Is a church residency necessary for church planters?

Lee Stephenson: Welcome, everyone to Unfiltered. A real podcast about church planting and everything that that entails. My name is Lee Stephenson, I am a local church planter in Orlando, Florida and oversee Church Planting for Converge.

Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmelee. And I oversee Church Planting for Converge MidAmerica. And today we're going to be talking about residencies and internships and what's the same and what's different. And Lee, I'd love for you to kind of kick off a little bit because you actually do residencies at the church. And obviously, even with Converge, you kind of oversee some of that in a larger scale, helping others to find residencies and opportunities. But would love to hear even just to start out a little bit of your heart for residencies why they're important, and then tell us even about the residencies that you do at Harvest.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm very passionate about this. And part of it has come out of I think, just experience both growing up in the church as a pastor's kid. Going to... Got a Bible education at my bachelor's level and went on and got a master's degree in Bible and Theology. And recognizing there are just a lot of holes. There are a lot of gaps. I'm all for education. And I'm thankful for the education that I have and the challenges that my educators gave us to get better at exegesis. And how do we do Bible interpretation? Just the art of pastoring. But the reality was, there are a lot of gaps from what we learned in the classroom to experientially what actually takes place in the local church. And I think that's the gap that residency fills when it comes to the development of people feeling called to vocational ministry. And I like it a lot to following the medical school practice where four years of intense study memorization, understanding the body and kind of getting more directed towards a specialty. And then it's like, okay, now you're getting go complete even a three- or four-year residency of how does this actually play out in a hospital situation. In a critical care situation. And I think that is a priceless experience. And so, over the years, I'm sitting there going, man, they've learned something that I think the church has missed. And we're not doing young ministers a service and just grabbing them straight out of college or grabbing them straight out of seminary going, "Okay, go plant a church, you're ready because you got the education." It's like, how can we prepare them better. And as a result, their long-term impact is greater. And even their sustainability is greater because they did complete a one- or two-year residency in a local church situation. And I think what we have to understand is what is a residency first of all. A residency isn't free labor for the church. And I think that's where a lot of churches and church leadership's get a mistake. They think, man, I can get this guy, he doesn't need an income. And I'm just gonna give him a bunch of "to-do" tasks to handle. That's not residency. Residency is actually developing the skills. It's an apprenticeship. Which means you've got to see yourself as a pastor. You got to see your church as a center of development. It's how am I going to walk with this person, and help them develop to be the person that God has actually wired them to be? And that means sometimes you've got to actually give them the opportunity to preach. You've got to give them the opportunity to do counseling. And then you take the back seat, and then you sit down and debrief afterwards and go, "Hey, this is what we see. This is what we learned. This is where you need to continue to improve." So, it's giving them that practical ministry experience.

Danny Parmelee: A lot of people interchange the word residency and internship. How do you kind of differentiate them? And kind of the importance of the differentiation?

Lee Stephenson: I think internship typically is a shorter time period. And more specified specific area. So, it may be, hey, I need a three-month internship to fulfill a requirement for me to be able to graduate from my bachelor's degree. And so, I'm going to do it in youth ministry. And a residency is a long-term commitment to the development of a higher level of leadership within the life of the church. And so, it means you're going to be specific in this area for a season. Then you're going to maybe specify in this area. And then it's kind of how do I do both at the same time? And so, it's helping people get their feet under them of what overall church leadership actually requires.

Danny Parmelee: And the residencies that you do at Harvest, what do those look like? Kind of paint a picture or use an example of someone who's maybe gone through it. Some of the different experiences that they're exposed to. I know you'll kind of be speaking for them, but maybe some of the takeaways that they had, you know, going into it.

Lee Stephenson: At this point, we've had three residents actually complete the residency. And we actually have two new residents right now that have just started a residency. Some of it is contextual. So based on what gaps they have. What they sense they need to develop. What call to ministry. Our hope and desire is that the majority of them will be church planting residents, so that we can send them out. And so, four of the five residents that were working with our church planting residents. One of them was actually more focused towards next gen ministry. And we were like, "That's fine, we just need to know kind of what your long-term aspiration is, and then we'll create a scene for that." So, for instance, the next generation resident actually completed a two-year residency with us. And recognizing that there were just... He was young. There were just enough gaps in place that it's like, hey, we want to walk with you and help you develop so that you could be a full-time person on somebody's staff, and be an asset to them from a ministry standpoint. The other residents are church planting residents. The two that completed - one was probably we did it more like a nine-month residency. The other one was a one-year residency. The nine month we were able to fast track a little bit because of his background and experience level. That there were certain things that we knew we just didn't need to tackle. And so we were like he could complete this in nine months. The other one was a completed full year. And then we're staying in contact as he's working towards getting actually on the field and begin the church planting process. And so we kind of moved from a residency experience to now more what I would call it's morphed into a coaching relationship. Helping them get on board. The next two that we just started, one is doing a kind of a one to one-and-a-half year residency with us. And the other is going to work on a two year residency. But again, some of that is educational. So, we have a vocational track that we work with people that, you know, that is meant towards those that are maybe later in life feeling a call to go into ministry. But the reality of them, breaking away, taking their family and actually completing an M div is just not realistic. And so it's like, how do we fast track? What are the absolutely most important pieces that we need to help them grasp a hold of before they go and do that? So, that's the vocational track. And then we have an educational component, which requires a two year. So, either they can complete a bachelor's degree if they haven't fully completed. So, like one of them is an adult student. You know, he's 30, but hasn't actually completed his bachelor's degree. But he's more than halfway through. So, we've got the process for him to actually complete his bachelor's degree while he's doing the residency. And then we also have the option for people that are kind of going, I've already got my bachelor's degree, I want to work towards a master's degree. We have the ability for them to actually complete a master's degree while they do a two-year residency as well.

Danny Parmelee: That's great. But what about and I know it differs from place to place and thinking through maybe some potential church planters that are listening to this. Are these paid? Are they paid during that time? Do they usually get another part-time, full-time job? How do they balance you know, if they do have another part-time job, how they're able to still get the full experience of ministry type of thing?

Lee Stephenson: Great, great question. Our preference both in the way that I coached churches around like our Converge network that are becoming residency centers. And even what we do here practically is we do not pay the resident. We give them the option that they can go get a job. That in the marketplace is our preference so that they're learning how to build relationships with non-Christians while they're carrying a load of ministry. So, that's an option. The second option is we will help them raise the support. And that's actually our preference for church planting residents is that they raise a portion of their support. Because we know, and you know, like long-term that's going to be necessary for them to be a successful church planter. They've got to learn how to raise funds. And so, at this point, three of our residents have actually raised the majority of their support while they're going through the residency process.

Danny Parmelee: Which is great. And some don't want to do it. Because they're like, well, I'm going to need to ask for money from people later. But usually, those are long term relationships anyway. So, if someone's joining your support team for 50 or $100, a month now, they'll just continue on as you plant the church. And so, then you haven't built in that, you know, you get on on site, and you already have half or three quarters of your support raised already.

Lee Stephenson: Exactly. But one of the things that we do, and we encourage other churches to do is pay for some educational components. So, like, take them to a conference, where they're going to learn and to be exposed to new ideas. And then sit down and debrief them. Give them a computer. Give them workspace. Make them part of the staff team from that standpoint. And so, we do invest in those areas. And then if it's a church planting resident, we feel like now we actually feel like you can actually plant a church, we will be a supporting church, once you actually finish your residency and you move on. And so, we don't necessarily commit to in the moment. But it's, hey, we will at least give you a computer. We're gonna pay for you go to a few conferences. We're gonna give you workspace. We're gonna give you opportunity to learn. But if we feel like, yes, you've got the components we're going to pay for you go to Assessment Center. Once they get through the Assessment Center, and they pass we'll become a supporting church for them as they get moving.

Danny Parmelee: That's great. Final question. What should be the questions that church planters are asking as they're, you know, considering maybe a couple of different options of churches. Because every church does residencies different. What should be the questions that they're asking?

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, love that. Number one, I think, is this a healthy place that I can actually learn what healthy ministry looks like?

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, it would be horrible to pick up a whole bunch of bad habits over two years, right?

Lee Stephenson: And guys, it does happen. And so that's why I'm like, just do your homework on your side to make sure like, I can trust this leader, I can trust this church. There's something about this church that I want to learn from. That's got to be number one. Number two, I'd be asking questions specific to what kind of experiences will I actually experience here? Am I going to have an opportunity to sit in board meeting? Am I going to have an opportunity to preach? Am I going to have opportunity to actually sit with the lead pastor and have them speak into my life and challenge me and kind of mentor me in this season? And again, it may look different across the board. But you want to be exposed to many different experiences so that you have the opportunity to actually grow. And so, it needs to be about is this a place I can grow? Or are they just looking to use me as cheap labor? If it's just cheap labor, I'd walk away and find another place to go and be exposed.

Danny Parmelee: Absolutely. And I love some of those examples that you gave. Because it is. It's the behind-the-scenes stuff that you need experience doing. The board meetings, the staff meetings, the conflict meetings. You know, all of those different types of things being brought in on the inside and go, oh. Because you will have all of those things and you can't learn about it in a textbook.

Lee Stephenson: You can't. You can't. There's just a gap. And so, you need that practical learning and I'm thankful for some of my opportunities of working on church staff. Even though I was carrying a load. I look at that experience. I've worked under pastors that really looked at me as somebody they wanted to develop. And so, it was not a formalized residency, but the reality is it was like a five-year residency at the two churches that I worked at, prior to us first planting. And I'm thankful for that season. Well, friends, it's been fun conversation. Let us know what questions you have about residency, finding a residency, developing your own residency. We'd love to be able to partner with you in that. You could just email us at churchplanting@converge.org And we'd love to be able to follow up with you. Till next time, keep it real.