Feel the pulse of today's church with us as we navigate the troubling pastoral drought, examining its roots and searching for the life-giving waters of leadership development. Churches are at a defining moment, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, and we stand at the forefront, exploring the decline of pastors in youth, worship, and children's ministries. No stone is left unturned as we scrutinize the generational disconnect in pastoral training and the decreasing allure of ministry as a profession. The local church emerges as the hero in this narrative, the fertile ground where future leaders must be cultivated through intentional discipleship and mentorship practices.
Journey with us through the transformative power of mentorship, where potential leaders are not just found but also forged within the nurturing embrace of their church communities. We don't just talk about the issues; we're actively partaking in the renaissance of church leadership, focusing our collective gaze on the horizon. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for pastors and church leaders hungry to reverse the trend of leadership scarcity. And as we wrap up, we tease the mind with what's to come: the unique challenges pastors face during the political fever of an election year. Your voice matters to us, so after tuning in, share your reflections and stories at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com, where we eagerly await the diverse threads that enrich our tapestry of conversations.
Feel the pulse of today's church with us as we navigate the troubling pastoral drought, examining its roots and searching for the life-giving waters of leadership development. Churches are at a defining moment, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, and we stand at the forefront, exploring the decline of pastors in youth, worship, and children's ministries. No stone is left unturned as we scrutinize the generational disconnect in pastoral training and the decreasing allure of ministry as a profession. The local church emerges as the hero in this narrative, the fertile ground where future leaders must be cultivated through intentional discipleship and mentorship practices.
Journey with us through the transformative power of mentorship, where potential leaders are not just found but also forged within the nurturing embrace of their church communities. We don't just talk about the issues; we're actively partaking in the renaissance of church leadership, focusing our collective gaze on the horizon. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for pastors and church leaders hungry to reverse the trend of leadership scarcity. And as we wrap up, we tease the mind with what's to come: the unique challenges pastors face during the political fever of an election year. Your voice matters to us, so after tuning in, share your reflections and stories at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com, where we eagerly await the diverse threads that enrich our tapestry of conversations.
Hey there and welcome to the Healthy Church Staff podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom, and today I want to talk about something that, man, I think about a lot, and it's a conversation that we have oftentimes with many churches that we work with here at chemistry, and it's the topic of the Big C Church, the kind of the universal church, evangelical churches as a whole in the United States, and this kind of pastoral crisis that we've found ourselves in. And by pastoral crisis what I mean is that, man, we're losing pastors left and right. We're four years, matter of fact. Just last week was the four-year anniversary of kind of everybody's world changing in the church with the pandemic, and we're four years after that and we're still dealing with a lot of the fallout. We've lost a lot of pastors. We've lost particularly youth and worship and children's pastors. Many have just left the ministry. We are dealing with a ton of churches right now that are in the process of going through a senior pastor's succession, because pastors pre-COVID thought, hey, I've got another five to 10 years in me, 10 to 15 years, whatever COVID hit. And at the end of COVID, man, it was exhausting and they're like no, I think it's time now. So a lot of people are moving up their success and anyway, what's happening is we have a lot of churches that are just finding new staff and new pastors. It's very difficult, and our job at chemistry staffing much more difficult, because everybody's hiring Churches are hiring everywhere and there's less candidates because so many people have left.
Speaker 1:
Now, before I get into kind of what I want to dig into today, let me say that this is not a last four-year issue. This is a last generation issue. This is a 20, 25-year problem. We have done a poor job overall as the Big C Church to train people to be pastors and I'm going to get into that here in a second and maybe a possible solution but for the past 20, 25 years, many of our Christian colleges and seminaries have struggled to attract new students, to attract people to train. In some cases we've done a poor job at training people. We've, in some cases, churned out graduates that didn't even necessarily have a calling of God on their lives. So that's one issue.
Speaker 1:
I think another issue is we've really I remember back in I'm dating myself but back when I was a teenager man, every camp I went to everything had a component of no-transcript. Are you called? Is God calling you to ministry? Do you want to go on the mission field? Do you want to be a pastor? Is God calling you to lead a church? Those kind of things. And I just don't think that we talk about calling and ministry as a vocational option nearly as much to our kids and teenagers that are growing up. So I think that's another issue.
Speaker 1:
But anyway, where we are today and what has happened in the past four years has not created the problem by any means, but it has has exasperated the problem or it's shown the cracks, it's made the cracks maybe a little bit wider. What do we do? Where do we get? My co-founder, matt Seen, often talks about we have no bench anymore. When it comes to to pastors and church leaders in the country, the bench is really slim. So what do we do?
Speaker 1:
And I think I think the key to this and I thought about this a lot I think the key to this is and this sounds too simple to actually work, but the key to this is multiplying leaders at the local church level. It just has to be, it has to come down to discipleship and how well your church is actually discipling, not just people that can serve in your church, but people that can be sent out, people that can become next generation pastors, people that are, that get tuned in to the possible calling of God on their lives. And a lot of times I honestly think this is going to sound really weird and really strange from somebody that that owns a staffing company that pays their mortgage on helping churches find staff. But I wish that churches were healthy enough that they were hiring from within, from people that they have raised up and discipled, and that would just be incredibly healthy for the church, and I would gladly go find something else to do with my time to pay the bills. But this is really a wake up call, I think, for churches for the next five to 10 years.
Speaker 1:
If we continue on this trajectory of not raising and training leaders locally and seminaries and colleges and all of that as well, but if we don't step up our game here, we're going to be in real trouble with the shortage of people to lead our churches and the people that are called Now. There is so much good going on and we are so excited about the future of the church, but this is one of the things that, man, if you're a pastor, if you're a leader in a church, if you can find a way to instill this into the DNA of your church, hey, we're going to identify number one identified leaders, future leaders. We're going to train and develop leaders. We're going to disciple people and we're going to give them opportunities to serve in a meaningful way. That may be just a key volunteer, but it also may be a paid position on your staff. It may be sending them out, it may be helping them get the theological training that they need. But we just have to do better. We have to do better, and there are some great churches doing some really great work in training up on the church and there are some churches that really need to quite honestly step up our game in these areas.
Speaker 1:
What am I asking you to do? As much as you are able, as much as it's possible for you in your local setting and we talked about this a little bit yesterday build into people, disciple people, build their character, train people, mentor people. My friend David Ferguson talks about I see in you conversations. Hey, pull people aside and say, hey, I see in you some great potential. Maybe God's calling you to do this. Maybe you could take on this responsibility. This really makes a difference. And is it slow? Oh my goodness, absolutely it's slow. Is it easier to call Todd at chemistry and say, hey, find me a youth pastor. Than to raise up a youth pastor? Absolutely it's. It's much faster. This is, this is a slow game, but it's an important game, and once you identify leaders and really start to train into them, I think you'll be surprised at how fulfilling it is, but also just the benefits for you and your church. So that is my admonition for you today. At least think about that. How are you doing as a church, how are you doing as a leader, at training up the next generation? How are you doing at implementing discipleship? How are you doing at building character in in your own church?
Speaker 1:
Who do you have, rather than and believe me, I want you to call me when you need staff but who do you have if you've got a staff opening or some extra dollars laying around to build up your team? Who do you have on your team locally, key, volunteer, somebody that that you could just take under your wing and just mentor? They might not hit the ground running, but, man, they've got the potential and maybe even be called by God to help you out on those areas. Now, of course, give me a call. We can help coach them. We have our chemistry solutions team that would love to come alongside and coach maybe a new staff member that you hire internally that's maybe a little green. We can come alongside you and help do that. And reach out to me if you would like some information on that.
Speaker 1:
But get started today. Just identify people. I think that's where it starts. Identify people that you think have real ministry potential. Build into them, disciple them, take them under your wing, show them how you do it, and it's going to make a huge difference in your church and it's going to make a huge difference. If enough churches get this thing down and start to multiply leaders at the local level, it will totally alleviate the pastoral crisis that's on the horizon and probably already.
Speaker 1:
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Send me your thoughts at podcast at chemistry staffing dot com. You can send along any comments that you have anytime, 24, seven. I read every email that comes into that email address of podcast at chemistry staffing dot com. Thanks you. Thank you so much and we will be back tomorrow. Let me see what we're talking about tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going to be talking about. This is going to be fun you won't want to miss. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about an election. It's an election year. It's heating up. How does it make pastoring different? We're going to talk about that tomorrow, right here on the healthy church staff.