How We Train Established Pastors

Advanced Pastoral Training

CORPORATIONS FIGURED THIS OUT LONG AGO

Why hasn’t the church?

THE CORPORATE CULTURE

Larger corporations faced a significant challenge.

As their revenue increased, so did their demand for managers and leaders to sustain that growth.

Where would they find qualified candidates?

While MBA programs are one source, there is an issue.

Graduates often possess theoretical knowledge but may lack practical experience and necessary skills. To effectively lead, they require a combination of knowledge, experience, and skills.

This is where Executive Development Programs come into play.

These in-house programs train managerial and leadership skills over a period of three to five years.

Participants can include recent MBA graduates or seasoned professionals with up to 10 years of experience looking to enhance their careers. Throughout the program, they rotate through various departments within the corporation and are frequently assigned challenging tasks to evaluate their competency and character.

Support is provided through trainers and mentors who guide participants during this advanced skills training. Upon completion of the program, graduates are placed in leadership roles where they are tasked with navigating difficult business challenges.

Initially, none of the participants possessed the skills needed to tackle these challenges.

However, they acquired the ability to perform at the highest levels by engaging in a proven training process under the guidance of experienced leaders.

Corporations have figured this out, why hasn’t the church?

THE ESTABLISHED PASTOR

You are knowledgeable and experienced.

You have been to conferences, read books, maybe been mentored by a great pastor to develop your skills and deepen your knowledge.

Yet, your church might be plateaued or declining in health and numbers.

Your seminary offered basic training. Where will you find advanced training so your church fulfills the mission Jesus set before it?

The lack of training is the reason most churches plateau or decline.

Imagine a Fortune 500 company assigning untrained leaders to a stalled group to get it moving in the right direction.

That could be trouble.

George Barna discovered a disconcerting fact in one of his pastoral surveys:

DID YOU KNOW

50% of pastors felt that their theological education DID NOT adequately prepared them for ministry?

Skills like vision casting, planning, establishing culture, interpreting your neighborhood, leading, managing, reaching out, team building and advanced preaching skills may be outside your wheel house.

If you are pastor serving a church under 200 people, you will need to be proficient in these skills.

To get there you will either:

Trial and error it through a DIY process that could last years OR
Submit to a proven process under the supervision of trained leaders.

SEMINARY TRAINS YOUR MIND

WE DEVELOP YOUR SKILL

HOW?

ACCEPT THAT A PASTOR IS A SHEPHERD

If you serve in a church less than 200, you will be a generalist. You need be proficient in many skills, even if they are outside your gift mix. The more skills that you develop, the greater chance your church will become a healthy and sustainable.

We have found that if you manage your household well, you should have no problem developing these skills. Remember, you do not have to master these skills, just be proficient.

Contrast a smaller church with a larger one. Pastors in larger churches will specialize. In this case, the Lead Pastor often focuses on vision and preaching.

This is the reason we use The Shepherd as the model to orient pastors. It is simply designed for you to focus a on few things to build and reinforce your skills.

THE SHEPHERD

Every skill that you will develop flows through leading, caring for, or feeding your church. There are about 80 skills to develop or reinforce.

ACKNOWLEDGE THE DIFFERENT SEASONS

As churches mature, they will go through different seasons. You will need to be skilled to lead the church from one season to the next.

This is no small feat.

Every church has plateaued at some point.

Do you have the skills to keep the church moving so it doesn’t prematurely plateau?

We have identified five seasons:

Initiate: To ensure the church establishes a firm gospel foundation and that it is in step with the broader community.
Develop: To form the rhythms of the church body’s to impact the broader community.
Lead: To increase the ministry capacity to minister to more people in better ways.
Grow: To fuel key ministries to reach out, evangelize, and disciple.
Multiply: To expand existing or develop new ministries to bring the gospel to the community.

This adds a layer of complexity to developing your skills. For instance, the leadership skills you will need in the Initiating Season will be different than the leadership skills you will need in the Leading Season.

You will need to grow as a shepherd as you move through the seasons.

ALIGN YOURSELF TO OUR PROVEN PROCESS

We have been providing advanced pastoral training for 25 years. Our proven processes are backed by DMin and PhD research along with corporate training, change and innovation management training.

Hundreds of pastors across 15 denominations in six countries have participated in our trainings. Pieces of it have been taught at eight bible colleges and seminaries.

HERE’S A SAMPLE OF OUR TRAINING MANUAL

Our focus is to prepare you to effectively lead a healthy church that multiplies.

To make that happen, skill development demands that we:

Spend a lot of time with you. We listen, instruct, encourage, troubleshoot, advise, coach, and counsel you until you become proficient.
Create an environment to provide you ample support and appropriate challenges to grow and mature as a pastor.
Integrate honing your character and deepening your knowledge to become godly and effective.
Follow proven processes and tools that create and sustain healthy churches from scratch.

How does this work?

You will develop 20-25 skills each year.

Because of the nature and time it takes to develop and reinforce a skill, we require a 12 month commitment.

We have a “it takes what it takes mentality.” Some months we might meet three to four times, other times we might meet once every six weeks.

We will bring pastor’s together from time-to-time to support and sharpen one another.

How much time will it take?

Short answer: Minimal.

Our emphasis is creating a new mindset and habits while you are ministering to your congregation.

For instance, you will develop your time management skills. We will introduce several tools to you so that you can better plan your time, then deeply support you to become a master of your time.

Same as true with sermon prep. You will use some of our tools to think through the passage and how you are going to present it. We will be a sounding board and give you timely feedback as you work through the process of putting it together. You will think about the material in a different way, but not you may not necessarily spend more time preparing it.

Though we refer to two books and a lot tools during our time together, the amount of time you spend reading will be minimal.

How much does it cost?

We took the following five factors into consideration:

Your energy: The cost of having the church drain you because you are not quite sure how to handle certain situations.
Your time: The cost of not knowing how to fix the problem, but trying multiple times.
Your church’s identity: The cost of not being known in your community as you would like it to be.
Your health: The physical toll of trying to figure it out on your own will impact your health and your relationships.
Your church’s finances: The cost of you trying to develop the skill on your own can stunt the numerical and financial growth of the church.

The investment is $400 a month for 12 months.

When can I start?

We have a rolling monthly enrollment.

For Elders and Denominational Leaders

People perform better with a trainer by their side.

Consider personal trainers. Just going to the gym and randomly working out will get random results. But a personal trainer will help you get your desired outcome by putting together a plan and holding you accountable to it.

The same is true for pastors. We do not have data for established pastors, but our experience tells us that the following numbers are roughly the same.

Did you know church planters who have coaches:

Increase their effectiveness by 300%

Increase the number of baptisms by 150%

Increase attendance by 100%

77% of church planters that struggle receive less than one-week of training.

50% of pastors felt that their theological education DID NOT adequately prepared them for ministry.

Look at the return on investment.

Over a three-year period, the church could spend upwards to $360,00 on salary/benefits/expenses on their pastor.

What is it getting in return?

What if the pastor doesn’t move the needle in three years? Time and money down the drain and the Kingdom hasn’t expanded.

That’s not a good return on investment.

A trainer working alongside the pastor will increase his skill level.

As a result, the church will become healthier and be able to minister to more people in better ways. Healthy churches grow spiritually, numerically, financially, then exponentially as God sees fit.

Healthy churches multiply.