Much of my ministry career has been devoted to helping church plants and smaller churches find lead pastors. This used to be a lot easier than it is today and the
future presents more challenges. Take a look with me into the next 20 years in North America. Where will the next pastors come from?
First of all, church plants and churches will probably need to look at sources for lead pastors beyond seminaries. For the last 50 or more years, seminaries have been the place to find pastors. Within the last few years, that has been changing. Seminary enrollment, particularly in M. Div. programs, has been stabilized or declining. There are a number of reasons for this trend including the rising cost of a seminary education and the required time to complete 3-year or 4-year seminary degrees. Other reasons include the increase of online training and one or two year master's-level degrees related to church ministry. Many married students now question the value of relocating for two or more years with the loss of income and stability. Church plants and established churches should still seek graduating and former students from reliable seminaries, but also look elsewhere.
Sometimes a church will have someone already in the church whom God has gifted and called to ministry. Some may not have considered becoming a pastor or they may have not been in ministry for a season of healing or family needs. Others may have studied theology and ministry on their own. Still others have never been asked about pastoral ministry or been affirmed by the church as having a call to ministry.
There are some existing churches or church plants that have a training system set up for preparing vocational leaders of churches. Some of these churches may even be associated with an accredited seminary. Look around and see what church sources there are that are producing qualified pastors.
There are a growing number of online organizations that have a placement service available. Like any source for pastors, the potential leaders who are on ministry job sites must be vetted well to see if they are biblically qualified, gifted, and trained.
Open churches do well to explore pastors in existing churches or church plants. Church search teams do well to explore known pastors by taking the first step of asking about interest in praying about the opening.
Sometimes returning missionaries or chaplains may be looking for a church ministry. Denominational networks can be helpful in this regard. In this same category are parachurch ministry staff with successful experience of leading ministry and outreach.
Church members may know of someone who might be a good possibility to become the next pastor so it doesn't hurt to check out existing networks from within the open church.
But here's the best source of all for finding the next pastor. Jesus states it Himself in these words from Luke 10:2 - "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Pray and keep praying until God answers.
If you find a good candidate for the next pastor for your church who does not have the basic training needed, mobilize your church to help him get that training, along with coaching, and mentoring. Then watch what God does as only He can.
Photo by Alexei Scutari on Unsplash