Lead Time
Lead Time
The Biblical Case for Raising Up Leaders in Your Church
Tim and Jack explore why developing church leaders locally is both biblical and essential for church health and growth.
• The urgent need for leadership in the post-Christian, secular American context
• Sustainable leadership training that is robust, affordable, and accessible
• Cultural relevance – locally developed leaders understand their communities intuitively
• Biblical foundations from Exodus 18 (Jethro and Moses), Acts 6 (appointment of deacons), and Paul's instructions to Timothy and Titus
• The community impact of having leaders with deep relational connections
• Creating leadership pipelines for long-term church stability
• The challenge of current LCMS systems that limit succession planning
• How technology can help deliver robust theological education without compromising quality
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This is Leap Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Leap Time, tim Allman. Here with Jack Kauberg, we pray. The joy of Jesus. Is your strength, is your buckled up, ready to learn today with us? How are you doing, jack? I'm doing well.
Speaker 3:Tim, how about yourself?
Speaker 2:It's a great day.
Speaker 3:It's a great day hey, loving life.
Speaker 2:I get to watch my daughter play beach volleyball this afternoon. That'll be super fun oh boy, it's a meeting Monday for us, right? So we're going to get after it. But here's our topic for today, something we've spoken about a lot, but maybe we're going to look at it with some fresh eyes. Today we're going to give you five reasons why churches should embrace local leadership development. Want to kick us off with the first reason, jack?
Speaker 3:or any other opening comments Before we do just as an introduction, and so I put some effort into compiling this, but I wanted to ask you a question, Tim, because of some conversations that we've had recently, so I'm going to ask you this question, Tim why do you feel like you have the right to develop leaders locally?
Speaker 2:feel like you have the right to develop leaders locally. It's what Jesus said to do and it's what the early church very evidently did and for things to turn around in post-denominational, post-christian, secular America, churches that do this will grow and more people will be in heaven rather than hell. I mean it becomes that central to who I am as a pastor. I have been called to equip the saints for love and good deeds, to empower Ephesians 4, other pastors. This was given to the church and to leaders. Like who is the church? It's just leaders at the local level who are looking to raise up other leaders based on their respective gifting.
Speaker 2:It appears as if Paul's very, very clear about not one leader you know standing above other leaders, the whole hand and eye and foot thing. Where would we be without one another, all the various gifts and parts of the body? But we need leaders. Leaders should lead. I mean you get back to the gifts, like, for those who lead, do it with zeal, right. So I guess we're just zealously getting about leadership development and it's not all about pastors. It's about raising people up locally based on their gifting, right, but we should be connected to pastoral formation more deeply than we are right now in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, to be sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's kind of a presupposition even in that question about. The presupposition is that some people have a right and some people don't have a right, right, I guess. So it's an interesting presupposition. But I felt inspired just by that question to say, well, there's reasons why it's necessary and what are those reasons? So we're going to unpack this five reasons why the church should embrace local leadership development. So the first one is a practical perspective sustainable and accessible leadership training. Right, when leadership training is local, it becomes more accessible, it becomes more affordable, it becomes more people can participate in it. So this is interesting. Historically, missionaries have aimed to establish self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating churches led by indigenous leaders. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 2:Well, that's just evident. That's the way missionaries have to work. There's no system that's created and they go into a pre-Christian culture and they have to take responsibility for doing the mission. I mean, it seems so duh, we're just wrestling with. Well, we've already done this, right, we've done it, and we do different things in the American context than obviously we do in the missionary front.
Speaker 2:I don't think leaders and I'm going to be general here I don't think leaders who are in the tower in the institutions, understand at a core, deep level the state of emergency that exists in the local church for people not knowing and following meeting Jesus in our local churches.
Speaker 2:The percentages have declined Because and here's my rationale because if they understood the urgency, there would be no end to the adaptive conversations toward formation that are taking place in the LCMS.
Speaker 2:The reasons those conversations are not taking a place is the state of emergency from local leaders has not been made evident to those respective and again, this is not villainizing one person or one institution at all, but corporately, in the system of the LCMS we're not. We're not sensing the urgency that the missionary zeal for the self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating, we got to do whatever it takes to get the gospel into the ears of an unreached people group. Right, that's the way a missionary has to. I don't know that the eyes of our pastors I think the eyes of a lot of our lay leaders and this may be is this law Maybe? Yes, I don't know that the eyes of our pastors even sense the state of emergency, because if we did, then we would do whatever it took to raise up, serve team members, leaders, coaches and directors, and all the way up to pastors, to propagate the gospel in our respective areas.
Speaker 3:So this is interesting Local leadership development tends to be much more cost-effective and accessible. Now, tim, I was thinking about this. Right, there is an urgency, like you said, and especially in a context like Christ Greenfield. We have taken on to ourselves, through the leadership of Christ Greenfield not just you but through lay leadership, this desire, this big, big evangelical desire to do a lot of campuses and be involved in starting a lot of ministries. We've talked about our 20 and 20 vision 20 campuses in 20 years, that requires a whole lot of leaders, a whole lot of pastors. That requires a whole lot of leaders, a whole lot of pastors, and it requires us to start thinking on scale that goes beyond what I would say our current educational system can just feed us.
Speaker 3:Right, and I'm thinking through, like what Walther must have felt like in the early formation of the LCMS they're being fed pastors from Germany and he's like no, we got to do this. This is not going to sustain us. This is just not going to sustain what we're doing. We need to do this ourselves. So he believed, you know, that the local church body had the authority to set up its own seminaries and train its own people, and they did it because it was urgent right and so he wanted it to be robust. When we think about, in our context, what we want for pastoral formation, we want robust. So I would say that we're defining success through three terms right now robust, affordable, accessible. If we have a pastoral formation that is robust, accessible and affordable, then we can achieve our missional goals. Right now, tim, we are winning at robust and we are struggling mightily with accessible and affordable. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yep, oh yeah, or credit-based that you're evidently going to compromise on robust, rigorous Lutheran formation and I can tell you I have had so many conversations when people enter into whether it's the Luther House of Studies or as students are starting to enter into the Center for Missional Pastoral Leadership, this is going to press you. There will be stress and, jack, you've been in the Reformation class in Luther House you will look at it and say, wow, this is hard. Like to think that you can't have an online experience. That presses the students is yeah, it's just not true. It's just not true.
Speaker 3:So, yes, we need to work at accessible and affordable though. You're in community and we're also in mentorship communities locally, we're also working practically to try and apply the things that we're learning in a day-to-day basis, and we're still in community with people that are teaching. So all of these things are true because of technology. It just brings the cost way down, way down, right.
Speaker 2:And accessibility. So we're not sacrificing rigor.
Speaker 3:We're not sacrificing robustness, but we are embracing models that are creating cost effectiveness and accessibility. Yep.
Speaker 2:All right. So that's the practical. We need more sustainable and accessible leadership training. Let's move into the second one strategic perspective.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cultural relevance and effectiveness. Locally developed leaders possess an intuitive understanding of the culture, social and economic contexts of their community, making them especially effective in ministry. In that wild Cultural relevance, tim, this is crazy. So I've lived. Well, I was born in Norway, so I've lived in Norway. I used to go there in the summer times. I've lived in Connecticut as a young kid In the army I lived in we called it the Tuckasee area, kentucky, tennessee border area.
Speaker 3:Visited all over the country, been up to the Midwest right, lived in California, lived in West Phoenix and I've lived in the East Valley of Phoenix. Would you believe that the culture in every single one of those locations is really different and like there's different terms for things, different accents, different presuppositions about the types of lives people are living? I've lived most of my life in Arizona. I've lived most of my life in Arizona, I've lived in West Phoenix and I live in the East Valley. Now, right, can you believe that West Phoenix is radically different than Gilbert? Isn't that wild?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's 35 minute drive from here. It is a radically different place than where we are here at Chris Greenfield. It's a different context In the area that I grew up. I want to say speculative, speaking just from what I observed, that there's probably a majority of people there that are Spanish speakers. That's not what Gilbert looks like, not even remotely close like that. It is a different place, just 35 minutes away. So we sometimes think that you know, hey, having a national program is going to equip you to serve anywhere in the nation. Well, the reality is, the nation is extremely diverse, extremely diverse.
Speaker 2:There's radical differences in culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have native Arizona's unique state because we have a lot of reservations still today with indigenous people groups, right, this lady, oh my gosh, I got to tell you a story. I've not told this story. I was at my daughter's. I mentioned volleyball, so I was at a beach volleyball tournament on Friday last week. Okay, and this lady comes up to me. She's from a tribe in Northeast Arizona and she walks up and she goes. Man, there are a lot of white women around here and I was like, yeah, yeah, there are, she goes. If any white women want to pick a fight with me, man, I'm ready to go. Like this lady has a lot of issues.
Speaker 2:My wife and a few of her friends are like overhearing it. I'm just having this kind of sweet conversation with this. And it actually led toward a few of her friends are like over here overhearing it. I'm just having this kind of sweet conversation with this. And it actually led toward a lot of her pain in her community, pain over you know the American story, if you will, out here in the West. And it ended pretty well. I gave her she may, she may come to church and and then she cause, I gave, I told her where I'm a pastor and things that. But I'm afraid she's going to come and say and then she cause I gave, I told her where I'm a pastor and things that, but I'm afraid she's going to come and say there's a lot of white people, there's a lot of white people. I don't know, I don't know what you want me to do. It's a, it's a. Yeah, it's a white European community.
Speaker 1:Do we want to go to places that are more?
Speaker 2:diversity. Yeah, yeah, for sure we want to be, we want to represent our community in all of our worship contexts.
Speaker 3:Now I'm not saying it's impossible to go around and assimilate into the community. It's totally possible to do that. But let's just be clear. A pastor raised in an inner city neighborhood will intuitively grasp the challenges of gang violence and poverty in an area. He'll be able to tailor the way that he communicates to people the types of programs that they have to be able to tailor the way that he communicates to people the types of programs that they have to be able to respond more effectively than somebody who's an outsider. That is just how it is, and so can we be thinking strategically about developing people locally to serve locally, because they understand the culture, they're a part of the culture, they know how to communicate effectively. They understand the ways that the community is hurting, which is different in West Phoenix than it is in Gilbert.
Speaker 3:People are hurting in both locations, tim. There's hurt, sin felt needs, outward sin, inward sin. That's happening in both locations but it looks different. There's different presuppositions, there's different language being used, there's different anxieties that people go to sleep with, right, that are being addressed. It's culturally, contextually different.
Speaker 2:And we love our seminaries and they have a unique cultural context. Yes, you are formed in a certain way at the seminary, which will be and that's not bad which will be different from the context that you find yourself as you're sent out as a pastor. You're going to have to adapt to another context, another culture.
Speaker 3:So the advantage of the local leadership development is they don't have to go through the same learning curve to adapt to the culture. They're a product of the culture, they know it. They're trying to bring that gospel into that culture. They're not trying to build the same type of credibility that locally developed leaders have. So that's a strategic reason, practical and strategic.
Speaker 2:So let's hit the next one, tim. Number three theological perspective a biblical foundation for raising local leaders. I think this is the most compelling, jack.
Speaker 3:So embracing local leadership development is not only practical and strategic, but it's also deeply rooted in scripture. So one early example from the Old Testament that we talk about the need for leadership development the story of Exodus 18. What happens in Exodus 18, Tim, Remind people what happens in that story.
Speaker 2:Moses and Jethro. What you're doing, man, is not good. You're working. You're going to burn yourself out. You need a father-in-law to come alongside you and let you know. You need to get strategic, based on the gifts, the capabilities, the capacities of the people around you to share the work. Yes, Thank you. Moses goes along with it. Moses could have said Jack right, nah, thank you very much. I'm the guy here.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm the man God called me. He kind of hinted at that initially. That's like the only solution that he had. Jethro broadened his thinking on that right, yeah, wise counsel. Well, so he created a leadership structure people over tens and fifties and hundreds, you know thousands. So it worked and it said what was the result? The result was all of these decisions got delegated down and all the important ones, people were funneled up to Moses and he was able to make decisions on only the most important things.
Speaker 3:But smaller things were decided day in and day out at different levels of leadership. Why can't the local church do that? It is Tim biblical. It is biblical to raise up leaders in the church to handle this type of stuff, to be under supervision of somebody who's pastoring the church.
Speaker 2:Amen. Let's get to the early church. Where do we look to in the early church?
Speaker 3:The early church. A really good example Acts chapter 6, the formation of the deacons. Well, first we can look at Jesus. Right, jesus chose 12 and he developed them locally, in context, in relationship, and then in the early church, acts, chapter 6, the raising up of the deacons. So what's going on in that story? There is dysfunction in the church. What's going on in that story? There is dysfunction in the church, dysfunction with a benevolence program, the administration of resources. It seems to be unfair to people and I can only imagine Tim, I mean trying to deal with allegations of mismanagement of funds in a day before spreadsheets exist. That would be really difficult. I'm trying to do this on tablets and an abacus or whatever, trying to prove that you're being impartial with the use of funds. So what do they do? They raise up local leaders. They said choose amongst yourselves. This is interesting. The apostles didn't even choose them. They asked the churches, they asked the congregations choose among yourselves people who have wisdom and spirit. And they laid hands on them and they raised them into this deacon role.
Speaker 2:Isn't that?
Speaker 3:wild.
Speaker 2:It's very evident that the church needed help. You look at managing. You had people selling land and bringing all of these resources and laying it at the apostles' feet and they're like I'm not an accountant. They're like Matthew, are you going to take care of all this kind of stuff? Because you're the tax guy, right, but the normal Peter, he can barely keep his family fed. He stinks at fishing, for goodness sake. Now he's going to fish for men. We've got to. We've got to have other people on our team with with gifts. I think one of the most compelling though jack is, is paul's instructions to titus to appoint elders from every uh, for them in every church and go and appoint elders in every, in every town.
Speaker 2:I mean that that sounds ludicrous. Who would? Who like today? Could you imagine if a dude was just going around like, say, in Arizona Say, I claim to be, I'm the Bishop of Arizona, right, but I'm going to go to all these different areas where there's not an established church yet, maybe there are small. You could think of a house to house, right, groups of people starting to organize and I'm just going to come in and I'll obviously talk to leaders. This is very practical. How it happened? Who's the leader around here? Who?
Speaker 1:is kind of who is the Holy Spirit oh?
Speaker 2:who do you guys respect? Okay, here it is, you are ordained and off you go to carry word and sacrament.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's literally connected.
Speaker 3:Practically how it had to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to check in, you know. Yeah, that's what happened in the early church. It was radical, like today. It would seem like frivolous, or just kind of wild.
Speaker 3:We don't want to advocate for frivolous, by the way, oh gosh, no, yeah.
Speaker 2:But you just look at the practical movement of the gospel in the early church and you're like whoa, this required a lot of trust, yeah, in the Holy Spirit and in the Holy Spirit who made people his dwelling place. So yeah, it's so evident. Any other stories I mean 2 Timothy 2 too entrusts to faithful people who could teach others. So Paul to Timothy, to ones that he's going to train, and then those guys are going to obviously move on to training other people. It's so, so evident. I guess the reason I like how do we not learn this? Stuff Like this is really really powerful for starting a missional movement.
Speaker 3:Jack, and this starts to rethink what you know. What is the role of pastoring? What is the role of staff? Absolutely, word in sacrament is totally there, thousand percent on board with that. But there's also what we hear about in Ephesians 4. Christ gave the pastors and the teachers to the church to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. So everything, theologically speaking, everything that's needed to do ministry is in the house of the Lord, locally, at the local church. The people are the next generation of leaders. We have to think that, like they're not evangelizing now but they will be evangelizing, they're not preaching now but they will be preaching, this is the development role that the pastor needs to come in and have that perspective on the church, seeing them through the lens of potential. Right, who am I going to be? Who am I bringing on my shortlist to Disciple Weekly so that they can share in leadership with me? Right, who's going to be the next generation?
Speaker 2:And I don't think this is that hard to do. Maybe just throw out a model today because we have technology, jack right, yeah, well, what happens if our seminaries and our professors started to say I'm going to put my best lectures for X courses just available on a platform and they could monetize it, whatever it is, to kind of keep the economic system kind of going? And then we're going to have pastors who get together you could say pastors in a circuit, bringing potential future pastors together to listen over time. This would be asynchronous. You go listen to these lectures, You're going to read these books, and then we're going to get together and we're going to talk about it Hard conversations about how we apply it into our context, like that could happen today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, would it?
Speaker 2:require some risk and some institutional potential disruption, as people want to protect the institution. You know what? Yeah, so you could. Therefore, you could put up some boundaries around. Well, we're not going to have the young men kind of do this because we think they should go and receive formation life on life, face to face. But I think one of the arguments is well, face to face learning is the best and I would say, yeah for sure, application, face to face learning is the best.
Speaker 2:But you got to bring who's going to be applying it in their local context. You've got to bring active pastors who have a missional zeal and a missional vision to reach more people. And then, because this is what I'm living in right now, jack, and I'm not frustrated or angry at all, there's just a sense of urgency. I'm living it in our context and it's so fun to have all these learners at all different levels being dispersed to bring the word to people like it's the best, and I just want that for more pastors. And I would hope that our system, our theology, doesn't need to change, but our system of delivery must change for the sake of the advancement of the gospel. Anything more there, jack.
Speaker 3:No, I think we've nailed it. So look, you can't make an argument that it's not biblical to do that. You might not want to do it. You might prefer the traditional system as it is. That's fine, it's permissible to do that. You might not want to do it. You might prefer the traditional system as it is.
Speaker 3:That's fine, it's permissible to do that but you can't make an argument that it's not biblical to be raising up leaders locally. It just happened way too much in the early church and it just happens way too much now in places where the mission is really advancing very fastly In Africa, in the global south. These places have set up systems that are depending very heavily on raising up local leaders and equipping them robustly, right, Inexpensively and accessibly. That's the key thing that they're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen. All right, let's get into the fourth point community impact.
Speaker 3:Community impact. Community impact so when leaders this is about trust, accountability and a shared mission so when leaders are grown locally, the relational bonds within the church and the community are much, much stronger. Isn't that interesting? Isn't it interesting to be served by somebody who's a son of the church? Isn't that wild? I'm thinking about Adam Lamb right now, who's one of our worship directors. He's a son of this church. Isn't it a blessing to have people like that? Isn't it like such a cool story? And think about what it does to people when they come in, go to a worship service and they know that backstory, that this is a person that was a kid in the church and now he's helping to lead the church.
Speaker 2:Sure Isn't that wild. Well, some may say, jack, that, well, what about? Jesus in a prophet is not without honor in his hometown except in his own town. Sometimes, exactly Sometimes, it doesn't work to stay in your context, right, and you need to be sent. So I think it's not an either or thing. Sometimes leaders are going to stay, sometimes they're offered to the wider church to go right, and it's definitely a both and thing.
Speaker 2:But there's no denying that if the right fit is found for the local leader, he has exponentially more trust in that local context than an outside person who may be there for three to and this is one of the things right, you get out of seminary and I remember the average you know well, son, you're probably going to be there for three to five, three to five years.
Speaker 2:And there was this great pain I'm just going to be honest, jack great pain in coming into a context, building relationships, and not that I. You know that coming to Christ Greenfield was was the wrong thing. It was the right thing. I definitely was called, but there was trust that was lost in that community because we thought you'd be here, tim, for a while and I took that really, really hard right, whereas if someone's in, it's not like they can't be called, but they're more prone. They're more prone to stay in that context. So it's both, and we need to raise up leaders locally for the local church, and some of them are going to be sent elsewhere, jack it is harder to disengage or behave irresponsibly when your friends, family and neighbors are all around and that they are part of your formation process.
Speaker 3:You are accountable. There's high accountability in that system. Right, there's this accountability.
Speaker 2:You don't shared sense of Adam's parents you don't want to make exactly Adam's parents. Well, you don't want to make your grandma and many grandmas who were around when you were young angry by not listening to them. Well, well, moving too fast or moving moving too slow, right.
Speaker 3:So these elders, these elder, elder, elder members are actually like legit elder members that may have formed you when you were a kid that you're serving now. Isn't that wild?
Speaker 2:They're actually your elders. That's obviously they are. That's obviously what happened in the early church, right?
Speaker 3:So when the whole church becomes a tight-knit team and locally developed leader is more likely to remain there for the long term and provide a stable, healthy presence that further deepens the trust of the local community. These are just some of the cultural things that we see in some of these case studies here.
Speaker 2:So some local leaders who stayed in the Book of Acts, timothy, titus, phoebe and Priscilla and Aquila, all leaders raised up locally, not necessarily missionary leaders sent, but they were formed locally. Yeah, anything more Jack.
Speaker 3:Nope, that's about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, All right, point number five long-term growth and stability, creating a leadership pipeline.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So investing in local leadership development sets the stage for long-term growth and stability for the local church. It creates a continuous pipeline of future pastors, teachers and ministry directors who are already bonded to the church's doctrine and vision. They're being raised up internally. You don't need to convince them of your confessional beliefs. They were raised in it and you know what. You don't have to teach them the culture of the church.
Speaker 3:Right now I would say we're doing probably more external hiring. That I would want to do at Christ Greenfield, and they're wonderful people, but there is a learning curve. I've want to do at Christ Greenfield, and they're wonderful people, but there is a learning curve. I've got to get them. Luckily, we're. You know the LCMS, the confessions are the same everywhere, so you're not asking people whether they believe in the Bible or not, you know, but the culture is different and we've got to get them acculturated and we have to get them, you know, thinking the same way in terms of leadership development. So there's a process to do that, Whereas when you're raising people up, they're already part of that culture. They're saying yes to that because they love the culture. So it's less work to do that. Study on leadership development noted that it is a sign of an unhealthy church if no one in the congregation is ready to fill the pulpit whenever the pastor is gone. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in contrast, a healthy church intentionally raises up in your notes here. You said grooms.
Speaker 2:I don't like to use the word grooming for a variety of reasons but, intentionally raises up, prepares one or several potential successors, ensuring the transition of leadership, do not derail the ministry.
Speaker 2:There are so many churches we're about ready to fall off a proverbial cliff in the LCMS, in a lot of our medium to large-sized churches, who are asking who do you know right, who do you know context?
Speaker 2:Rather than because the system hasn't been created necessarily for us to raise up a general pastor who could be a senior pastor in our current system, right, the best I guess we can do is residential seminary for four years, or maybe it's a residential seminary If the church is really strategic and this is happening in some churches where they're like, okay, pastor Tom is going to be retiring in five years, we want to send, we believe, this man or this small group of people and this is fine who are going to go, they're going to study for three years as a pastor, but then their vicarage is in this congregation and we're anticipating general roster status. We're anticipating them becoming or they are a small group of guys becoming a becoming a pastor. That takes some intention not to say it doesn't, it couldn't happen. Maybe it's, maybe it's great, but maybe that story should just be told actually more at the seminary, as a seminary's partner with local churches looking to raise up the next gen.
Speaker 3:Jack, yeah, well, and again, you know the model requires you to send them off rather than develop them locally. You know, other than perhaps their vicarage might be a part of what they're doing. So that's the part where definitely the robustness is there. You're never going to hear me say that what we're doing isn't robust, but that there is the accessibility and the cost. And so a really big church you know, if they've identified somebody, they've got the money, they've got the resources, they can figure it out.
Speaker 3:But smaller churches worshiping 100 people, that is a much bigger challenge. To be able to do that, apart from a local mentorship process, that you could identify somebody and develop them locally in a way that's inexpensive that is, tim, what we're trying to advocate for here at the ULC. That is some of the change. That is, tim, what we're trying to advocate for here at the ULC. That is some of the change. We're trying to change the system so that more of those types of models are available to churches, so that a smaller, more medium-sized church would have access to some of the things that may be only limited to really big churches right now in terms of creating continuity of pastoral leadership.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and the SMP Jack is good. It's not great, and one of the reasons it's not great is because the pastor can't become a senior pastor, a general rostered pastor.
Speaker 3:That would be the accessibility issue, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Maybe the SMP needs to evolve. And some people say, well, if you're going to move them full MDiv or full general, then it's going to take longer. And I think, well, if you're going to move them full MDiv or full general, then it's going to take longer. And I think, ok, fine, yeah, have them be in a distance learning cohort for six years or whatever it takes. You know, as a long vicar, right, the CMC program before ordination took one of our former pastors, jake Besling, right, it took him four years as a vicar. He was a vicar after the order of Melchizedek. I mean, he's always been a vicar and that's okay. That's okay. I don't think, especially right now with a lot of our Bible and co-vocational potential leaders in our church, I don't think there's a reticence toward challenge and a longer learning journey while they're in the marketplace and they eventually they may stay in the marketplace or maybe they're a leader who could take on that next season of senior pastor leadership. So that system does not exist right now in the LCMS.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean you have. You just have examples of people working with successors, trying to raise up people to do what they do. You know Paul worked with Timothy Moses, you know. I mean it was just like we see these models everywhere in the church. So what does it look like in the local church to do that? Who is your successor? Who's on your bench? Right, if there's no bench, then your church is going to have a really really difficult transition when something happens to you or it's time to retire. And I tell you something your odds of continuing to be a healthier, healthy, fruitful church increase dramatically when you've got an internal development system, a bench of people that are ready to step in to do what you do.
Speaker 2:It's as if we believe we're not going to die. You know like.
Speaker 1:I'm always in transition right, I'm an interim.
Speaker 2:I'm an interim pastor here in this place. It may be a third. You transitions, are people one not coming to the church because there's power struggles that are taking place, who's actually leading here in this place? And two, a lot of people end up leaving churches and I'll just be straight, frank here. People end up leaving churches and a lot of them don't stay in Lutheran churches. A lot of our best laid leaders don't stay in Lutheran churches.
Speaker 3:Like they end up going to the non-denom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they end up going to the non-denom or another kind of Lutheran confession. That's a tragedy. That stinks man, like they're there and there are so many of these stories in the LCMS People looking at our doctrine and loving it, but looking at our systems and we're struggling right and a lot of our, a lot of our best people end up leaving our confession of faith for a counter, a counter confession. Like if we actually believe it's the best doctrine which I do, I subscribe to it Like why wouldn't we want to adjust some systems to not lose some of our best leaders? Uh, to another, another faith tradition? Um, and that's, that's and that's a bummer. So we got in conclusion, jack, anything. And then we got some resources I want to share for folks if they want to go deeper in this topic.
Speaker 3:So yeah. So conclusion embracing local leadership development is a win at multiple levels. It's practically a win means a church community can sustain itself and adapt to challenges with minimal outside dependency. Strategically, it yields leaders who are culturally attuned right, that's a big deal and therefore they're more effective at ministry because of that cultural context. Theologically, it aligns with the biblical model of equipping the saints and raising shepherds from among the flock. It also forges stronger community bonds through trust and shared labor. And it secures the church's future through an ongoing supply of prepared leaders Churches that prioritize developing pastors, elders and ministry workers from within their own membership positions themselves for healthy growth and faithful witness to the community.
Speaker 3:Now, this is very important, tim, in this age when many congregations are facing leadership shortages, especially in the LCMS. How many vacancies are there right now in the LCMS? So there's lots of shortages and cultural disconnects. Turning to leaders God has placed in the midst of your local congregation is probably the most fruitful pathway forward. So this is our encouragement train and empower local leaders to lead. The church not only follows a biblical mandate to do this, it also ensures that the gospel will continue to be proclaimed in ways that people can understand, trust and carry on for generations to come.
Speaker 2:Amen. Well, this has been. This has been a lot of fun. One final comment for me.
Speaker 2:Some may say you're, by embracing different models, testing different models, you're dividing the church. Tim, and that gosh, that is a hard word to hear, because we take church unity very seriously and I would say the lack of response to the shifting cultural context that we find ourself is the dividing line right now. We're just analyzing what is Leaders look at what is not what they wish things were, and so if you think that actually being honest with the times in which we live is divisive, then I'm sorry that you have that perspective. Our heart is for people who don't know Jesus and we're not ashamed of that. We want people to be reconciled to God by faith in His Son Jesus, as the way, the truth and the life, and we would like to be a part of a church body that embraces that end. We do not exist as a local church for ourselves. We exist for those who are yet to meet and follow Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So a few resources if you want to go deeper. A book by Rich Fraser why Training Leaders is Biblical you can check that out. Another one by Endale Ausman, developing a Leadership Training Model for Churches, a Biblical Perspective. Another one by Carl Dalfred Our Long-Term Missionaries Obsolete. And then one final one by a group called Mission One, starting Projects Through the Local Church.
Speaker 2:And I'll put another, just preemptive plug. I guess is I have a brand new book coming out, hopefully in the next handful of months. We're in editing right now, confessing Jesus Mission. It will be the first of a number of books that the Unite Leadership Collective will be coming out with, and a lot of these topics that we just looked at today will be addressed in that book. Topics that we just looked at today will be addressed in that. In that book, jesus loves you so much and he loves when you love those who the world says are unlovable, the least, the lost, the lonely, and to raise up other people in your context, to go to go on mission in the marketplace, in our homes and in our marketplace, in our neighborhoods, to make disciples of all nations. It's a good day. Go make it a great day. Wonderful work, jack. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1:God bless, you've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.