Churches Can’t Find a Preacher Because the Pipeline Is Broken…Change is Coming!

Read the job listings of churches looking to hire a preacher and you will see that churches are all looking for the same people who just aren’t out there like they were.

Churches have traditionally been staffed by people who:

• Have 3-5+ years of experience
• Have a degree and went through years of school
• Are married with kids
• Got experience in a smaller church and “moved up” the ladder

Those aren’t necessarily bad things but they are getting harder to reproduce. And if your church depends on a university to train your staff and smaller churches to get their initial 3-5 years of experience, you are going to find a harder time replacing staff because:

• Fewer people are going to school to minister in a local congregation
• The cost of education is going up, which means student loan debt is rising and that means…
• These new ministers need to make more than most churches can pay to be employed
• More ministers are retiring or quitting to do other work
• Smaller churches are closing and that means larger churches won’t have as many experienced ministers to poach off the small, rural churches.

This whole situation makes local congregational ministry less than appealing for many young people. That is especially true if they saw the carnage of how some of their ministers growing up were treated.

The reproducibility of the traditional minister is going to be hard and harder to accomplish due to the factors just listed. But we aren’t without hope…there are alternatives.

This all points to one thing

Our leadership pipeline needs an overhaul. We must adopt ways of training people that are inexpensive, fast and can be done by anyone who works any job without having to be a professional minister.

The good news is, this training is out there. The hard part is people aren’t “problem aware” because their church is still going. We aren’t desperate on this issue yet so it can be ignored by many in the short run.

But the problem is only going to get worse and that is going to lead us (force us into) some much needed changes.

Here are the blessings coming our way as we change the leadership pipeline

• More people will serve and use their gifts.
• The divide between the preacher and the member will shrink
• Church gatherings will become more relevant
• Gatherings will be more intimate and less business-like
• There will be more room for the Spirit to move and less controlled

This sounds a lot more like the first century church to me. How about you?

Do you want to serve but feel unqualified?

There is no need to be stuck! I am here to help you get started in a deeper walk with Jesus, helping others grow and starting new churches. And none of those things require a degree or years of professional ministry experience. It is actually all pretty simple.

Here are a few things to do:

1. Start praying and asking God for clarity on how you can be used. Here is a daily prayer guide to get you started.
2. Check out our training platform to get the skills and education you need that is simple and free to inexpensive.
3. Join a live webinar to get more explanation of how we train people in multiple countries and states in the US to make a kingdom impact.
4. Invite a friend to join you in the journey.

And if you have any questions for me, feel free to email me via the contact form on this site!