duty” was

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unexpectedly interrupted. He went to work for a construction company that was languishing due to the culture of the work environment. This pastor methodically worked his way up in the company and today he serves as vice president. He has completely changed the company’s culture and did so, in large part, by applying what he learned in Bible college and church ministry. I know of another pastor who went on to be an attorney. He combines his heart for evangelism with the practice of law and is now providing expert counsel to churches in legal matters. I counseled another pastor who became a chaplain in the U.S. Navy; he is brought in on highlevel assignments because of his skills in connecting with people. He credits these skills to what he learned in church ministry.

Bullish on the Future I know that many people are concerned about how hard it’s going to be for church and ministry leaders in the future. I fully expect that, as a clinical psychologist who specializes in the mental health of ministry leaders, I am going to always have a full practice. But unlike those who are pessimistic, I am abundantly bullish on the future of young ministry leaders. These young leaders have the guts to enlist and the willingness to serve Jesus. No matter how long their tours of duty, their service will be appreciated, and they will help move the gospel forward. It isn’t likely ministry will be easy for them. Rather, it’s going to be difficult. Ministry has always been hard and it always will be. How do you convey the gospel to a divided and distracted world? I’m not sure, but the future generations of ministry leaders will figure out a way. Whether serving in vocational ministry until retirement or only for a season, once a pastor, always a pastor! As a team of ministry leaders, paid by a church or otherwise, we are the Colorado River of living water. It flows through us and out of us. People with a heart for serving Christ will always find a way. And in doing so, we help build a Grand Canyon-sized legacy of faith for others to build on. As Jesus said, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). 

abou t the au thor

Dr. Wes Beavis has served as a pastor in Restoration Movement churches in both the United States and Australia. He is also a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in helping ministry leaders navigate the leadership journey. His latest book is Let’s Talk about Ministry Burnout: A Proven Research-based Approach to the Wellbeing of Pastors. drwesbeavis.com text 949.246.7836

hori z ons

s Katie Hughes made her way to her car at the end of another long school day, she reflected on her day in the classroom. After years of studying to become a teacher like her mom and other family members, she felt disappointed and exhausted in her student-teaching experience. The more time she spent in the classroom, the more she questioned her decision to become an educator. Was this really what God had planned for her?

A New Plan

A Bright Future for Resident in Intercultural Ministry by Laura McKillip Wood

Katie talked with her parents and began to take an inventory of the gifts and interests God had given her. She knew she liked working with young people. Maybe she should pursue youth ministry. Was she ready for such a ministry, since she had not studied in that field? Did she need more schooling? She had more questions than answers. Internet research led her to the residency program at Discovery Christian Church in Broomfield, Colorado. She applied for the program and began the interview process. “When the residency coordinator told me about Compassion Ministry, which is our church’s local ministry in support of the city of Broomfield, I felt strongly that this was what I wanted and what God had for me,” Katie says. “I asked more questions, interviewed some more, and they hired me!” Katie grew up in a close Midwestern family, so moving to Colorado was a change, but she loves her new location. She has always prioritized relationships and loves spending time with friends. In fact, her favorite things about college were the relationships she cultivated there. This ability to make friends has come in handy during her residency at Discovery, where she combines her administrative talent with her love for people.

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She now works as the Compassion Ministry resident. In this role, her work includes supporting local partnerships, overseeing the pastoral care team, a meal ministry, engaging in the city, and overseeing the church’s Benevolence Ministry and team. The more time she spent in the classroom, the more she

q u e s t i o n e d h e r d e c i s i o n t o b e c o m e a n e d u c at o r . Wa s t h i s r e a l ly w h at G o d h a d p l a n n e d f o r h e r ?

“We go to a lot of meetings with people working at other churches or organizations in the city,” Katie says. “We have an amazing network of people who want to help our vulnerable neighbors, including many from our church.”

Pa s t M i n i s t r y Pav e d t h e Way

“I’m grateful I’ve been given opportunities to lead and join others in learning through my church,” Katie says. God is weaving Katie’s background in education, her natural curiosity, and her passion to serve in new and exciting ways.

This is not Katie’s first ministry experience. Before her senior year of college, she spent the summer working with an organization called City Service Mission in Washington, D.C. There she hosted youth group teams, leading them to locations around the district to help them learn about and serve the people living there. “That summer, I began to see how God loves cities, what Shalom means, and what being a minister of reconciliation looks like,” she says. “It was life-changing!” Now Katie sees how God used that experience to prepare her for her current residency and future work. She enjoys learning about people from different backgrounds and ways of life different from her own. She also likes learning about racial justice. Katie’s current project involves coordinating the church’s annual resident mission trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The residents from Discovery Christian Church will work with Praying Pelican Missions; they will partner with a local church to serve that church’s community. At the start of the trip, they will spend three days learning about the Tulsa area. Katie plans to lead the group to museums and historical sites and participate in spiritual practices to grow closer to God. They will learn specifically about the Trail of Tears and how forced displacement in the 1800s shaped Native American nations today. They will also study the Tulsa Race Massacre to learn about the African-American experience in Tulsa. “The hope for this trip is to practice learning history and how to participate in these spiritual practices, so we can also look closely at where these injustices have shown up in our hometown,” Katie explains. “We are hopefully cultivating a spirit of curiosity and a willingness to [deal with] the hard stuff, even when it is easy to ignore, and to bring it to God.”

A Future of Service Katie has enjoyed her residency experience thus far and still has plenty to look forward to. She works with a retired professor who has served the local homeless population for decades. In coordination with him and her supervisor at the church, Katie planned two classes on homelessness for church members and other community members.

She also co-led a book club about anti-racism. The members had rich and honest conversations about their lack of understanding about racial justice.

The professor she and her church work with told her that his work with homeless people has felt like he’s been pushing a giant boulder uphill for years. “He said his arms have only gotten stronger as he’s rolled it up for so long,” she says. After some introspection, she adds, “I remember feeling so scared that I would either get too tired pushing the boulder uphill or that I would get distracted and leave it to roll down. I want to be faithful to where God has called me, but being faithful is slow, hard work.” Katie is committed to continuing the work God has given her and remaining faithful to her calling even after her residency ends. She is excited for what the future holds and the ministry God has planned for her.  abou t the au thor

Laura McKillip Wood, former missionary to Ukraine, now serves as bereavement coordinator and palliative care chaplain at Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. She and her husband, Andrew, have three teenagers. /laura.wood2 @woodlaura30 @woodlaura30 lauramckillipwood.com lauramckillipwood@gmail.com

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“So many people showed up ready to learn!” she says.

Katie’s role is to coordinate some of that connection and teach classes at the church. She also works to learn all the aspects of her supervisor’s role, hoping someday to follow her example at another church.

*ne w colu m n! inte nt i ona l

hen I was being trained as a minister, one of the primary points of emphasis was expositional preaching. I remember the concept “context is king” being drilled into my head like it was yesterday. It went a little like this: “Rudy, we must know what it meant to them to know how it applies to us today. Rudy, what’s the historical distance? Exegete the text, Rudy! Think exegetically, Rudy! Preach expositional sermons, Rudy!” OK, OK, OK, I got it.

A Caseload of One: Keep Seeking to Know Her

When it comes to our marriages, however, we are not taught to seek to understand our spouses to the same degree. As ministers and Christians, we often know more about a culture from 2,000 to 7,000 years ago than we do about the living and breathing blessing in the present. Oh yes, we know, “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22). But we don’t live like understanding our “good thing” is a priority.

H u s b a n d s : S i n g l e- C a s e D e t e c t i v e s

By Rudy Hagood

Maybe no one mentored or taught us to live in an investigative way with our wives, but the Word of God teaches us to do just that. Peter wrote, “Husbands, . . . be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers” (1 Peter 3:7). Husbands, this verse means we are detectives with a caseload of one. The words kata gnōsin, translated “understanding way” in the English Standard Version or “considerate” in the New International Version (more literally, “according to knowledge” or “with understanding”), means that husbands are to live with their wives in an investigative way. Peter pointed out that husbands should understand and be considerate of their wives’ spiritual, emotional, and physical needs. Paul also elaborated on the husband’s responsibility to protect and care for his wife, “just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28–30). So, husbands, until we know our wives like Christ knows the church, we have some studying to do.

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Husbands, investigate your wife like she’s your only case. Each morning, show up to life with one human being to kata gnōsin (live with in an understanding or investigative way). Consider this: most police precincts attempt to keep their detectives’

Don’t exegete the text and forget to study your wife. If there is anything we should be able to expound on, it is on the blessing that is our God-given bride.

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caseload at a minimum to improve case quality (or case preparation) and case closures. From the beginning, God has called husbands to leave . . . and cleave to one wife (Genesis 2:24, King James Version). So, God has given each of us a caseload of one for the purposes of case quality (let’s call that intimacy) and case closure (let’s call that transparency).

5 I n v e s t i g at i o n s f o r H u s b a n d s I will leave you with a few simple ways you can “investigate” your wife. I don’t have the space to treat these in-depth here, but Osharye and I will come back around to discuss them in the coming months. Husbands, we should . . . 1. investigate our relationships (date our wives), 2. investigate her soul (create spiritual connections), 3. investigate her interests (experience things she likes), 4. investigate how she communicates (learn her love languages), and 5. investigate who she’s becoming (meet her again and again, for she is not the same woman you originally met or married). Can I challenge you, men? In 1 Peter 3:7, I believe God challenges husbands to live with their wives in an investigative way. I believe God tells us, in that verse, that it’s our responsibility to maintain the oneness in our marriage and that our tool to do so is to investigate our wives! When we consider (kata gnōsin) her, like God considered us, we will then be co-heirs as we were in the beginning. My encouragement is simply this: Investigate your wife like she’s your only case. God’s looking for case quality (intimacy) and case closure (transparency). For, after Christ, she is your life’s work. She is God’s holy daughter entrusted to you in like manner as the church has been entrusted to Christ. Don’t exegete the text and forget to study your wife. If there is anything we should be able to expound on, it is on the blessing that is our God-given bride. Yes, be wellversed in the biblical cultures, but hold a PhD when it comes to the breathing blessing who is your caseload of one. For we know, “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.” Now let us commit to living like understanding/investigating our “good thing” is a calling. When we do, we will investigate (kata gnōsin) our wife like she is our only case! Because she is. 

abou t the au thors

Rudy and Osharye Hagood have seven children and nine grandchildren so far. Osharye is a women’s minister who is also certified as both a life coach and a health coach. Rudy is a lead pastor with a background in social work. They love being married and love to bless both married and engaged couples. @rudy.hagood @rudy_hagood_

METR I CS

ministry friend recently worked with the Slingshot Group, a church staffing firm, to find a new ministry, and they told him he was one of 19,000 candidates they were helping. I imagine this represents people from a multitude of denominations and backgrounds, as well as those seeking a variety of church ministry roles. Either way, it’s clear there’s a sizable number of people currently in ministry who are looking for something different or somewhere new to serve. But what does the future “preacher pipeline” look like based on who’s leading our Christian churches today?

A L o n g -T e r m L o o k at L e a d M i n i s t e r s ’ A g e s

The Preacher Pipeline Problem by Kent E. Fillinger

A comparison of our annual church research from 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 showed that the average age of lead ministers in churches of all sizes has remained consistent over the last 15 years. For example, lead ministers of megachurches (average weekly attendance of 2,000 or more) were between 50 to 52 years old on average during that time span. Ministers of emerging megachurches (averaging 1,000 to 1,999 weekly) were between 49 to 51 years old, on average. Lead ministers in large churches (500–999) from 2010 to 2020 were 50 years old, and those leading medium churches (250–499) were on average 48 years old. The age disparity in small (averaging 100–249) and very small (99 or fewer) churches was more apparent though we only started including them in our annual survey in 2017. The age range for lead ministers in small churches was 50 to 52 over the past four years, while in very small churches it was 51 to 58 years.

The Rest of the Story

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On the surface, the age consistency seems to be positive news, but when you dive deeper to look at the overall percentage of older preachers, the alarm bells start to ring. Our 2020 church survey showed 60 percent of the 410 lead ministers surveyed were 50 years of age or older. This includes 28 percent who were over the age of 60, and among those folks, 15 percent were I wonder w h at t he ‘p re acher p ip el ine’ woul d l ook l ik e t oday 65 or older (considered if w e h a d l e a d pa s t or s w ho s chedul ed t ime e ach mon t h t o retirement age in many l e a d a group of middl e s chool er s or high s chool er s f rom other careers).

t heir church t o ta l k t o t hem a bou t t he bl e s sing s of church minis t ry a nd how t o p repa re a Bibl e me s s age.

Looking back just a few years to 2017, data shows that the situation, we dare say, has worsened. That year, just over half

R a mif icat ions a nd Rep ercus sions This means 115 of the lead ministers surveyed last year will most likely be finished preaching and retired in the next five years or less, and churches will need to hire new lead ministers to replace them. The 245 lead pastors over the age of 50 last year will likely retire from fulltime preaching ministry within the next 15 to 20 years. If you extrapolate those numbers to better reflect the realities across Restoration Movement churches, the concern intensifies. For decades now, people have estimated 5,000 independent Christian churches and churches of Christ, but no one knows the actual number. If you use 5,000 churches as a baseline, then the 410 churches in our last survey represent about 8 percent of the total number. From that, we can project that more than 1,000 lead ministers in our churches might retire in the next five years, and approximately 2,000 additional lead ministers could retire in the next 20 years. Stated another way, given that 60 percent of our churches last year had a lead minister over the age of 50, we can assume that 3,000 churches will need to replace a retiring lead minister over the next 15 to 20 years. That’s a bunch of pulpits to fill moving forward. Granted, many churches have multiple associate ministers on staff. But oftentimes, these associates are specialists who fill niche roles and don’t have the desire, training, or skill set to preach or be a lead minister.

W h at ’ s N e x t ? It’s impossible to predict the future, but here are some possibilities for what might happen over the next several years in light of the statistics I’ve shared. It’s possible we may see the rise of more “preaching elders,” as the apostle Paul described in the New Testament. Maybe we will see the return of itinerant preachers who travel and preach in multiple churches in the same county or region. Maybe more small churches will be absorbed by larger churches, and thus become “video venues” where the preaching is broadcast from another campus. Maybe more church mergers will take place and we’ll see a renewed focus on a unity movement in our churches. Maybe more churches will close their doors due to a lack of available leadership and a dwindling number of aging members. Or maybe we will see a renewed emphasis on raising up a new generation of preachers equipped to serve the local church. Time will tell what the future holds, but you and your church could help shape the future based on what you choose to do today! 

abou t the au thor

A Preacher-Pipeline Plan Twelve years ago, I asked Bob Russell, longtime lead pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, “What are some things that in hindsight you would do differently today in ministry?” His response surprised me. “The first thing I would change is that I would start a preacher development group for junior high boys,” he said. “I always thought about it a lot, but I never got around to doing it because I never put it on my schedule. I always thought if I would schedule it, I could meet with them once a month, take them to lunch, and talk to them about sermon preparation. I’ve always felt if I had done this, then I could have recruited a lot more preachers. It used to be that we recruited ministers through Christian service camp, but now we need to recruit preachers differently.”

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22

I wonder what the “preacher pipeline” would look like today if we had lead pastors who scheduled time each month to lead a group of middle schoolers or high schoolers from their church to talk to them about the blessings of church ministry and how to prepare a Bible message.

(52 percent) of the 426 lead ministers surveyed were over the age of 50; in 2020, we remind you, it was 60 percent. Likewise, in 2017, 21 percent of the lead ministers were over the age of 60; last year, it was 28 percent.

Kent E. Fillinger serves as president of 3:STRANDS Consulting, Indianapolis, Indiana, and regional vice president (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan) with Christian Financial Resources.

/3strandsconsulting 3strandsconsulting.com

pre ach

am thankful for my time in Bible college. I enrolled at Ozark Christian College in the fall of 1976 and while there I developed lifelong friendships, a greater understanding of the Scriptures, and a deep love for preaching. Don DeWelt was my homiletics professor, and every class was memorable. That course provided me with a better understanding of how to preach, and it awakened my love for preaching. But it wasn’t just my homiletics class, it was also the opportunity to hear great preachers in chapel services and at special events.

What They Didn’t Teach Me in Bible College by Chris Philbeck

I learned about preaching with passion by listening to Tom Moll. I learned about urgency in preaching by listening to Dave Bycroft. I learned about the dignity and honor of preaching by listening to Ken Idleman. And I learned about the persuasive power of preaching by listening to Ron Carter. I have great respect for each of these men who continue to be some of my favorite preachers. With everything I learned about preaching at Ozark, however, one thing was missing. I didn’t learn about how to preach during the dry seasons of ministry. That’s not a criticism, it’s simply an acknowledgement of reality. As someone who has served as lead pastor in a church plant, a turnaround church, and now a megachurch, I know there are dry seasons of ministry, regardless of a church’s size. I’m talking about seasons when God seems far away . . . when you’re dealing with personal struggles . . . when you’re not seeing fruit . . . when you’re uncertain about the future. Add the unprecedented consequences of a worldwide pandemic, and every honest preacher will tell you he knows what it’s like to be in a dry season of ministry. So, what do you do? How do you continue to be an effective preacher who shares life-giving hope to people when you aren’t feeling hopeful? I’ll offer three suggestions.

Embrace the Power of Lament

“

Simply stated, lament is a God-given way to deal with our emotional struggles. This is a prominent component of the book of Psalms, where at least 60 of the How do you continue to be an effective preacher 150 chapters are psalms of lament. w h o s h a r e s l i f e- g i v i n g h o p e t o p e o p l e w h e n That means a full y o u a r e n ’ t f e e l i n g h o p e f u l? I’l l o f f e r t h r e e 40 percent of all suggestions. psalms are written about bad situations. Christopher Wright said, The point we should notice (possibly to our surprise) is that it is all hurled at God, not by his enemies but by those who loved and trusted him the

Everyone needs a “release valve” when they deal with the pressure of life, and God has clearly given us one in words of lament.

B e H o n e s t a n d D i r e c t A b o u t W h at Y o u N e e d f r o m G o d In Exodus 33, Moses descended Mount Sinai to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. He then returned to the mountain to ask God to forgive the people, only to have God tell him to go and lead the people to the Promised Land (Exodus 32:34). God reiterated his promise to deliver the land to the people, and then he said, “But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way” (Exodus 33:3). Ultimately, Moses went into the tent of meeting to talk to God. “If your Presence does not go with us,” Moses said, “do not send us up from here” (Exodus 33:15). During a dry season, Moses told God exactly what he needed. He needed to know the Presence of God would go with him as he continued to obey God. I say the same prayer before I preach. I say, “God, empty me of myself, forgive my sin, fill me with your Spirit, and preach through me with clarity and conviction.” That’s not vain repetition, because I pray those words with sincerity.

abou t the au thor

Preaching is a calling from God that allows us to participate in the work of God, and if he’s not present, our preaching has no power. So, when we’re in a dry season, we need to tell God what we need from him to be faithful to our calling.

P r e a c h W h at Y o u K n o w t o B e T r u e Psalm 13 is one of those psalms of lament. David began by writing about how he felt. He said, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” (vv. 1-2). Clearly, David was in a dry season as he wrote those words. But if you fast-forward to the end of this psalm, you see a reversal. “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me” (vv. 5, 6). What happened in-between? A simple explanation is that David began with what he didn’t understand about God

Chris Philbeck serves as senior pastor of Mount Pleasant Christian Church in Greenwood, Indiana. He has been in ministry since 1980 and has had the privilege of planting a new church, leading a turn-around church, and now leading a megachurch. Chris is passionate about biblical preaching, effective leadership, and developing new and better ways for the local church to make an impact in the community and the world. /PastorCPhilbeck @cphilbeck @pastorphilbeck

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22

and ended with what he did understand. I can’t remember where I heard or read this quote: “Writers heal themselves with their writing.” I think the same is true about preaching. Preachers can heal themselves with their preaching. In other words, sometimes the best way to deal with a difficult season of life is to let your preaching remind you of what you know to be true about God, regardless of how you feel. Dry seasons of ministry are a reality, but they don’t have to lead to dry preaching. 

most. It seems, indeed, that it is precisely those who have the closest relationship with God who feel most at liberty to pour out their pain and protest to God without fear of reproach. Lament is not only allowed in the Bible; it is modeled for us in abundance.

The Ministry Pipeline Restoration Movement colleges struggle to produce enough ministry graduates to meet the growing need for pastors. College presidents explain why.

BY CH R IS MOON

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22 29

Training pastors is difficult work. Training enough of them to meet the growing need for preachers and teachers of the gospel is even more challenging. Christian Standard gathered graduation data about the largest colleges and universities in the Restoration Movement to determine how many ministry graduates they are producing each year. The most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics show 16 Restoration Movement schools during the 2019-20 school year graduated 482 bachelor’s degree students with ministry or theology degrees. Presumably, most of those graduates had their sights set on joining the staffs at the more than 5,000 independent Christian churches and churches of Christ in the United States. So, are those 482 graduates enough? If the colleges produce that number year after year, can they meet the need for Restoration Movement pastors? “Absolutely not. It’s not enough,” said Ron Kastens, director of the Ministry Leadership Program at Milligan University. He’s not alone in that opinion. “I get way more calls from churches looking to find ministers than I have names to hand out,” said Matt Proctor, president of Ozark Christian College. And that doesn’t take into account the number of new churches that need to be planted. “We need a whole lot more graduates,” Proctor said.

The Gap Between Bible College/University Graduates and Grads with Theology/Ministry Degrees

1800

1350 784 867

865

934

991 1083 1129 1124 1205 1115

1101 1152 1295 1386 1396 1701 1685 1563 1581 1493 1521

510

621

605

672

726

900

563

758

775

828

817

807

690 696

723

728

673

630

570

578 484 482

450

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

The white line tracks the total number of graduates—ministry and non-ministry—at 16 of the largest Christian colleges and Bible colleges associated with our Restoration Movement churches. The orange line tracks the total number of graduates earning theology and/or ministry degrees at those same institutions. Notice that during the first decade of the 21st century, the lines run parallel to one another, but during the past 10 years, the number of non-ministry graduates has increased while the number of ministry/theology graduates has declined. All data gathered from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System website (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/).

what’s the problem? Christian Standard interviewed 12 presidents from Restoration Movement colleges about the ministry pipeline flowing through those institutions.

Colleges have endured more than a decade of steady declines in the number of ministry graduates they are producing. The 482 graduates from the 2019-20 school year are the fewest they’ve produced in any of the past 20 years—down 41 percent from their high-water mark in 2006-07. That year, those same colleges produced 828 bachelor’s level ministry graduates. Those numbers only consider graduates from schools still in existence. Cincinnati Christian University and Nebraska Christian College shut their doors in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Generally speaking, these are tough times for Christian colleges. David Fincher, president of Central Christian College of the Bible, said colleges continue to be affected by a downward trend in students that began during the economic downturn of 2007. Many families have tightened their spending as it relates to higher education, eschewing private Christian universities in favor of less-expensive options. And more students who venture toward Bible colleges are doing so after they’ve already gotten a year or two of school under their belt at a community college. Online education has exacerbated financial stress on colleges, Fincher said, as students pay less to pursue that option. “They usually don’t stay as long and they don’t pay as much,” Fincher said. Additional factors have also put a crimp on the number of ministry students being trained, college presidents say. Colleges need to do a better job recruiting students of all ages. They need to do a better job of serving nontraditional and midcareer students who enter ministry later in life. And families need to do a better job of encouraging their children to consider a career in vocational ministry. Finally—and perhaps most important to most college presidents—Restoration Movement churches are not sending students to the colleges as they did in the past. Derek Voorhees, president of Boise Bible College, said the colleges exist solely to help the church. They are “bridesmaids” to the “bride” of Christ, he said. “We own what we can own, but the bride also has some things to own,” Voorhees said. Jesus said the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Said Voorhees, “We love to recruit the few. But there are few.” The presidents say Christian colleges face several key challenges to increasing the number of students graduating with ministry degrees. Among them . . .

2 019 - 2 0 2 0 T O TA L G R A D UAT E S INSTITUTIONS A S S O C I AT E ' S

Boise Bible College

Central Christian College of the Bible Dallas Christian College

Great Lakes Christian College Hope International University Johnson University Florida

Johnson University Tennessee Kentucky Christian University

1 1 2

15 7

Mid-Atlantic Christian University

Milligan University

Ozark Christian College Point University

St. Louis Christian College William Jessup University

30 31 5

125

Total

482 Graduates with Theology/Ministry Degrees

MASTER'S

D O C T O R AT E

Lincoln Christian University

Manhattan Christian College

BACHELOR'S

172

147

148

104

183

156

195

294

149

1521

694

22 98 98

113 15

1,039 Graduates with Other Degrees

M I N I S T RY- FO CUSE D D EG R E E S T O TA L BACHELOR'S

D I S TA N C E LEARNING

17 (65%)

19 4

2 (6%)

1 (12%)

113 34 15

30%

57%

100%

15%

27%

17%

72%

32%

166

24%

28%

95%

59% 10%

47%

95%

23%

28 (82%)

113

100%

482

46%

33%

26%

76 (16%)

406

RESTORATION MOVEMENT COLLEGES WITH 500+ STUDENTS (UNDERGRADUATE)

Hope International University Johnson University Kentucky Christian University Milligan University Point University William Jessup University

D O C T O R AT E

100%

9 (69%)

15%

19 (50%)

% O F T O TA L MASTER'S

% O F T O TA L BACHELOR'S

% O F T O TA L D O C T O R AT E S

MASTER'S

IN-PERSON LEARNING

26%

RM COLLEGES WITH VOCATIONAL MINISTRY FOCUS* (UNDERGRADUATE)

Ozark Christian College

Boise Bible College Central Christian College Great Lakes Christian College Manhattan Christian College St. Louis Christian College

* This circle represents Restoration Movement colleges in which at least 50 percent of students earning bachelor’s degrees major in Bible or ministry.

RM COLLEGES WITHOUT 500 STUDENTS OR VOCATIONAL MINISTRY FOCUS (UNDERGRADUATE)

Dallas Christian College Lincoln Christian University Mid-Atlantic Christian University

A S HORTAGE OF T I MO T H Y S The shortage in true “sending” churches was forefront in the minds of many college presidents. John Jackson, president of William Jessup University, said the church is facing a “crisis” in that it is not calling enough people into vocational ministry. “I don’t think it’s we’re not training enough,” he said. “We’re just not calling forth enough.” Kevin Ingram, president of Manhattan Christian College, echoed that. “I haven’t heard a church talk about a Timothy in a long time,” he said. Churches used to bring vanloads of students to Christian colleges, he said. A group might have visited Manhattan Christian College, Nebraska Christian College, and Ozark Christian College on the same trip. That rarely happens now. “We’re now having to work to get into those churches,” Ingram said. Several college presidents recounted their own stories of being encouraged by their home churches to enter the ministry. Ingram remembers coming home from Bible college regularly to play golf with a church member. The man regularly tucked “a little Coke money” into Ingram’s shirt pocket—enough to pay a good portion of his college expenses. Terry Allcorn, president of Kentucky Christian University, also said his home church encouraged him to become a pastor. He followed the calling and was accepted as a student to KCU before he ever even met a college recruiter. He said he didn’t even know there were college recruiters. “I thought the local church did that,” he remembered thinking.

Young people simply aren’t as interested in traditional, full-time ministry, said Paul Alexander, president of Hope International University. And churches are not challenging them like they did a couple of generations ago—when a pastor might pull a young person aside and encourage the pursuit of ministry. “That was just part of the culture back then,” Alexander said. “I’ve talked to a lot of pastors. It’s not a part of the culture anymore.” Part of the problem is a reluctance to guide adolescents in “strong ways,” Alexander said. Parents and pastors are less likely to try to influence a young person’s career choice. And encouraging people to enter the ministry just isn’t on the radar of many churches. “I would 100 percent say that churches also need to wave the banner for vocational Christian leadership,” said Proctor, of Ozark Christian College. Churches use a variety of metrics to determine how healthy they are—from attendance to baptisms to small groups to giving. They might add a metric to measure how many young people have gone into ministry from that church, Proctor said. “There are places where they’re doing a great job, but there are definitely places where that’s not put in front of

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22 35

STUDENTS NOT BE I NG E NCOU R AGE D T O PU R S U E M I N I S T RY young people,” he said. And in some places, young people actually are discouraged from pursuing ministry careers. Larry Carter, president of Great Lakes Christian College, spoke last year at a large church in Michigan and asked to speak to the high school Bible class. The youth minister, himself a GLCC graduate, reluctantly agreed. Carter said he talked to 40 or so students about how his own Bible college education changed his life. After he finished—and in front of the class—the youth minister said Carter may have seen glazed looks on the faces of the students because “I discourage anybody from going into ministry.” The explanation: Ministry is hard. “I was like, holy cow!” Carter said. “No wonder we’re not getting anybody from this church.”

PA S T O R S W H O A R E ‘ F RUS T R AT E D A N D BURDENED’

PA R E N T S W H O T A L K STUDENTS OUT OF BIBLE COLLEGE

Some college presidents recognize the culture—and church ministry—has changed.

Christian parents often aren’t much help. It isn’t uncommon for them to dissuade their kids from entering the ministry, college presidents said.

Ministry is not the esteemed profession it used to be. The pay isn’t great. The hours are long. And some churches don’t treat their pastors well. And some parts of the country are highly secular. Churches have a hard time just building their youth programs—much less raising up future preachers. Boise Bible College tries to recruit students in Washington and Oregon, but Vorhees said it has been tough sledding. John Jackson, of William Jessup University, said pastors—like people in many professions—can be burdened with the condition of their vocations. “They are frustrated and burdened,” Jackson said. “We’ve had what I would call the professionalization of pastoral ministry. And that professionalization has often meant the burden of leadership falls more singularly on a solo individual.” It’s natural then that those pastors might not suggest others follow their path.

Kastens, of Milligan, said parents used to be concerned mostly about their children becoming missionaries and serving in some remote, faraway location. “Now it seems like parents are not encouraging their children to go into ministry period,” he said. MCC’s Ingram remembers having a hard conversation with his father before heading off to Bible college. But overall, Ingram’s father was happy about his son’s choice to pursue the ministry. Today, fewer parents are happy about it. Silas McCormick, president of Lincoln Christian University, said he sometimes sits down with parents concerned whether their kids will be able to receive fairly normal job benefits— like health insurance. Of course, many churches don’t provide benefits. That wasn’t a discussion just 20 years ago. But factors like that one can cause a parent to dissuade their child from entering the ministry. The college feels the effects. “It’s harder and harder to find students every year who have a deep commitment to ministry,” McCormick said.

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22 37

A L AC K OF ‘ B R A N D L OYA LT Y ’ Carter, president of Great Lakes Christian College for more than 20 years, identified a related challenge. He said he’s seen a change in what he calls “brand loyalty” to the Restoration Movement among churches during his time at GLCC. It’s a “huge decrease,” he said. “The church members aren’t identifying themselves as Restoration Movement people,” he said. As a consequence, they aren’t prioritizing sending their children to Restoration Movement colleges. Of course, the “brand loyalty” question swings both ways, said David Fincher, of Central Christian College of the Bible. Sometimes, colleges recruit students who have Christian backgrounds outside the Restoration Movement, and those students fall in love with the independent Christian church while in school. Fincher said it happened to him. He grew up a Methodist. “We get those people all the time. I love it when I see that happen,” Fincher said. And, so, there is no uniform kind of student among Restoration Movement colleges and universities. In fact, some students come with no faith in Christ at all. Dean Collins, president of Point University, said he wouldn’t be surprised if 30 to 50 percent of his student body came from a non-Christian background. The college, then, becomes the primary point of discipleship for those students. “That’s a very different job,” he said. “It’s a harder job, but it’s an essential job.”

C H U RC H E S T H AT S E N D MON EY BU T NOT ST U DEN TS Some churches try to help the colleges by sending money. This is a long-standing tradition in many congregations. College presidents were quick to express appreciation for that support. Even during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many church doors were shuttered, monthly financial support from the churches continued. However, “the greatest gift the churches can send us is a student,” said John Maurice, president of Mid-Atlantic Christian University. The financial benefit of a single student deciding to attend the college usually far outpaces the monthly support any one church may give, Maurice said. But some college presidents worry churches simply figure their financial gifts are enough. KCU’s Allcorn said he regularly visits churches to thank them for their gifts. But, he said, “If I’m feeling cantankerous, I might say we don’t exist just for you to send us money . . . we exist also for you to send us students.” On either count—financial gifts or student recruitment—some presidents noted that churches can’t be expected to continue their support without regular interaction from the colleges. Pastoral turnover can be high, and the colleges need to make sure they visit those churches to build new relationships so the financial pipeline will remain open. “I think it is a matter of getting on people’s radar,” Allcorn said. “I think it’s important to maintain those relationships.”

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22 39

BE L I E V I NG T H E WOR ST As college presidents have worked to connect—or reconnect—with the churches they serve, some say they occasionally encounter a subtle distrust. Sometimes, it’s the result of the colleges’ decisions to offer more than just ministry training to their students. Most colleges operate with a wide range of degree offerings. Training preachers isn’t necessarily the primary mission. (See sidebar, “Two Christian College Models,” page 43.) Maurice said Mid-Atlantic Christian University once was accused of dropping its preaching program altogether. It wasn’t true. This perception can affect funding. Some churches are reluctant to support a college because they don’t want to be funding sports scholarships instead of young preachers. “It’s a sad day that so many of our churches look only at the value in Christian higher education as [solely] producing preachers,” Maurice said. Maurice said he’d like to educate more preachers. But a 2,000-member church may have only five paid staff members. And Christians are needed in every vocation. “Who really is influencing more people. Is it the five or is it the 2,000?” he asked. Allcorn, at Kentucky Christian University, echoed that.

“We cannot surrender our education to the secular university,” he said. And besides, Allcorn said, those non-ministry graduates aren’t necessarily lost to vocational ministry. He knows of one business graduate from KCU who serves as a pastor in an executive role at a local church. And he knows an education graduate who is serving bivocationally at a church. Brian Smith, president of Dallas Christian College, said surveys over the past three years show 55 to 60 percent of DCC’s graduates are planning to go into vocational ministry. “Not nearly 55 to 60 percent actually graduate with a ministry degree,” he said. “I don’t know that the degree they report to have graduated with tells the whole story.” But the occasional distrust can go beyond college program offerings. It also can be rooted in theology. GLCC’s Carter told of a rumor that spread that he no longer adhered to the Restoration Movement’s beliefs about baptism. He had to visit a local association of pastors to clear the air, and he received an apology. Carter said similar dustups have occurred over women’s roles in the church and the role of Moses in authoring the Pentateuch. “Especially on the conservative side, we have such a willingness to believe the worst about our Bible colleges,” Carter said.

They need to do a better job of serving nontraditional and mid-career students who enter ministry later in life.

Colleges need to do a better job recruiting students of all ages.

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22

how do we move forward? Facing those headwinds, Christian colleges are trying to find their way forward.

one

Even as some doors seem to be

A N E W M I N I S T RY P I P E L I N E

shutting—or at least aren’t open quite as wide as they used to be—other possibilities are appearing. Here are five examples.

McCormick, of Lincoln Christian University, said he sees two ministry “pipelines” rather than just one. The first consists of 18- to 22-year-olds who go straight to Bible college and then into ministry. The second consists of second-career adults who opt to enter the ministry after working for years in other vocations. That second pipeline, some college presidents say, tends to be a bit more robust than the first. “One is easy to sell, and one is hard to sell,” McCormick said. Second-career students oftentimes are more committed to their decision to enter ministry before they even seek out a college to attend. They’ve already weighed the costs and benefits, he said. CCCB’s Fincher said a growing market for Christian college recruits consists of people over the age of 26. Those ministerial candidates are most influenced by their spouses and preaching ministers, rather than their parents. “That’s where the sweet spot is going to happen with that market,” Fincher said.

c hristia n sta nda rd 42

two

A N E W PA R A D I G M And, so, colleges and churches are adapting. Many larger churches have gravitated toward hiring pastors from within their congregations—taking someone who is in mid-career and putting them into a pastoral role. Rather than sending those new staff members to a Bible college, the churches are training them on their own. Some churches have created entire training programs or residencies to equip new ministers. And some are finding it necessary to call in the Bible colleges to help with that, particularly in the more technical areas of biblical studies and theology. Colleges are increasingly linking up with churches to help. Lincoln Christian University announced in September it is partnering with The Merold Institute of Ministry, a training program at Harvester Christian Church near St. Louis. Great Lakes Christian College is partnering with 2|42 Community Church in Brighton, Michigan. The college will send one of its professors—in New Testament, Old Testament, and theology—to work with the staff at 2|42. Boise Bible College is looking to provide a remote training program for students who want to bulk up their pastoral skills without leaving their home churches. BBC’s model would pair a student with a mentor in his or her home church—likely the pastor—and then run the student through a remote curriculum. Hope International University has a program called SALT— School for Advanced Leadership Training—that it has deployed at about 30 churches; SALT blends the school’s online education with on-the-ground mentors from the churches. Dallas Christian College has created an academy at Compass Christian Church in Colleyville, Texas, that awards certificates in biblical studies. Thirty-five students are participating, most of them staff or key volunteers at the church.

J a nua ry/Feb rua ry 20 22 43

T WO C H R I S T I A N C O L L E G E M O D E L S Restoration Movement colleges and universities come in a couple of varieties.

because many of those schools are populated mostly or almost entirely with Christians.

Some offer a wide range of degree programs, from nursing to business to engineering. They still offer ministry programs, but those aren’t the primary mission of those schools.

Dean Collins, president of Point University, said his college sees students baptized each semester.

These colleges have opted to broaden their approach—and their enrollment—to raise up Christian leaders across a spectrum of secular vocations. After all, the world needs more people with Christian worldviews in every vocation, college presidents say. But a handful of Restoration Movement schools have opted not to pursue that model. They simply want to train ministry leaders. These include Boise Bible College, Central Christian College of the Bible, Manhattan Christian College, Ozark Christian College, and St. Louis Christian College (which is in merger talks with CCCB). Presidents at these institutions say they take nothing away from their peers with broader program offerings. A student may come into a college looking to major in business or biology and then decide they want to be a pastor—because that degree program also is offered there. “I don’t think that’s a terrible strategy,” said David Fincher, president of Central Christian College of the Bible. And a non-Christian might head to a Christian liberal arts college and find Christ in the classroom—

Further, some colleges with broader degree programming pair a nonministry degree with a minor in biblical studies or some other Christian discipline. So those students are prepared to impact the world for Christ in a number of ways. While some of the presidents of the more traditional Restoration Movement “Bible colleges” say they can’t criticize the liberal arts approach, they still point to the advantages of their model. “We’re probably going to die on that hill,” said Derek Voorhees, president of Boise Bible College, which graduates only students with ministry degrees of some kind. He said the ministry-intensive model has proven effective. Since 1990, nearly 80 percent of BBC’s graduates have remained in church ministry for at least five years, and that doesn’t count students who go on to seminary or head to the mission field, Voorhees said. “That’s a pretty decent track record of hitting our objective,” he said. The benefit of maintaining focus has other advantages. Matt Proctor, president of Ozark Christian College—the largest

Restoration Movement school exclusively focused on raising up ministry leaders—says every student in any class at OCC is aiming to enter the ministry in one way or another. And that leads to a better, more focused ministry education. “There’s a commonality of purpose,” he said. It also helps in connecting with— and raising money from—churches across the Restoration Movement. Some college presidents say they’ve noticed more distance recently between them and the churches they serve, for a variety of reasons. But Proctor said he’s sensed OCC’s relationship with churches strengthening in recent years, particularly after the closures of Cincinnati Christian University and Nebraska Christian College. Those have opened some pastors’ eyes to the need to support their local Restoration Movement schools. OCC recently launched a $5.9 million capital campaign. Already, $4.7 million of that has been raised, thanks to some large church gifts. For instance, Southeast Christian Church in Louisville gave $1 million. Churches like Southeast, Proctor said, have appreciated OCC’s focus on ministry and its avoidance of any “mission drift.” “I’ve heard that from other megachurches, too,” Proctor said. “I hear that from smaller churches. We’ve never had an identity crisis.” —C.M.

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three

PA R T N E R S H I P S T H A T WO R K Smith, of Dallas Christian College, said some large churches try to go it alone in creating training programs for their staff and volunteers—only to think twice about it and seek out help from a college. “Many walk into [the process] and say, ‘Oh gosh, this is more complicated than we thought,’” Smith said. The difficulty in all of this, said HIU’s Alexander, is figuring out a way to blend the very targeted goals of a church’s ministry training program with the requirements of a college. The church usually knows exactly what skills and knowledge it wants its program to provide—no more and no less. The college, meanwhile, must think about its accreditation standards. It’s an opportunity for colleges to educate students in new ways, but it’s a challenging one. “It is a challenge to make triangles and squares fit together,” Alexander said. “If we can figure that out, we can provide a really strong bridge so that everybody wins.” LCU’s McCormick said some nontraditional students balk at the expense of pursuing a 36-credit hour master’s degree program. But they may be willing to pursue a more affordable certificate in biblical studies. Whatever the case, the students benefit from their studies, he said. Fincher, of Central Christian College of the Bible—which has multiple partnerships with local churches—said a Bible college can add academic credentials to a megachurch’s in-house ministry training program, and that can give the program more credibility with trainees. Adult learners still want an educational program that is serious, even as they look for something that’s affordable. A program must be so worthwhile a person will forgo family time to pursue it. “It takes an academic partner to push it over the edge as a worthy investment,” Fincher said.

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E DUC AT ION R E V E RT I NG B AC K T O T H E C H U R C H E S In all of this, some college presidents see pastoral education moving full circle. Fincher said 200 years ago, ministers weren’t trained until after they had obtained higher education in some other discipline, such as Latin or Greek. After that, they were paired with a minister for practical training. Not until the late 1800s did the current model of Bible colleges and seminaries take hold. “Education is going back to the church,” Fincher said. “That’s where it started.” Along these lines, some college presidents said it’s wrong in some ways even to ask whether Restoration Movement colleges are producing enough ministry graduates. Point University’s Collins said the job of developing pastors historically has fallen to the churches themselves. Leadership in the early church was typically homegrown and bi-vocational. “It’s a little awkward or odd to me—someone comes to a Christian university, and we’re supposed to be the ones who disciple them and point them back to their place of origin,” he said. The Restoration Movement historically has valued the concept of the priesthood of all believers, he said. The

churches have an obligation to disciple their members, and Christian colleges ought to disciple whoever comes to them—whether they want to be a vocational pastor or not. “I do think some of it goes pretty deep in our theology of ministry and, in particular, the whole distinction around—to use those ancient words—the clergy and laity,” Collins said. Meanwhile, Jackson, of William Jessup University, said he believes the Restoration Movement’s founding ideals— believing in the lordship of Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the unity of the church—are now pervasive in much of the evangelical world. “I believe the Restoration Movement has won,” he said. As such, many Restoration Movement churches are satisfied hiring pastors who emerge from non-Restoration Movement colleges and seminaries, so long as those schools are broadly evangelical in what they teach, Jackson said. That doesn’t negate the fact the church still faces a struggle in finding qualified pastors. “I think we have a crisis in the church in that we’re not calling forth people who have a call to vocational ministry,” Jackson said.

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A FO C US ON T H E ‘ F RON T SI DE’ OF T H E PI PELI N E Perhaps lost in the paradigm shift that is putting more attention on nontraditional ministry students is the continued need for colleges to recruit high school students into their programs. Those high school students continue to be harder to find. But Kastens, of Milligan, has seen something that gives him hope. He recently visited West Side Christian Church in Springfield, Illinois, which has launched a ministry apprenticeship program for high school students. Those students work a few hours in ministry during the week for the church and get involved with the church’s staff. Not all of those students are likely to become vocational ministers. But some might. And, so, while more churches are launching formal residency programs for postgraduate and adult learners, they also should be considering how to promote the ministry to their youth. “It would be great if more churches could give similar attention and energy to the ministry pipeline on the front side of college,” Kastens said. “If we don’t understand that the solution to our minister shortage begins in middle and high school, it will not matter how great our colleges and residency programs are. And that’s on us. It’s on adult Christians who are a part of a local church.” 

Chris Moon, a pastor and writer living in Redstone, Colorado, conducted interviews and wrote this article. Kent Fillinger helped with research.

BOISE BIBLE COLLEGE Boise, Idaho Derek Vorhees, president DALLAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE Farmer’s Branch, Texas Brian Smith, president CENTRAL CHRISTIAN COLLEGE OF THE BIBLE Moberly, Missouri David Fincher, president GREAT LAKES CHRISTIAN COLLEGE Lansing, Michigan Larry Carter, president HOPE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Fullerton, California Paul Alexander, president KENTUCKY CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY Grayson, Kentucky Terry Allcorn, president LINCOLN CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY Lincoln, Illinois Silas McCormick, president MANHATTAN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE Manhattan, Kansas Kevin Ingram, president MID-ATLANTIC CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY Elizabeth City, North Carolina John Maurice, president MILLIGAN UNIVERSITY Milligan, Tennessee Ron Kastens, director, Ministry Leadership Program OZARK CHRISTIAN COLLEGE Joplin, Missouri Matt Proctor, president POINT UNIVERSITY West Point, Georgia Dean Collins, president WILLIAM JESSUP UNIVERSITY Rocklin, California John Jackson, president

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S OU RC E S

BY MARK SCOTT

HOW TO PREVENT

Message Drift WHEN YOU CALL YOUR NEXT PREACHER

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Message drift was not foreign to the New Testament either. In the Olivet discourse Jesus predicted that false prophets would arise (before the destruction of Jerusalem) and lead many astray, and some of them might even perform miracles (Matthew 24:11, 24). When men from Judea went north to Antioch and started teaching the people that they needed Jesus plus circumcision, the first church council meeting had to be called to solve the problem (Acts 15). Paul told the Ephesian elders that fierce wolves from among themselves would arise and speak “twisted things” and “not [spare] the flock” (Acts 20:29-30, English Standard Version).

Message drift is not new. Israel faced it.

Almost all the 21 New Testament Epistles were written to address some different nuance of message drift. In Romans, Ephesians, and Philippians the message was drifting toward disunity. In Corinthians the message was drifting toward making the cross and resurrection look dim. In Galatians the message was drifting toward legalism. In Colossians it was drifting toward syncretism. In Thessalonians it was drifting toward a skewed eschatology. In the Pastoral Epistles the message was drifting toward a wrongheaded view of the church. And Hebrews says simply, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1, ESV, emphasis mine). The word used in Hebrews to describe something drifting away depicted an object floating down a river but moving so slowly as to hardly be noticed. Message drift also gives birth to other drifts. Message drift can lead to identity drift (who we are), mission drift (what we do), core value drifts (what we cherish and fight for), and leadership drifts (who oversees and directs our paths). Ministers, elders, deacons, and congregations should be concerned about it. This is always important but no more so than when a church sets about to call a new lead or preaching minister. Here are three ways church leaders can avoid message drift.

Message drift is not new. Israel faced it. When Moses predicted that the Lord God would raise up a prophet like him (a reference to the Messiah), he also warned against prophets who would presume to speak in God’s name but actually speak in the names of other gods (Deuteronomy 18:15, 20). Jeremiah ran into a similar situation with a false prophet named Pashhur (Jeremiah 20:1-6; cf. 14:14; 23:32).

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DISCERN THE MESSAGE How will church leaders know if a preacher or teacher is committing the sin of message drift? They obviously need to know what the real message is. They need to be able to articulate the gospel. They need to be able to succinctly summarize the story of the Bible. For some years I had students in preaching classes at Ozark Christian College form small groups and strive to summarize the story of the Bible in one sentence. They had to display and defend their work on a marker board. It seemed like an arduous task at first pass, but the students usually rallied and were excited by the end. After they shared their work, I would display what various Bible scholars thought. (See “The Bible in One Sentence” by Gene Veith at www.patheos.com, January 14, 2011.). Here are a select few: “God was so covenantally committed to the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (Daniel Block). “God is in the process of recreating the universe which has been corrupted by sin and has made it possible for all those, and only those, who follow Jesus to be part of the magnificent, eternal community that will result” (Craig Blomberg). “Apprenticing with Jesus to become human again” (Zack Eswine). “John 3:16” (Andreas Kostenberger). “The story of the Bible is about a God who is out to get back what rightfully belongs to him” (Gardner C. Taylor). It seemed only fair to share my own one-sentence effort. I usually said it this way, “The triune God rescues fallen creation and moves it to new creation.” Message drift occurs when we do not focus on God, who is the hero of all the narratives of Scripture. Message drift occurs when we neglect to put the spotlight on the salvific event of how the cross and empty tomb rescue creation. Message drift occurs when we fail to bring hope only realized in the new heaven and new earth. The Bible contains a plethora of narratives. But message drift is occurring if the arch of creation, fall, and redemption is not part and parcel of a preacher’s preaching. Unifying all things under the headship of Christ is not only good Pauline theology (Ephesian 1:9-10), it also is a mark of preaching in our Restoration heritage.

To help guard against message drift, a congregation would be wise to ask themselves the following seven questions for each candidate they are considering. (Asking these questions will not completely prevent message drift, but it will cut down on the possibility.)

Is Jesus marginalized? It is amazing how little Jesus shows up in some preaching. And it sometimes is done in Jesus’ name. By this I do not mean a preacher should repeat Jesus’ name in the sermon in an almost meaningless manner. Neither do I mean attaching a Jesus sticker to parts of the message to make it sound Christocentric. Instead, congregations should be looking for what witness the sermon bears to the person and work of Christ. The late Wayne Shaw of Lincoln Christian Seminary taught, “If Christ isn’t in it, then it isn’t a Christian sermon.” Our Restoration heritage has stressed “No creed but Christ.”

Is the cross diminished? These first two questions are inextricably linked. The Messiah dying on a cross is an offense to human pride. For many, the cross is an example of an abusing father or is unbearably horrifying and repulsive. But for us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). If the preacher is embarrassed about the blood of Jesus, avoid that preacher. Allow “the things of earth,” not the cross, “to grow strangely dim.”

Is hope realized? Pastor, professor, and theologian Haddon Robinson taught, “Hope is the music of the future, and faith is the courage to dance to it now.” There is no need to hire Eeyore’s cousin for a preacher. The church has had enough Debbie Downers and wet blankets. The empty tomb is at the heart of the gospel message (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” (Matthew 28:6). Does the preacher inspire resurrected hope?

Is the kingdom announced? The government of God was the main theme of John the Baptist and Jesus’ preaching. The gospel is more indicative than imperative. Be leery of the preacher whose every sermon is filled with “ought,” “must,” and “should.” There are well over 1,000 imperatives in the New Testament, and preachers should want to hit them all. But what God has already done in Christ is what gives rise for us obeying God in the first place. Does the preacher regularly announce that the loving reign of God is being expanded through grace?

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ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MESSENGER

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Is the authority of the Bible undergirding every message? This means more than just giving a nod to the Bible in the sermon. This means the message will be the strong development of what the text says and how the text says it. The goal is not to just use parts of the Bible in the sermon. But the preacher seeks to become—as Robert Smith Jr. wrote in Doctrine that Dances—an “exegetical escort” of the text. The text wins over every nuance of the sermon. Is the preacher developing a biblically informed community through their preaching? Our Restoration heritage has stressed “No book but the Bible.”

Is salvation clarified? To some extent, the preacher never puts the evangelistic hat in the closet. The preacher is always beckoning people to come to Christ. This does not mean to commit the sin of the idolatry of salvation (i.e., as if just getting another gospel notch on our belts is our goal). But does the preacher see salvation in its broadest terms (lost/found; guilty/forgiven; sick/made well; outsider/insider; injustices are corrected; and creation is healed)? Make sure the preacher has no puny view of salvation.

Is the vocabulary clear and the call compelling? This is more than just honed homiletics. Jesus’ preaching vocabulary was understandable (Mark 12:37), and the people were compelled by it (Luke 19:48; John 7:46). The Pentecost folk were cut to the heart (Acts 2:37). The Philippian jailer asked what to do to be saved (Acts 16:30). Clear and compelling preaching garners those responses. Haddon Robinson said it rightly in his book Biblical Preaching, “Don’t overestimate the people’s vocabulary or underestimate their intelligence.”

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ESCAPE THE TRAP OF METHOD OVER MESSAGE When I was interviewed for a preaching professorship at Ozark Christian College in 1983, I was surprised by the question, “As a teacher of preachers, will you emphasize content or method more?” I said in so many words, “I don’t think I have to choose. But if you made me choose, I would always choose content.” The message leads us to Christ who saves—not the method we use to communicate it. Congregations will be wise to think this through.

The message leads us to Christ who saves—not the method we use to communicate it.

Fred B. Craddock told the story of a fresh-outof-seminary preacher who took his first church and began using different (less predictable) styles of preaching—narrative, first-person biographical, inductive, etc. After a few weeks the leaders took the young seminary graduate aside and told him they liked the style of their former preacher because he preached more “biblical” messages. What the congregation failed to understand was that a change of style to the ear sounds like a change of content in the mind. The young preacher might have had more Bible in his messages than his predecessor, but it did not seem so to the church.

Today, most preachers’ sermons are available online. Pulpit committees and search teams no longer need to go through the traditional trial sermon(s). They can listen to several of the candidates’ messages to make sure they are not adrift. Do we want our preachers to communicate well? Absolutely! Do we want them to captivate our interest? Indeed! Do we want them to inspire us to go out and slay spiritual dragons? For sure! Just not at the expense of the content of the gospel message. 

Dr. Mark Scott serves as minister with Park Plaza Christian Church in Joplin, Mo. He retired last May after more than 30 years as professor of New Testament with Ozark Christian College in Joplin. He also writes the weekly “Study” material for The Lookout.

PASTORS ARE QUITTING WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP

BY SEANA SCOTT

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Pastors in Restoration Movement churches quit at an alarming rate. According to research from the Christian Church Leadership Network, 70 percent of Bible college graduates in the Restoration Movement leave pastoral ministry within the first 10 years. That means 7 out of 10 current Bible college students called to pastoral ministry in this movement probably will not last a decade. How might we better develop and grow healthy leaders? In what ways might we support the leaders we already have so they last a lifetime in ministry? The future of our movement and the health of our churches is at stake.

6 KEY FACTORS FOR ATTRITION Every story is unique, so defining the cause of pastor attrition can be complex. Especially now—with COVID-19 and so many tensions in our country. Difficult circumstances reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a person’s leadership. So, even in a COVID-19 world, several key factors of pastoral attrition stand out.

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1. IMMATURE LEADERSHIP Giftedness and personality do not equal maturity and character. Even when new ministers have a compelling call to vocational ministry, the responsibilities and interpersonal challenges they face can cause them to short out. “The breadth of tasks performed by local church pastors coupled with the rapid switching between task clusters and roles . . . in this position is unique,” 2. INADEQUATE COMPENSATION Michigan State University professor Richard P. DeShon wrote. “I have never encountered such Financial pressure is another reason pastors in Restoa fast-paced job with such varied and impactful ration Movement churches quit at alarming rates. More responsibilities.” than half of the ministers who responded to CCLN’s research reported personal and educational debt, lack of An added component might include pastors besufficient health-care coverage, and/or lack of churchginning ministry with unrealistic expectations. funded retirement as major reasons for financial stress. “We have young leaders coming out of Bible col“Christian churches and churches of Christ generally lege and all they want to do is preach,” said Tim compensate their pastoral staff less than the national Winters, executive pastor at Shepherd Church in average,” said Tim Wallingford, executive director Porter Ranch, California. “Sharing the Word is imof the Christian Church Leadership Network (CCLN). portant, but we also need people called to minis“We need a theology of compensation that is biblical. try that can lead themselves and others. We lack A worker is worthy of their wages (1 Timothy 5:18). We prepared leaders.” have a responsibility to care for our leaders. Instead, hiring committees approach salaries as trying to get a ‘good deal’ and save the 3. CHALLENGES WITHIN THE MINISTRY church money.” A third key reason pastors within Restoration churches quit within the first decade is more nuanced. Factors contributing to pastoral attrition include unhealthy elder boards, mistrustful staffs, congregations unwilling to change to meet the shifting ministry needs of their communities, and pastors not knowing where to turn for help. Among the pastors who participated in the CCLN study: • 71 percent did not feel capable of leading culturally relevant programming, either because they lack the skills to do so or because their congregations are unwilling to change, or both. • 79 percent identified lack of a clear mission as an obstacle to congregational effectiveness. • 80 percent struggled with change management.

Across the board in Restoration Movement churches and elsewhere, pastors sometimes depend on a second job and/ or a spouse’s job to make ends meet. “No national or regional body exists to set minimum salary requirements,” researchers wrote, “and most lay leaders are unaware of compensation patterns among other congregations in their area. As a result, promising pastoral leaders often leave smaller congregations simply to make more money.”

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An unexpected finding to the CCLN study included pastors repeatedly saying something to the effect of, “I feel like I am out here doing ministry all alone.” Restoration Movement leaders used to connect more frequently in regional gatherings and annual conventions, but many conferences have weakened or died. “When it comes right down to it, God has commanded us to be interdependent,” said Richard Creek, retired pastor and founder of The Kingdom Partnership. “We are all part of the body of Christ, not just our local church. We need one another.”

4. ISOLATION

5. LACK OF SELF-MANAGEMENT

Ministry leadership can act like a never-ending machine that requires constant fuel. For some pastors, the urgency of others’ needs stays at the forefront of their lives. They never learn how to practice a life rhythm that includes rest, healthy habits, and spiritual formation disciplines. Eventually the pastor wears out because of the constant spiritual warfare taking place in ministry. Alan Ahlgrim, founder of Covenant Connections for Pastors, also sees a link between pastors quitting and a lack of intentional life rhythm.

“Pastors that quit usually have a combination of inadequate support, inadequate disciplines, inadequate 6. FIGHTING THE WRONG BATTLE friendships, and/or inadequate commitment to physical health,” he said. “SoulScripture says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and enriching rhythms involve living well blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, reflectively, relationally, and recreationagainst the powers of this dark world and against the ally. All are vital.” spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). As ministers of the gospel, pastors and ministry leaders advance the kingdom of light into evil strongholds of all kinds. But instead of focusing on the battlefield of spiritual warfare and committing ourselves to God’s Word, prayer, humility, and teamwork—we can easily change our focus to programs, worship style, and building projects. When we fight on the wrong battlefield, we lose (because we’re fighting the wrong war). If we spend more time on programs and committee meetings than we do on our knees, we likely are leading ourselves and our ministries with chunks of our armor missing. When this happens, our pastors and staff are likely to become casualties (Ephesians 6:10-20).

IF WE SPEND MORE TIME ON PROGRAMS AND COMMITTEE MEETINGS THAN WE DO ON OUR KNEES, WE LIKELY ARE LEADING OURSELVES AND OUR MINISTRIES WITH CHUNKS OF OUR ARMOR MISSING.

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4 WAYS TO DEVELOP HEALTHY LEADERS 1. MENTORSHIP One way to help a new pastor become established is to connect them with a seasoned pastoral mentor to walk alongside them. “These coaches deal with pastoral and personal issues from the very beginning of their ministry callings, so they hopefully avoid turning [these minor issues] into major problems down the road—the kinds of problems pastors quit over,” Wallingford said. “Pastors, especially young pastors, need scriptural-based mentors,” said Creek. “They need a place to safely process the challenges of ministry.” Committed and qualified mentors might help younger ministers deal with one of the top three reasons pastors quit: they simply are immature leaders. The “follow my example” mentorship is also how Jesus taught leadership. He healed the sick, cast out demons, cared for the least of these—and then sent out his followers to do the same (Luke 10:1-24). He took a towel and a basin of water to scrub layers of road refuse off the disciples’ feet—and then told them to serve one another with the same humility (John 13:1–17). “The challenge among our movement is we don’t have a model of pastoral leadership development that mentors young pastors in life, ministry, finances . . . everything,” Wallingford said. “The beauty of our movement is the model of independent and local autonomy, but the challenge is how to walk alongside one another as well.”

2. EDUCATIONAL SCHOLARSHIPS Does your church have a gifted pastor who lacks biblical and/or leadership training? Consider paying for their education. This helps in four ways: (1) It gives them the tools to study and teach God’s Word so they can teach the message of truth accurately (2 Timothy 2:15) and lead others well. (2) It links them up with peers and mentors. (3) It encourages them and makes them aware they are cared for and valued by their church’s elders. (4) It keeps them out of financial debt, a major 3. FELLOWSHIP cause of pastoral attrition.

4. TEAM LEADERSHIP

Encourage pastors and church leaders to connect in authentic community with others in similar positions. “Growth happens at the speed of trust,” Ahlgrim said. “Transformation happens on purpose, over time, in community.” It’s important for mental and spiritual health to link arms with others on the same journey.

Developing healthy leaders includes developing healthy leadership teams. Is the senior pastor great at evangelism but weak on discipleship? (Can an elder or pastoral leader help him develop a comprehensive discipleship strategy?) Is the senior pastor great at preaching but slow in administration? (Can someone with administration leadership gifts come alongside him?) “A good leader loves God and loves people, but you need to supplement the areas of leadership you are not good in,” said Caleb Kaltenbach, church consultant and author of Messy Church. “Staff and lay leadership teams need intentional developing, including elder teams. The health of the pastor and the church depends on it.”

5 WAYS TO SUPPORT CURRENT LEADERS 1. SPIRITUAL LIFE AS PART OF THE JOB DESCRIPTION Many ministry job descriptions focus on the production end of work, but the inner work of church staff is vital. Elder teams should include prayer and spiritual disciplines as part of church staff job descriptions, while also allowing for times for daily/weekly Bible study and prayer as a part of staff’s “on-the-clock” time. Ministry works both on the physical plane and the unseen spiritual reality. 2. FINANCIAL SUPPORT

When we value our pastors and staff for their “output” but do not make space (i.e., pay them) to work on their inner life, we set them up for burnout (at worst) or working out of human strength (at best).

According to CCLN’s research, the average congregant in Christian churches contributes only 2 percent of their annual household income but still expects the church to be wellresourced to hire capable staff, lead with creative vision, engage the local community, support missionaries, and provide dynamic programming.

Elders and pastors need to cultivate a congregation of generous givers. One possible way is to tell stories of how ministry funds impact the community. Share the vision constantly with the church. Challenge them to support the ministry they glean from. Churches need to pay ministers and church leadership well. Period. They should be able to live without wondering if they will be able to save for retirement or worry whether they can afford to take their child to the doctor. Consider their take-home pay after their out-of-pocket expenses. Consider personal debt reduction as part of a benefit package—especially for student loans for leaders with Bible college or seminary degrees. When pastors and church leaders do not need to worry about financial stability and future security, they are able to serve others more freely and with longevity.

3. CONTINUING EDUCATION

The more you invest in your leaders, the better they will lead. Provide staff and pastoral leaders with continuing education toward spiritual development and leadership training. This can include mentorship, conferences, retreats, scholarships for higher education, books, and resources.

4. OUTSIDE CONSULTATION ON A REGULAR BASIS Invite outside ministry leadership consultants to help with staff development, vision, and strategy . . . and to help when the church’s ministry leaders need an outside perspective. 5. ENCOURAGEMENT Pastors and church staff receive loads of critique but not much encouragement. “When people critique you, they attack your character—‘You’re a bad Christian because. . . ’” Winters said. “But when people encourage you, they point out something you did. Encourage your pastors just as deeply as they are critiqued. Encourage them for their character. Be specific with your encouragement. 

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DID SOMETHING IN THIS ARTICLE CATCH YOUR ATTENTION OR STRIKE A NERVE?

PERHAPS YOUR CHURCH SHOULD TAKE STEPS TO DEVELOP AND SUPPORT MINISTRY LEADERSHIP.

RESOURCES: •

www.e2elders.org help with training and developing elders/pastoral leaders

•

www.covenant-connections.org information about spiritual formation groups for pastors

•

www.churchlawandtax.com church financial guidance (specifically, download Setting Wages and Benefits for Church Staff)

Through writing and speaking, Seana Scott encourages others to know God’s Word, walk with God, and live with purpose. The Dallas Theological Seminary graduate is a mom of three. Her husband, Jason, serves as a pastor at Chapel Rock Christian Church in Indianapolis. seanascott.com @seana_s_scott

WHERE DO CHURCH PLANTERS COME FROM?

BY JUSTIN HOREY

What do a lawyer, a football player, and a youth pastor have in common? It might sound like the setup to a bad joke, but it isn’t. All three are examples of professionals who recently left their jobs to plant independent Christian churches in the United States. Many of today’s church leaders are asking where tomorrow’s church leaders will come from. That’s a critical concern among church planters as well. In fact, Stadia president Greg Nettle says, “The number one

challenge we face right now is our leadership pipeline of church planters.” Nettle and other church-planting leaders estimate it will require 8,000 new churches per year in the United States alone to keep pace with church closures and population growth. All evangelical denominations together currently plant about 3,500 churches per year. Christian Standard spoke to Restoration Movement church planters and churchplanting leaders about the state of the church-planting pipeline.

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TODAY M A N Y NEW CHU RCH PL A N TERS

A RE CHRISTI A N LE A DERS W HO H AV E

WORK ED IN THE BUSINESS WORLD.

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CHURCH PLANTERS COME FROM HEALTHY, REPRODUCING CHURCHES “Church planters are coming from all over the place,” says Tim Cole, executive director of Waypoint Church Partners.

is important and needs to be replicated. But, sadly, most churches today don’t have that culture and DNA.

But one vital common factor is often involved. Church planters are often produced by “healthy churches with a healthy reproduction mindset,” according to Brett Andrews, founding pastor of New Life Christian Church in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Since launching in 1993, New Life has grown into a multisite church and has directly planted 294 churches with more than 31,000 people reached.

Similarly, Greg Marksberry, former executive director of Florida Church Partners (FCP), says new-church staffs are an especially great source of planters. Individuals who have served in new churches have already experienced church planting firsthand. A lot of churches are “born pregnant,” he says. Those kinds of churches and staffs have the vision to find and train planters.

“The best planters come from the harvest,” says Andrews. Churches that produce fruit— reproducing disciples, reproducing churches— help people catch the vision. Cole says many new church planters are coming from the staffs of churches with church-planting cultures. These can be churches of 200 or 2,000— the size doesn’t matter, he says. It’s the culture that

Andrews agrees. “At New Life, we tell churches to ‘plant pregnant,’” with an intent to give birth to another new church. A planter should be part of your launch team, he says. As Phil Claycomb, executive director of Nexus Church Planting, puts it, future planters—whether they are from “traditional” ministry backgrounds or are leaders from the marketplace—are in the pews of our churches!

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CHURCH PLANTERS COME FROM ‘TRADITIONAL’ MINISTRY BACKGROUNDS Nick Parsons, who works in recruitment with Orchard Group, says many planters come from megachurch staffs. It’s a good pathway from large churches to church planting. In fact, says Marksberry, when FCP looks for potential planters, they often look at church staffs. “Conferences like Exponential have been really influential in raising up planters from among church leaders,” says Andrews. Marksberry agrees. He has seen staff people catch a vision for planting at the conference. (The Exponential National Conference is March 7-10, 2022, in Orlando, Florida. See exponential.org for more details.) Parsons says planters come from a variety of church staff positions—executive pastors, teaching pastors, youth pastors, and others. Nettle adds another group, campus pastors, who move into church planting because they feel called to preach or to take a more active role in church leadership. Several church-planting organizations singled out youth pastors as good church-planting candidates. “A lot of our church planters come out of the ranks of leading youth ministers,” says Cole. As a youth minister, “you can become a lead minister sooner as a church planter.” Most established churches want a senior pastor in his 40s or 50s, Cole explains, but church-planting organizations are willing to hire younger candidates. This is significant because young adults tend to be attracted to plants that are led by youth ministers because they find the preaching style more familiar and relatable.

CHURCH PLANTERS COME FROM DISCONTENTMENT Discontent often leads current church staff members to seek out church planting. Sometimes it’s godly discontent and sometimes it’s not, says Andrews. Ideally, of course, the desire to plant comes from a godly discontent to reach lost people— especially in a specific locale. Claycomb refers to this godly discontent as “positive processing.” Less ideally, the staff members are frustrated with their current church or ministry. Claycomb calls this a “negative processing” perspective—they simply want to move on from their old church. Therefore, it’s important, says Marksberry, to ask several questions when evaluating a potential planter: Is this person having a bad experience at their church or are they being called to plant? Do they have a heart for the lost? For a certain geographic area? CHURCH PLANTERS COME BACK TO PLANT AGAIN Another category of church planters are former planters who decide to plant again. At Waypoint, says Tim Cole, five or six of the last 40 church planters have planted churches previously; some are what we might call “serial planters” who have planted several times. “Typically, we think church planting is a young man’s game,” says Cole. But that’s changing. Several of Waypoint’s last 40 planters were over age 40. Cole himself planted at age 30 and again at age 40. (Marksberry is also a repeat church planter.) Waypoint has recently seen an increase in the number of planters who start churches as soon as they become empty nesters.

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CHURCH PLANTERS COME FROM THE MARKETPLACE While most current church planters have a background in vocational ministry, most new church planters do not, says Brett Andrews. Today many new church planters are Christian leaders who have worked in the business world. Most church planters who come straight out of the business world do so because they want to reach unreached people and they have an entrepreneurial spirit, says Greg Marksberry. These types of planters may not be Bible college graduates, however. Andrews thinks the most effective method for finding planters in the future will be saving lost people who then go on to start churches. Many staff members at New Life “came out of the harvest,” he points out. One former New Life attendee who became a believer after living most of his life as an atheist just moved to St. Augustine, Florida, to plant a church. At Orchard Group, the top three categories of church planters are megachurch staff, pro athletes, and lawyers. They’re all high achievers, Nick Parsons says. “I think personality [and an] in-built tendency toward entrepreneurship might be more important than the path” they take to become church planters. Only about one-third of Orchard Group’s planters in the last five years did their undergraduate studies at a Christian college, says Parsons. However, “Orchard Group might be a little atypical.” Often, those who come to church planting from the business world sense “a second calling,” says Nettle, but they create a “theology vacuum.” (See other articles in this issue that address this concern.)

CHURCH PLANTERS COME FROM THE MARKETPLACE— AND STAY THERE Phil Claycomb posed a question that sometimes arises with respect to church planters coming from the business world: Why would we ask people to quit their jobs and live in relative poverty in order to start a church? Many capable, quality leaders can plant churches without quitting their jobs, he says. After all, he adds, bivocational and covocational leaders are part of the history of the Restoration Movement. Covocational planting—by planters who never intend to leave their other job—is growing, says Greg Nettle, especially among people of color. Fewer and fewer planters are relying on their new church for all of their income. “Almost every church planter also has a side hustle,” says Parsons. DeWayne Reeves is a covocational church planter in Farmington, Arkansas. He became a believer in 2010, and then, in 2013, he felt God moving. He had no seminary training and had experienced multiple divorces and bankruptcy. He describes his past, pre-Christian life, as “a train wreck,” saying, “I wanted to disqualify myself from anything God wanted me to do because of that.” Yet he felt God calling him to ministry. In 2014, Reeves enrolled in a one-year program at Johnson University to get a certificate in Christian ministry. A few years later, he decided to plant a church—which he did in September 2018—but not as a full-time, paid minister. Reeves takes no salary. The church has no paid staff at all. That’s intentional. “I’m an entrepreneur at heart,” Reeves says, “a serial entrepreneur.” The church that Reeves planted, Casting Christian Church, is not large. Their pre-COVID attendance was 80 to 100, with around 200 for Easter. In

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COMMON QUALITIES OF ALL CHURCH PLANTERS September 2021, Casting Christian was averaging 42 people. And yet, in 2020, the church gave $50,000 to community needs—in large part because it has no payroll. “Unless God tells me, ‘Go full-time,’” Reeves says he will continue to be covocational because “it allows me to be relatable. People say, ‘He’s just like me’ because I have another job.” Claycomb suggests that church planters reconsider bivocational and self-funding strategies by using Priscilla and Aquila as their guides. He recently wrote in a blog post, “I ought to be biased in favor of self-funding strategies. When I was young, my father launched and grew a healthy church as its bivocational pastor. My wife and I have self-funded our ministries on several occasions. Some of my mentors have been bivocational.” This kind of bivocational, self-funding, highly mobile, entrepreneurial church-planting team—in the style of Priscilla and Aquila—may be one opportunity to enable people who feel called to plant a church but don’t have traditional ministry training or experience.

A variety of opportunities abound for church planters today, and they are, indeed, coming “from all over the place.” Whether church planters come from traditional ministry backgrounds or from the marketplace, they all have several things in common. “Church planting attracts high-capacity people, risk takers,” says Parsons. They have an entrepreneurial orientation and a heart for evangelism. “If you’re wired to be a church planter, you always see yourself as a church planter,” says Marksberry. Many, many more of these people who see themselves as church planters are needed. They are the “workers” Jesus told us to be asking God to send into his harvest fields. So . . . what else do a lawyer, a football player, and a youth pastor have in common? Each one, and many more, are answers to the prayers of many for the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field. 

Justin Horey is a writer, musician, and the founder of Livingstone Marketing. He lives in Southern California.

A LTE

THE

NAT I V E S In a world where traditional Bible colleges and universities face many challenges,

what options (and opportunities) are emerging for theological and ministry training . . . and how do they stack up?

By John Whittaker

One such challenge is the need for significant hands-on ministry experience. Also needed is more mentoring to help emerging leaders grow in wisdom as followers of Jesus and leaders of people. Cost is another challenge. Ministry graduates increasingly are saddled with high amounts of student loan debt, and this doesn’t bode well for their future in ministry. Another challenge involves people who serve their churches in significant ways and now desire more formal ministry training. Often, these folks do not want to leave their present job or uproot their family. Several schools now offer fully online programs to help address this need, though online education has its own challenges. I taught full-time at a Bible college for 19 years and still teach as an adjunct, so I have seen these needs firsthand. We worked hard to create an internship program that provided valuable handson ministry experience, but the results were mixed. Students not only carried a full-time course load, but many also had to work to pay bills, so students understandably had difficulty giving the appropriate time and attention to an internship on top of their other obligations. (The school I’m associated with is working to address this by creating a full-on residency experience as part of their academic program.) A robust alumni tracking program at the school consistently showed that graduates who fared best in life and ministry were those who had a close, mentoring type relationship with a staff or faculty member while they were in school. Unfortunately, staff and professors can’t provide that for every student. And I’ve watched alumni struggle for years after graduation to pay off student loans. I’ve even seen alumni receive stellar assessment scores from church-planting organizations only to be denied acceptance into those programs until they could pay down their student debt. Add to these needs the fact that culture has changed dramatically since the Bible college movement began, back during a time when Christian virtues still guided American culture to a large degree. But that’s no longer the case. In fact, many new students have difficult family situations and only recently became Christ followers. They need instruction in life skills and character formation as much as traditional theological and ministry education. How can traditional academic approaches address this? A variety of other approaches to leadership development and ministry training have emerged because of these challenges. Here are a few examples.

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Traditional ministry formation in our Bible colleges and seminaries face many challenges. Yet I believe these challenges could lead to opportunities for how we develop leaders.

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Residency Programs

Institutes, Partnerships, and Schools of Ministry

Residency programs focus on providing a mentored ministry experience. At least two megachurches offer this type of program: the 215 Residency at Southeast Christian Church in Kentucky and the Leadership Institute at Christ’s Church of the Valley in Arizona. Both of these programs prefer residents who are college graduates, with many of them Bible college graduates; in that respect, they can serve as supplements—rather than alternatives—to Bible college training.

Another kind of training is non-accredited biblical and ministry education that seeks to equip leaders for the church.

The 215 Residency Program at Southeast is a two-year commitment. Residents spend most of their time serving as part of a ministry team at Southeast while being mentored by their ministry lead. The program also strives to lay a healthy foundation of spiritual formation and biblical understanding. It’s essentially mentored-ministry experience and provides no degree option. Residents receive a small stipend for living expenses.

Among their distinctives: it is tuition-free (scholarships cover all costs); instruction is a combination of video-based courses plus in-person learning labs; it includes two years of supervised ministry experience and discipleship (students are discipled in year one and disciple others in year two).

The Leadership Institute at CCV is a 10-month program that also provides mentored-ministry experience and a monthly stipend to help with living expenses. In addition to serving in one of CCV’s ministries, residents participate in learning labs and discussion groups. Skilled practitioners provide instruction in various facets of ministry, and residents have freedom to explore some of their own learning initiatives. The Leadership Institute also offers a graduate degree option through Johnson University. These programs don’t provide the same theological depth as seminary. But for those who received solid theological education from a Bible college, programs like these are a great way to gain robust hands-on ministry experience in a top-tier environment after college.

One example is the Russell School of Ministry, which refers to itself as “a non-accredited Bible College.” So, in one sense, they aren’t really an alternative to Bible college training. Their educational approach is distinctive enough, however, to consider them here.

The goal of this approach is to provide hands-on ministry experience that also forms students spiritually and biblically. The baseline program of the Russell School of Ministry, based near Cincinnati, is a 36-hour Certificate in Ministry. But they also offer more robust biblical education through a diploma program in partnership with Central Christian College of the Bible (Moberly, Missouri) and a full degree program either through CCCB or Hope International University (Fullerton, California). Another example of non-accredited ministry training is SALT (the School of Advanced Leadership Training) at Hope International University, which “partners with churches to develop effective servant leaders within the local congregation.” HIU provides “short but meaty online courses designed to strengthen the biblical foundation, ministry skills, and emotional and spiritual health of emerging Christian leaders.” University professors and guest lecturers (i.e., “skilled practitioners”) teach the courses. SALT is not a degree program (though students can transition into one at Hope), but it does offer certificates in ministry, evangelism, and children’s ministry. In short, SALT is designed to aid churches in raising up their own leaders.

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Informal Online Course Packages

A vast assortment of Bible and ministry video and audio resources is available online. These resources aren’t structured programs, nor do they present themselves as alternatives to Bible college or seminary, but they can be used by churches in their leadership development programs. To achieve that, however, churches need someone to provide leadership and direction so that these resources can be most effective. Here are a three examples of these resources:

1. NextLevel at Ozark Christian College: These video courses, taught by Ozark Christian College professors, are designed and produced for online teaching, so they are not mere recordings of classroom lectures. Most of the courses are studies of Bible books or theological topics. Additionally, NextLevel offers webinars that explore various ministry and leadership topics.

2. RightNow Media: RightNow Media is a self-described “streaming library of more than 20,000 Bible study videos for leaders to share with their people.” Production quality is high for most of the Bible studies. The teaching quality varies. Typically, these are aimed at personal or small-group use for churches; they usually don’t offer in-depth Bible teaching. They do offer a “professional development” track, which intends to provide deeper studies in leadership, apologetics, and Bible. This more in-depth area could be used to equip leaders within the church.

3. Classroom by BibleProject: Many people are familiar with the extremely popular BibleProject videos (the largest Bible teaching channel on YouTube). Recently, BibleProject launched Classroom. BibleProject provides seminary-level Bible courses online taught by Dr. Tim Mackie and other college professors. The best part? They are free and are super-high quality. The focus is on Bible teaching, not ministry training, but if a church wanted to use these courses to train leaders with a solid biblical foundation and provide their own ministry training, this resource could be helpful. Since this is a brand-new feature of BibleProject, only four courses are available so far, but new courses are being planned and filmed.

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All these alternatives represent innovations in ministry formation, leadership development, and churchmember equipping. They recognize some of the challenges and needs, as well as opportunities, of culture today and seek to address them in unique ways. A strength of some of them, it seems, is in providing hands-on ministry experience. And a deficiency of many is that they fall short of being a true theological education, which they often address by partnering with a traditional Bible college. (In fact, all these options are led or developed by people with Bible college and/or seminary education.)

Raising up leaders from within has become very popular for megachurches. Leaders developed in this way typically are successful midcareer college graduates who have good management and people skills but lack a theological foundation. Some of the online resources mentioned here could be a great help in meeting that need, but it would require time and leadership to coordinate and oversee.

This kind of partnership between Bible colleges and the church or parachurch organizations is perhaps the best innovation: each organization plays to its strengths. The college provides the biblical and theological education, and the church carries out a robust mentored ministry experience. I personally believe we need to keep praying, collaborating, imagining, and experimenting so we can create a method of ministry formation that is richer, deeper, and wiser than is now available. In his Book of Pastoral Rule, Gregory the Great contended that only those experienced in humility, virtue, and knowledge of God should be put into positions of spiritual authority. I think he was onto something. I say, let’s keep dreaming until we figure out a way to form church leaders with that kind of experience. 

John Whittaker has been a pastor in two churches and taught New Testament, theology, and preaching at Boise (Idaho) Bible College for 19 years. Currently he equips people to follow Jesus by creating podcasts, YouTube Bible studies, and online courses to help people learn and live the Bible. @johnwhittaker1969 @john.whittaker1969 /JohnWhittaker johnwhittaker.net

Plenty of other online options are available, including my own Core Training for Christians series of online courses and Listener’s Commentary on the New Testament. But here’s the thing—most of these online resources are aimed at discipleship and deepening the faith and understanding of Christians in general; they don’t aspire to provide the full scope or depth of traditional Bible college or seminary. They should never be viewed as a ministry-training track that could lead to a job in ministry. But with leadership and direction, they can be a key component of how churches train and equip their leaders.

Looking Back How Chris tian Colleges Have Responded to the Need for Pre achers Over the Pas t Century

By Jim Nieman

It had been that way for some time, and it likely remains that way today . . . though probably to a lesser extent. [See “The Ministry Pipeline,” page 28]

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesias tes 1:9).

A survey of pertinent articles appearing in Christian Standard between 1969 and 1974 and a review of James B. North’s Restoration Movement history book, Union In Truth, indicate that most of the colleges producing ministers for Christian churches and churches of Christ were started in the 1920s and thereafter as a means of supplying capable, conservative preachers and leaders for those churches. Theologically conservative educational institutions were considered critically important to those churches’ survival because, as of about 1920, most of the existing Disciples of Christ colleges were seen as having drifted toward liberalism. [See sidebar on page 78] “Perceiving an urgent need for fullt ime paid preaching ministers, we responded by founding colleges which would educate them,” Gerald C. Tiffin wrote in Christian Standard in 1974. He referenced a February 1922 article in Christian Century that reported less than half (43 percent) of all Disciples congregations—liberal and conservative—employed full-time ministers, while one-quarter (25 percent) employed no minister at all. “Early in our separating history, in a time of crisis particularly in ministerial preparation, we chose preacher-training education, not only as a point of visible separation from Disciples, but also as a major focus of our identity, a means of continuity, and a strategy for survival,” Tiffin wrote. “These colleges functioned (and continue to function) to reopen closed congregations, begin new congregations, and strengthen existing congregations. The sustenance and promotion of paid leadership for local congregations has dominated the thrust of most of our colleges founded from the third decade of this century [the 1920s], until today.” And thus, throughout most of the last 100 years, Christian churches and churches of Christ have filled their pulpits with men who graduated from our institutions.

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Fifty years ago, most pulpit ministers in Christian churches and churches of Christ were products of our Restoration Movement colleges.

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A PRE L UDE T O AT T E NDING BIBL E COL L EGE

But Christian colleges must have candidates to mold into preachers and ministers. Looking back several decades, how were ministry candidates being groomed during their growing-up years? Veteran Christian minister and educator LeRoy Lawson came through the ministry pipeline that existed in the 1940s and ’50s. “Then, as now, the local church was the primary source of future Christian leaders,” said Lawson, 83, who served with Christian colleges and churches throughout his career, including years as senior minister with Central Christian Church in Mesa, Arizona, and president of Hope International University in Fullerton, California. “I suspect it’s still true that smaller churches do a better job of recruiting and inspiring young people into ministry than megachurches and even moderately large churches do,” Lawson said. Larger churches tend to “attract and entertain their youth,” he said, while small churches “integrate their high school kids into serving in the worship service. . . .” At his home church in Tillamook, a small city of a few thousand in northwest Oregon, Lawson was considered a “budding preacher.” It was assumed he would go to Bible college for formal training. Other key factors in raising up ministers for many years, Lawson said, were the summer camps that

“flourished in that era” and the Christian Endeavor program. “Many of my fellow Bible college students testified to the lasting impact of their camp experience,” Lawson said. “One reason for the success these camps had in recruiting future preachers is that they were staffed by preaching ministers. In later years, these men stayed home and sent their youth ministers in their place, so the number of aspirants for youth ministry as opposed to preaching ministry grew while the numbers seeking to study for general (preaching) ministry diminished. There is no substitute for the apprenticeship model of training.” Camps remain relatively strong, but the Christian Endeavor program—whose vision included leading young people into increased biblical understanding and spiritual maturity, and developing one’s spiritual gift of leadership—was waning in most places by the 1950s. Bible colleges and seminaries were the capstones of preacher training, Lawson said. At his alma mater, Northwest Christian College in Eugene, Oregon (now Bushnell University), Lawson said, ministry students were encouraged to continue on for a seminary degree—“to ‘dig their wells deep,’ as Dr. Joe Dampier used to advise.” “I wasn’t aware as a college student that Bible colleges were then [in the late 1950s] at the height of their appeal,” Lawson said.

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T HE SI T UAT ION 50 Y E A RS AGO

In 1970 and 1972, Christian Standard reported on surveys that sought to determine how many ministry students our colleges were graduating. “Three to five hundred preachers will be graduated into the work of the church this spring,” Harrold W. McFarland wrote in March 1970. He based his findings on a survey of 32 preacher-training schools (among the 34 asked to participate). “[H]undreds of others will graduate and enter such fields of service as missions, youth work, Christian education, church secretarial work, and various musical ministries. A good number will also take up ministries as Bible college professors, instructors, and administrators.” “Of the 648 total graduates expected by the reporting colleges in 1970,” McFarland continued, “58 are to receive graduate degrees, and 325 of the total are ministerial graduates. . . . The preacher graduates are 55 percent of the total, and all of the graduates are entering church-related professions.” Those numbers might have seemed impressive on the surface, until McFarland pointed out, “It is still reported that almost 2,000 congregations do not have full-time preachers. Any pulpit committee knows [that] usually one is found at the expense of some other congregation, who then has to begin looking.” Two years later, a June 1972 editorial noted that Charles Matthews, director for leadership training for Standard Publishing, had surveyed Christian

colleges and asked similar questions about graduates. He received replies from 28 U.S.-based schools. “The [1972] total was . . . 546 degrees—356 degrees to men and 190 to women,” the editor wrote. “Three graduate schools reported granting degrees to a total of fifty-six men, which would indicate that one Bible-college graduate in six goes on to receive a higher degree in one of ‘our’ schools. A goodly number do graduate work elsewhere. Since these are the same men who graduated from the Bible colleges a few years ago, their work represents a deepening, rather than a broadening, of the available work force.” The editor wrote, “[The] Directory of the Ministry listed 4,148 ministers, 2,527 others in church-related vocations, and 658 missionaries, for a “grand total of workers now in the field . . . at 7,333.” “If the colleges continued to graduate the same number each year,” the editor noted, based on the numbers listed in the directory, “it would take approximately twelve years to replace the present work force. And that would not provide ministries to new churches, new multiple ministries to growing churches, or increase the overseas mission force.” The lesson from all of this? Churches have been dealing with a shortage of ministers for a long time.

An Era of College Pl anting

The Disciples of Christ and the independent Christian churches and churches of Christ split in the 1960s, and the former officially became a denomination— the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)—in 1968. But the fracture between the two groups had been apparent for 75 years or more. In the 1920s, the “emerging independent Disciples,” began in earnest to open conservative schools . . . schools that didn’t teach higher criticism or endorse open membership, et al. By that time, conservatives saw the handwriting on the wall. For independent Christian churches to not just survive, but multiply, there needed to be conservative schools training up conservative preachers to lead conservative congregations. A few of the established colleges—Milligan, Johnson, Northwest, Minnesota, and Kentucky (which had just opened)—came to be associated with these independent churches. Many more schools followed. Among the independent colleges founded over the next half century: Cincinnati Bible Seminary (1924); Manhattan Christian College (1927); Pacific Christian College (now Hope International University, 1928); Atlanta Christian College (now Point University, 1937); San Jose Bible College (now William Jessup University, 1939); Ozark Bible College (1942); Lincoln Christian College (1944); Boise Bible College (1945); Midwest Christian College (now part of Ozark, 1946); Roanoke Bible College (now Mid-Atlantic Christian University, 1948); Great Lakes Bible College (1949); Dallas Christian College (1950); Platte Valley Bible College (now Summit Christian College, 1951); St. Louis Christian College (1956); Central Christian College of the Bible (1957); and Emmanuel Christian Seminary (1965). Some other schools started and have since closed (as Cincinnati did in 2019). —J.N.

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O T HER P OIN T S T O P ONDER

In his article from 1970, McFarland acknowledged that “not all of the preachers for [these] . . . congregations came from these schools. Many preachers are ‘self-educated’ for their ministry; others adapt a general, liberal arts education; others receive their education in denominational colleges.” It was virtually impossible then, as now, to determine with a high degree of accuracy where the pulpit preachers and other ministers come from across the spectrum of our churches. But in the 21st century, it seems that more and more people are taking nontraditional paths into the ministry. Anecdotal evidence indicates many churches are taking skilled, personable, and committed folks from within their churches—i.e., known commodities—and training them for ministry roles . . . and doing so largely apart from the Christian college system. If we step back, we might see it’s not illogical that loosely affiliated “independent” Christian churches, over time, would grow less “dependent” on an established Christian college network. Through the years, Christian colleges have had to adapt to survive . . . and so have many other Christian church “institutions”—the North American Christian Convention (now called Spire) and Christian Standard among them. Lawson describes the past half-century or so of change this way: “A fiercely independent spirit

among churches and their leaders has replaced the greater sense of interdependence we felt in those days.” Change is inevitable. With innumerable factors at play over the past 100 years, it seems unfair to solely blame Christian colleges for failing to train up enough ministers for our churches. “I’ve been watching and mourning their decline ever since [about 1960],” Lawson said. “Many have closed their doors because of inadequate financing, diminishing enrollments, disappearing denominational loyalty (even in our ‘non-denomination’), and the waning influence of churches in recruiting the next generation’s ministers.” In other words, if Christian colleges are not producing enough ministers, there’s plenty of blame to go around for that. And if there’s a shortage of ministers today, it means not all that much has changed. There were not enough ministers to fill our pulpits in the 1920s or early 1970s, either. 

Jim Nieman serves as managing editor of Christian Standard.

Recruitment: How Do Restoration Movement Churches Find Talented Leaders to Fuel Growth?

BY K E V IN S TO NE

Since the beginning of our church in Pennsylvania, staffing has been among our biggest challenges. There is a continuous, ever-increasing need for people to lead stuff! As we all know, without a constant flow of good people, it’s very difficult to grow.

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Your church has a leadership need, so you go to an outside recruiting firm for help. You know the process—you write a position description and start the search. I wish it were that simple . . .

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Hiring from the Outside Your church has a leadership need, so you go to an outside recruiting firm for help. You know the process—you write a position description and start the search. I wish it were that simple. Our desire to prevent theological drift requires that we recruit from within the tribe, so to speak. And finding someone on the “outside” who will understand and practice our philosophy of ministry reduces the likelihood of success. To make things even more interesting, most recruiting firms structure their fee such that the church must pay them whether a successful candidate is found or not. This is crazy, I know. How many businesses get paid even if no product is delivered? But sometimes a recruiter is the only option, so be aware that the fee is the fee, regardless of the outcome. It is especially risky to work with an outside recruiting firm because of the lack of qualified people out there. The right person must be a graduate from one of only a handful of schools, have experience from the right kind of church, and must understand and support our philosophy of ministry. In most cases, the “right person for the job” is already employed. Therefore, it’s a matter of finding people already on staff at a church who are ready to make a move. Yes, the funnel is very narrow. Of course, plenty of churches have had success working with an outside recruiting firm. As a Restoration Movement church with very specific education, background, and experience requirements, there are a few things to keep in mind. The Fee—Be sure to understand the fee and how it’s required to be paid out. As I mentioned, in most cases the fee must be paid, regardless of the outcome of the search.

Questions to consider (or ask): How much is paid up front? Are there progress payments, and what specific milestones are required to trigger a payment? What happens if a successful candidate isn’t found? Can the final payment be withheld until the position is filled, no matter how long it takes? Position Description—I once thought writing a position description was merely a formality. I thought it was something the recruiter required that wasn’t that critical. I was wrong. Be sure to take the time to put a great position description together because it will be the operative document for the duration of the search. Don’t scrimp on the details. Get your team involved and make sure you capture everything that’s important about the position. Education, Background, and Experience— Most importantly, be sure everybody understands the minimum requirements of a successful candidate in terms of education, theological background, and church experience. This is key to preventing theological drift. The right degree from the right school won’t help if the candidate has spent all their time in ministry in a non-Restoration Movement church. On the other hand, the right degree from a school outside our tribe can work, if the individual has spent most of their career in an RM church. We have a few examples of this at our church. It really gets down to what the candidate believes to be true being consistent with what our church teaches. With all of this said, it’s been our experience that most of the time staff must be developed from within the church. In 21 years, the number of outside candidates we’ve hired can be counted on one hand (with fingers left over!). It makes sense. Where are we most likely to find people that “get” our church?

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After a few failed attempts on the outside, we became laser-focused on identifying and raising up leaders from within our church. And, since our church was attracting lots of nonbelieving people, we were often developing leaders and leading them to Christ simultaneously. (Or was it leading people to Christ and developing leaders simultaneously?) Regardless, fueling the church’s growth requires us to get very good at identifying potential leaders, getting them across the line of faith, and plugging them into significant areas of ministry. I believe God provides people with the necessary gifts and our job as leaders is to identify and cultivate those gifts. By far, the key for us has been recognizing and cultivating an individual’s desire to serve through establishing progressively more formal employment relationships. The difference between a volunteer, a volunteer team leader, or an intern is in how they are treated and the level of responsibility they are given. An intern, whether paid or unpaid, is treated more like a staff member and less like a volunteer. Depending on the need, they may be given a church email address, desk phone, and be included in the church phone directory. Often, they’re given a small operating budget and higher-level access to church management software and other tools. In fact, they’re often considered to be a staff member by those with whom they serve and regularly interact. Recruiting from within has become so normal at our church that we’ve formalized a five-step process over the years. Before we go there, though, let’s talk about finding good people from within.

Leadership Evangelism: We call it “leadership evangelism.” Why? As I mentioned earlier, getting a potential leader across the line of faith is part of the process. To keep the pipeline full, every ministry staff member is expected to “leadership evangelize” by continuously identifying potential leaders and plugging them into significant leadership roles. The process begins with intentionally identifying individuals who look, talk, walk, and act like leaders. There’s an opportunity to do this as part of almost any interaction. Meeting and chatting with someone in the lobby can be very fruitful, as can observing the work of a volunteer. Once a person has been identified, the next step is to meet with them to discover their leadership potential. This is most often done with a specific leadership position (or two) in mind. Over the course of a couple of meetings, the ministry leader works to discover the potential leader’s personality, passion, and, if they’ve been baptized, spiritual gifts. Of course, if they have not yet crossed the line of faith, working with them on taking that step becomes the focus.

Hiring from the Inside

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The whole point of the leadership evangelism process is to prime the pump, so to speak. From there, our fivestep process begins.

Our Five-Step Process 1. Volunteer Leader This is the first step in the process of finding and developing a future staff member. Once a leader is ready to go, plug them into a significant leadership role. Write out a “Ministry Description,” a job description for a volunteer position. As an example, for many years a volunteer oversaw the care of our facility by leading a team of volunteers; they did everything from changing light bulbs to replacing HVAC filters.

2. Unpaid Intern An unpaid intern is the next step in developing a volunteer leader into a staff member. Our current early childhood pastor started out as an unpaid intern. She was given a computer, email address, and cubicle space in our office area.

3. Paid Intern Does your church have a need for Sunday morning support in your children’s area or Sunday night support in student ministries? Pay that future student pastor a few hundred dollars a week to be there every weekend. With the pay comes more accountability and higher expectations.

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4. Part-Time Staff Transition a paid intern into a part-time staff member. Pay them a fair salary for 20 to 30 hours a week and give them something to “own.” Our middle school pastor served parttime for a few years before we could justify a full-time position. She was actively serving from the time she was a high school student at our church clear through earning her youth ministry degree from a local university.

5. Full-Time Staff Make a part-time staff member full-time when the time is right. I was involved in this process (but didn’t realize it at the time). In my fourth year of serving, I accepted the senior pastor’s offer to become our church’s executive pastor. That was 17 years ago!

So, the key to recruiting from within is to identify leadership potential, discover personality, passion, and gifts, and recognize that potential through establishing progressively more “formal” employment relationships. If you’ve gotten the impression that I’m an advocate for staffing primarily from within, this article has been a success. Find young, talented potential leaders through a summer internship program. Partner with Restoration Movement colleges and universities to bring a few interns into your church in the summer. After a few summers, those interns become “internal candidates” and end up being staff members after graduation. 

Kevin Stone serves as executive pastor of operations with Christ’s Church of the Valley, Royersford, Pennsylvania. If you have questions or want to talk more about meeting the challenge of finding staff to fuel growth, contact him via his website at ExecutivePastorOnline.com.

BUILDING A LEADERSHIP PIPELINE “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-13).

BY DOUG CROZIER

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As 2020 started, the church in America was already coping with issues ranging from racial tensions to gay marriage, all while competing with sports for a family’s attention on Sunday mornings. Then COVID-19 arrived in full force that March, and with it came a list of new problems and questions. Will people return for in-person church? Can churches survive the economic impact of a shutdown? Mask or no mask? Should a church write vaccine exemption letters? Will churches have the grit and commitment to survive? Will there be a major wave of depression, anxiety, and burnout among church leaders? Many leaders predicted the COVID-19 crisis would last only a few months. It is now 2022, and it feels like the never-ending challenges of COVID-19 are here to stay. Preparing and raising up future full-time ministry workers has always been on the hearts of leaders in the Restoration Movement, though few among us have prioritized it. The last few years have only increased the difficulty of finding, training, and deploying preachers and teachers of the Bible. Now is the time for those who love Jesus and his church to take up this crucial task. How do we build a “leadership pipeline” (two words that aptly describe how we must prepare for the church’s future)? A pipeline is simply the process by which we as church leaders process individuals into a system and continually build them up for future church leadership roles. This process must occur both at the macro level (within our overall movement) and the micro level (within our local churches). As most people know, to grow a church you must have quality people who will make sacrifices and lead well.

AT THE MACRO LEVEL

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