An Educational Experiment in Excellence

By Mark E. Moore

The Leadership Institute”s residency program at Christ”s Church of the Valley, Peoria, Arizona, began in 2013 because of a single disturbing statistic: 85 percent of all ministry students drop out of ministry within the first five years.1 This is an atrocious attrition rate””a devastating loss of leadership potential with a $60,000 average price tag in tuition.

It begs the question: “Why?”

The problem is not with our Christian colleges. They are doing a fine job teaching the basics of the Bible. Students come out conversant in apologetics, hermeneutics, homiletics, and a range of theological perspectives. They are competent to answer all the common biblical and philosophical questions they encounter in the pulpit or Bible study.

The problem is not with our churches, most of which desire to grow and are committed to loving people and being faithful to God. Churches are willing to work with young people and even give them second chances when they fail. The leaders are usually men and women of prayer and sacrifice who volunteer to carry out ministry and faithfully give their tithes to support it.

The Problem

So what”s the problem? Why do so many young ministers drop out in fewer than five years? The answer is neither complex nor surprising. We actually know with a good degree of certainty why most ministers get burned out or turned out. It has little to do with the quality of the preaching or the content of their studies (regardless of what is recorded in the board minutes when a person is released).

Most young leaders fail not because of ignorance of the Bible, but ineptness in human resources, public relations, information technology, emotional intelligence, and a host of other practical applications. They are woefully inexperienced with spreadsheets, project development, staffing, recruitment, and training for volunteers. In other words, they are untrained in the key aspects of human relationships in the context of a local church.

So why don”t colleges teach these things? Well, if you”re going to teach science, you need Bunsen burners and test tubes. If you”re going to teach mechanics, you need an engine block and some wrenches. If you”re going to teach football, you had better strap on some pads. The educational system, as it stands, is incapable of training for real-world ministry without the laboratory of the local church.

Lectures, tests, and grades function well to dispense information and develop higher-level thinking. The traditional classroom is matchless for developing values, and often the professor-student relationship is a great mentoring model. However, without an actual budget, without real staff stress, without looming events on the calendar, it is unlikely young ministers will have the internal impetus or the practical setting to adequately master the basic skills of ministry.

A church, all too often, hires a young leader it can afford. The church doesn”t have a large budget, or multiple staff members, or lay leaders who can take the time away from their own businesses to coach young men and women in the soft sciences of ministry. Consequently, the average ministry in America lasts 2.5 years (unless you are in youth ministry, which averages 18 months).

After a failed first ministry, one”s occupational options are just as thin as those for a recent graduate. The cycle repeats itself. After two failed ministries (5 years), the call of God morphs into pragmatic survival. By this point, the young couple has two kids, a lingering student loan of nearly $40,000, and the stark reality of starting a new profession at age 30.

A Solution

We can do better! We must do better. If the church will engage the university, we can let the classroom do what it is designed to do and let the church do what the church alone can do. That”s exactly what”s happening at the Leadership Institute at Christ”s Church of the Valley in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

For the last two years, Christ”s Church of the Valley has been executing a residency program that is accredited for both undergraduate and graduate credit. We partnered with a half-dozen colleges who share our vision for a comprehensive education both in the classroom and in the church. Simply put, it is a 3/1 program where students spend their senior year on our campus doing ministry under the careful mentorship of professionals . . . or, in the case of graduate students, they complete a Masters in Strategic Ministry with additional readings and PhD mentors.

How does it work? We have identified 10 competencies often lacking in short-term ministries. These include items like leadership development, human resource agility, pragmatic business skills, utility with personality assessments, etc.

Each of these 10 competencies has a series of specific projects that, when performed under the supervision of our staff, will ensure the resident has practiced these skills with excellence. On average, there are six projects per competency, making a total of 60 for the entire program. Each project is assessed by their coach with about 12 criteria on a Likert scale. Many of these projects will be repeated until competency is achieved.

Because of the size and scope of the ministry at Christ”s Church of the Valley (23,000 in weekly attendance on six campuses), we have enough experts in various fields to manage more than 50 residents per year in pastoral leadership, youth/children”s ministry, worship arts, sports ministry, missions, first impressions, and a range of support roles. This also allows us to assign a coach to each resident in the fall, and then switch the residents in the spring to another campus. This expands the resident”s vocational training and marketability. (At this point we are experiencing a 96 percent placement rate in ministry””25 residents graduated in 2014; 38 in 2015).

Because we recognize the multifaceted nature of ministry, each resident will have multiple supervisors in their program. We assign each resident a coach for professional development, a mentor for spiritual development, a Leadership Institute pastor for academic development, and a host home for social development. In addition, senior pastor Don Wilson provides weekly mentoring from his decades of ministry experience.

All of our senior level staff are also deeply engaged with the residents to provide them opportunities to participate in high-level meetings, future plans, and strategic development in real-world ministry. The residency program is a full-court press for our staff. We see not only the value of pouring into the next generation of leaders, but also the tactical advantage of building our own deep bench.

Make no mistake, this is a costly endeavor. It takes four full-time staff members to operate our Leadership Institute. It requires a substantial investment from some of our key leaders to pour into the initial training of our residents. It takes dozens of members to provide housing; offer training in their areas of expertise; and see to the social, spiritual, physical, and emotional needs of millennials.

Simply put, there is nothing about this that is cheap or easy. Nonetheless, it is much less expensive and much less traumatizing to the body of Christ than hundreds of young men and women who received a call from God to lead the church but did not receive adequate training for the task at hand.

The rewards of this residency do, in fact, outweigh the investment. Each spring we”re able to send out a list of our residents to partner churches. This provides goodwill to our sister churches, who reap the benefit of a well-trained minister who is mature well beyond his or her years.

And then, just about the time each of our residents secures employment, we finish the experience with a 10-day tour of Israel. Hey, if you talk about Jesus, you might as well have some legitimate dust between your toes!

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1Kristen Stewart, “Keeping Your Pastor: An Emerging Challenge,” Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 13/3, Summer 2009.

Mark Moore serves as teaching pastor with Christ”s Church of the Valley in Peoria, Arizona. Contact Rick Penny ([email protected]) with questions about the program or for information about how to refer potential students.