I’m trying to think more clearly about how to raise up the next generation of leaders for the church. It seems clear to me that things are shifting and changing, sometimes dramatically. Institutions are changing and sometimes failing. Key leaders are leaving the scene, sometimes because they have retired or died, and other times because a moral failing has been exposed.

I don’t have it figured out yet. But I want to start talking about it more.

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My writing often comes from a burden to figure out what I think about something and then try to communicate it as clearly as I can. I think some of my best writing comes when there are two things working in me:

First, I notice that I am working over a problem in my mind and am working hard to get clear about what I think is at stake (something that seems important and complicated or confusing).

Second, I notice a sense of pressure to not talk about it. This is usually unspoken and intuitive on my part. This means I could be wrong, or I could be seeing things. The pressure to not talk about it can either be because it seems like everyone views something as settled, while I have questions or concerns. Or, silence could come from the sense that speaking out could be problematic in terms of upsetting people in power.

Here are two examples of writing that has come from this:

1. I urged churches to start reopening five months into the Covid-19 pandemic. 

2. I expressed my concerns with the proposal of United Methodist bishops to make affirmation or prohibition of same sex marriage dependent on the surrounding dominant culture. 

Neither of those posts are perfect. In rereading them today, I would say things differently in both. But they both helped me think more clearly about matters that were very important to me (and to the church I was part of) when I wrote them. I am proud of them because I believe the Lord used them to help people think more clearly and make hard decisions during very challenging circumstances.

If you aren’t familiar with my writing, these will give you a sense of it. I hope they show my commitment to telling the truth. Of course, I also make mistakes. One of things I think I have often done well is move a conversation forward and bring clarity where it has gotten bogged down or stuck.

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So, I’ve been thinking about raising up the next generation of leaders for Jesus’s church.  I’ve been thinking about this longer than I usually think about the kinds of things I write about here. And to my own frustration, I don’t feel like I’ve made as much progress as I usually would have by this point.

I want to articulate why I think this it is hard. It is important to work to understand the moment in which we find ourselves. And I want to begin by naming two models that have been used to raise up the next generation of leaders for the church. I want to suggest that people in my networks have almost completely missed the importance of the second model. But first, why is this so hard to think through?

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The church in the United States is experiencing major challenges due to massive shifts in the culture, academy, and the church herself.

Aaron Renn does a great job talking about the changes in the dominant culture and how it impacts the church. Check out his book Life in the Negative World [Affiliate link]. I also follow his work at aaronrenn.com.

The academy is also undergoing massive change, which includes theological education (the seminaries where pastors are trained). This would be another post, so I won’t unpack this further right now.

And finally, the church herself is undergoing dramatic change. I think most of the changes in the church come from the influence of the first two. Many large non-denominational and congregational churches have also been impacted by the fall from grace of senior leaders of these churches. This has happened enough over the past few years, many feel uneasy in these kinds of churches, even if their own local church has not been directly impacted.

Here is an image I have used to describe what I think is happening:

Tectonic plates are shifting in the culture. When tectonic plates shift, there are earthquakes. There is rumbling. There is shaking. Often major edifices are damaged or even collapse when tectonic plates shift.

I think we are seeing this kind of major disruption and change in the church today.

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There have been (at least) two major models for raising up leaders for the church.

I’m sure much more nuance could be added here, so feel free to fill this out in your own thinking or experience. The point here is to get some things in place in order to move forward.

My own experience was largely with the first model. I will call it the ecclesial bureaucracy model. I’ll use my experience to explain it:

I received a calling to ordained ministry through a short-term mission trip to Mexico when I was a junior in college. One short week changed my life in so many ways. By the end of the week, I had a deep sense that there was nothing more fulfilling I could do than give my life in service to the church, by the grace of God. I remember time and time again being stunned by how joyful it was to serve the Lord through the church.

I knew nothing. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. And I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

But there were also a lot of things that were clear and decisions I didn’t really have to make. I was a United Methodist and didn’t question whether I should pursue ordination in the UMC or not.

The blessing of this was that the path forward was clear. The obvious next step was to attend seminary after I graduated from college. I began having conversations with the senior pastor of the church I was attending, who was generous with his time and wisdom. I formally applied to become a “certified candidate” during my first year of seminary.

I did not have a long-term relationship with the same local church throughout my time in the ordination process. I moved quite a bit from my freshman year of high school through seminary.

So to summarize: Once I felt a calling to ministry, I basically got on a moving walkway where the next step was fairly clear. And if I was approved for ordination by denominational authorities, I would also be appointed to pastor in a local church. If approved for ordination, I would, literally, be guaranteed an appointment (a pastoral position in a local church).

I think there are strengths and weaknesses of this model. And they could be done better or worse than it was done in the UMC when I went through the process. When I was teaching United Methodist polity, I used to tell students that the number one value of the UMC ordination process appeared to me to be persistence. If you kept going, you would almost certainly be ordained. 

(This was most evident to me when someone in the conference I was ordained in clearly revealed that they did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. They were not discontinued or removed from the process at that point. They were deferred and had to rewrite and repeat the interview process the next year. They were then approved and ordained. Is it more likely this person’s views on the bodily resurrection of Jesus changed, or that they found a more acceptable way to present (or cover up) their heretical views?)

The second model I’ll call the apprenticeship model. It was not my experience, so I can’t give as much detail. I think this approach is most common in non-denominational and congregational church polities. For this reason, I also suspect it is less uniform and more organic and relational.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. A person is raised up for leadership in the church by someone who is recognized as an excellent leader in the church. Preparation for ministry comes by being invited to get closer to the senior leader with behind-the-scenes access. Over time, they are given opportunities to lead with the senior leader’s oversight and feedback. And eventually, they are released to lead on their own, though likely with continued oversight or spiritual covering.

Sometimes a person in this system will replace the senior leader when they step down. Depending on the system, they might move to a different context taking on significant leadership responsibilities.

This model is highly relational. The person who is being raised up for leadership in the church spends significant time with the person who is discipling, mentoring, or apprenticing them. It is inefficient in the sense that it requires proximity and a lot of time together. It is also driven by the needs of the person being raised up and so is very contextual and responsive to where they are and how they need to grow. It is also inefficient because one person cannot have this kind of relationship with an unlimited number of people.

Another way to think of this model is to think of Robert Coleman’s Master Plan of Evangelism and other relational discipleship making tools. These are usually focused on discipleship as the goal for all who come to faith in Jesus Christ. It is not surprising that those who are raised up to lead in these kinds of contexts continue to be raised up to lead in this way.

I suspect that very often a sense of calling to lead in the church comes within the context of these discipling relationships.

During the season when I first began to feel a tug to rethink some of my assumptions about how to best raise up leaders for the church, I started getting to know a non-denominational church near where I lived. The folks in this church were very gracious to me and the senior pastor met with me. I wanted to ask him two questions in particular:

How did you get to be in your position? I remember the answer, though it was more fleshed out than just this, because I had heard it from others in the same church family: I lived in Buddy’s basement. 

In other words, the founding pastor invited him to come closer, literally into his home, for a season. And he poured into him and raised him up.

The second question was: Is there anything that I do that can help you and those you are raising up? We developed a degree at Asbury Theological Seminary that came directly out of my conversations with this pastor and the pastor of another large non-denominational church at another place I taught. (Send me an email [scroll down] if you want to know more about it.)

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I think both models would be improved by the other.

Non-denominational and congregational churches that don’t require any formal education outside of themselves make themselves vulnerable.

Large denominations that have heavily bureaucratic ordination processes have greater risk in my view.

My working hypothesis is that the most effective pastors in the United States at present came up through more of the apprenticeship model than the ecclesial bureaucracy model. My experience is that almost all of them end up pursuing a seminary education, but it usually comes after they have been leading in meaningful ways in the local church.

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So, Now What?

For most established leaders reading this, the action step is most likely to look for people to bring in closer to walk with you and build them up. One of the problems with bureaucratic approaches to ordination is that they are so depersonalized. People don’t grow in self-awareness because the kind of one-on-one conversations that happen in an apprenticeship don’t happen nearly as often.

Here is what I am seeing: I believe the church, particularly healthy large congregations with stable leadership and deep roots, is only going to be more important going forward for the work of raising up leaders for the church. All churches are important in this work. The local church is the ordinary context for hearing a calling to ministry. I think larger churches just have the capacity and the resources to invest in the next generation for their own sake.

I think large churches will develop coaching trees like Nick Saban did at Alabama. People will serve for a season in these churches and experience accelerated growth in a host of ways in these contexts. Some, who can joyfully stay long-term in an associate type of role, will stay for decades. But most will serve for a season, be built up, equipped, and sent out to lead with excellence.

And I have a feeling this will be less dependent on denominational affiliation than it has ever been in the history of Christianity in the United States.

This vision excites me because Asbury Church (where I am) is the kind of church that can do an excellent job of apprenticing people to be excellent leaders.

Asbury is a conservative evangelical church from the Wesleyan theological heritage that averages about 2,500 in person in weekly worship at one campus. At Asbury, intentional and strategic attention is given to the culture of the church. Asbury not only has a great culture, but the senior leaders can tell you why they are doing what they are doing and how to work to set, shift, or move culture. This is so important! And there is a clear emphasis on discipleship. As with our work to build and maintain a great culture, the church can articulate a coherent vision for how we make disciples.

And one of the most unique things about Asbury Church, within the context of this post, is that Asbury has a passion for education. Asbury hosts the Asbury Theological Seminary Tulsa Extension Site on its campus. So, a person preparing to become a pastor could come to Asbury Church and be in seminary here at the same time.

Asbury Church’s commitment to education is also evident in its decision to launch Asbury Classical School this year.

One of the saddest things to me about my time in theological education has been seeing the negative impact a seminary tends to have on local churches in the immediate geographical area of the seminary. At a previous institution, someone commented on the “dead zone” that surrounded the seminary. 

What a gift that I get to teach at a seminary whose mission and values I agree with at a church I am proud to be part of and that I am confident will bless my students.

If you, or someone you know, is wrestling with a calling to ministry, I would love to connect with you. Maybe you should move to Tulsa and see for yourself. I am learning more and more that proximity and time within a relational atmosphere are crucial to raising up the next generation of leaders for the church.

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Kevin M. Watson is Director of Academic Growth and Formation at Asbury Theological Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. He is also Scholar in Residence at Asbury Church. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States.