9 Best Practices for Leading a Residency

On a recent trip to Legoland Florida with my family, I came across a mind-blowing stat about Lego brick combinations. A Danish mathematics professor, Søren Eilers, calculated that with only 6 identical 2×4 Lego bricks of the same color, you can come up with a whopping 915,103,765 unique combinations! Surrounding this stat poster was a floor-to-ceiling display featuring hundreds of different combinations of 6 blue Lego bricks made by theme park guests. Although each Lego combination on display around the room was uniquely put together, they all shared the same essential components—6 blue 2×4 Lego bricks.

Building and leading a residency is like assembling Lego bricks. We can utilize similar building blocks while embracing the freedom to design something to uniquely fit our passions, strengths, and ministry context.

From my experience coaching pastors to build and lead residencies, one trap I often see pastors fall into is the perfection trap. Pastors often stall out on the process because they feel this pressure to build a perfect residency, as though there is only one right way.

Here’s a liberating truth: there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for residencies.

A residency is an intentional process for training qualified leaders to become church planters. There’s a lot of freedom in designing your residency. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach for residencies, I do believe there are evergreen principles and best practices that can help your church launch and lead an effective residency.

Send Network hosted a Residency Think Tank with several leading practitioners in church planting residencies from across North America to learn from one another and identify best practices for leading a residency. Though different residency models and strategies were represented, we were able to identify nine best practices for leading an effective church planting residency that you can utilize as you design your residency.

1. Clear Vision and Purpose

When building out a residency, it is always helpful to begin with the end in mind. Why is God calling your church to develop and multiply leaders? Why is God leading you to plant churches? The leading residency practitioners knew why their residencies existed, and they knew what they were trying to produce through their residencies. You need to know why you want to have a residency, and you need to determine what you want your residents to become.

2. Effective Evaluation Process

Another helpful practice is developing an application and interview process for evaluating potential residents. Well-structured residencies utilize various evaluation tools along with an interview process to effectively evaluate a potential resident.

3. Intentional Plan for Training

You’ve probably heard the phrase that failing to plan is essentially planning to fail. Leading an effective residency requires developing an intentional plan for teaching and equipping residents to become church planters. Developing a plan provides clarity on the leaders, structure, content, and a meeting schedule to run the residency.

4. Consistent Meeting Rhythms

You make time for the things that matter. The best residencies have established meeting rhythms and locations. They were not trying to figure out when and where to meet on a weekly basis. Instead, they had clearly communicated the residency meeting expectations. Communication about the residency schedule at the beginning of the program is key.

5. Hands-on Ministry Experience

Research shows that adults learn best by doing. If the desired outcome for your church planting residency is to produce elder-qualified men that will lead churches, then it is imperative to provide them with ministry experience to lead and shepherd others while under your care and coaching.

One practical ministry assignment to consider: challenge your resident to launch and lead a new small group at your church with the expectation that he will develop someone within the group to take his place when he leaves to go plant a church. If a resident can’t launch and lead a small group of people, he will probably have a difficult time planting a church.

6. Continuous Feedback and Coaching

Making mistakes is not the problem; not learning from our mistakes is the problem. The most effective residencies build coaching and feedback into their plans and meeting rhythms. Whether the resident is leading a small group, writing curriculum, developing strategy, or preaching a sermon, every opportunity during the residency is a crucial chance to help them sharpen their gifts in ministry. Leverage your influence in their lives by consistently meeting with them to provide ongoing coaching and feedback. Remember, feedback is meant to be helpful, not hurtful.

7. Access to Lead Pastor and Pastoral Team

Proximity breeds meaningful relationships, and meaningful relationships set the stage for transformational learning. One of the most mentioned qualities of an effective residency was the time the residents spent with the pastoral staff. Encourage your residents to shadow the pastoral team as much as possible. Let residents observe and participate in elder meetings and staff meetings. Consider inviting the residents to join the lead pastor and pastoral team for weekly sermon preparation meetings. Invite the residents to join your pastoral team during certain pastoral care opportunities (i.e. hospital visits, home visits, etc.). Great residencies have a structure for intentional, life-on-life discipleship of the residents by pastors at their church, allowing residents to grow as disciples and disciple-makers.

8. Exposure to Other Church Planters

You don’t have to know everything about church planting to lead a residency. One of the best ways to develop your church planting residents is to expose them to other church planters who are a few years ahead of them on the journey of planting. This can be as easy as scheduling a video conference call or an in-person meeting with an existing church planter. Or, it can be an immersive experience by taking your resident(s) on field trips to different cities to connect with other church planters. By doing this, you are providing residents with opportunities to ask questions and to learn from other experienced planters who are currently engaged in the day-to-day church planting world. This often expedites the learning experience of your residents.

9. Milestones and Markers for Growth

Effective residencies create a development plan to help track a resident’s growth and desired outcomes. They identified key church planting milestones for their residents to start pursuing while in the residency. They also determined specific growth markers for their residents based on the results of the assessments and evaluation tools leveraged in the application process.

Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building and leading a residency. Consider these best practices as your Lego bricks for building and leading an effective residency. There is freedom in how you design and lead your residency.