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unSeminary Podcast
Who’s the Next You? Building a Gen Z Residency Pipeline with Dave Miller
00:35:50
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by returning guest and friend of the show, Dave Miller. With a background in worship and creative arts ministry across Las Vegas, Kentucky, and Michigan, Dave now leads Leadership Pathway,
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast, the place where church leaders get practical insights, tips and strategies for ministry growth. Today, you're stepping into something bigger than just a conversation. This podcast is part of a bold mission to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. Whether you're dreaming of increasing your impact in your community, empowering your team, or reaching more people with the message of Jesus, you're in the right place. We're here to bring you the stuff you wish they taught in seminary, ideas and tools you can put into action this week to see transformation in your ministry. Let's dive in.
- [00:41]
B
Hey friends. Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, today I really do want you to lean in. We have got a return guest, which, you know, we don't do that often, and a friend. This is like a legit friend, somebody that I know from the real world who has got something for you today that I want you to take action on. We've got my friend Dave Miller, who served as a worshiping creative arts pastor in churches in Las Vegas, Central Kentucky and Western Michigan and also has spent a bunch of years helping churches on a variety of topics from strategy to technology and facility design. However, the thing he is the most passionate about is helping young leaders take their first, healthiest steps into ministry. He leads an organization called Leadership Pathway. They offer a two year residency program for future church leadership as well as training, coaching and consulting services. Plus, he's a great guy. Dave, welcome to the show. So glad you're here.
- [01:32]
C
It's great to be here, Rich. Thanks for the opportunity.
- [01:35]
B
It's so fun to have you back. Kind of fill in the picture. There we are. Return guests. So you know my mom, she listens to every episode so she can skip ahead. But for folks that don't kind of fill in the picture a little bit.
- [01:47]
C
Well, my mom has, she still asked me on occasion, do you have a job? What do you do? What do you do? Yeah, she has no idea.
- [01:55]
B
I love it. Yes.
- [01:56]
C
Fill in the picture. So the, the picture is. Yeah, in ministry. Thought I would be in ministry forever. Came. I don't have one of those great testimonies about going to jail and coming back from the edge. I grew up in an amazing church. All that legacy stuff. My parents, what they handed me an amazing youth group, an amazing high school experience into college and maybe I was an early adopter because upon graduation I had no idea what I wanted to what really do, but I knew I wanted to do something for God. And the local church was really important. I don't think I would have even said that when I was 22. But looking back, I'm like, I never really thought about the family business or doing something else with my life. And I thought I would do it forever. And then I was found myself at a church that was closing and yeah. Which is a. We won't go down that exit. But I was like, what happened? And someone invited me to go on a consulting trip, which I didn't even know in those days.
- [03:01]
B
Yeah, what is that?
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C
What is that? And he said, we'll figure it out. Which was, which was a foretelling of what was going to happen over the next few years. And I, you know, I, I literally in those days I'm like, okay, I think this will pay the bills for six months till I figure out where I'm going to go.
- [03:18]
B
Right. What's next?
- [03:19]
C
And that was 20 years ago now. So. So I mean that is crazy to say 20 years. So.
- [03:26]
B
Right.
- [03:28]
C
Anyway, that's kind of the, that's kind of the high level story.
- [03:33]
B
The thing there's lots I love about you and love about Kristen, your wife and you guys do lots of amazing things. But one of the things I love is you're consistently passionate about not even next generation. It's like, well, I don't even sure what the best way to say that. It's like this gen people that are leading today, that has been a consistent drum beat for you. And I realized, so I was born in 1974, the bottom of the bust. I, you know, the lowest I am classic Gen X. I literally at that lowest, the lowest birth rate year of the 20th century. The Pill was just kicking in. Well, wide adoption do not have a lot of people in my cohort. And so I've spent a lot of my career either interacting with boomers and helping them, you know, do their thing. But now I realize I, you know, I clicked over one of those ages with a zero on it. And I realize I'm increasingly mutual friend of ours, Carrie Newhoff, we joked about this. I'm like, increasingly. We're the old guy in the room. Like increasingly. Look around and I'm like, oh, I know that guy. That's my, that's my role. I'd love to kind of dive in on, you know, Gen Z specifically today because, because you are a thought leader. You've got real things to say. Plus you, you have actual experience working with dozens of leading an organization that works with dozens of Gen Z leaders. What are we? What Are we getting wrong when it comes to leading Gen Z folks? What, what is the church? You know, you, you take the average church in America, we're not doing this right. What's the thing that we're not doing right on that front?
- [05:08]
C
Well, first of all, a big change for me in the last eight, we started eight years ago. We'll be eight years old this summer. And a big change for me is, is the realization that there's a lot of churches doing well. And by a lot, I mean I'm going to say hundreds. You know, I take a look at some of some associations that are going on around the country. I look at groups that help interns and residents raise money, see how many postings they have, and you just kind of total it all up and then add 50% to try to be positive. There are hundreds of churches doing well. Okay, that's good. That's good. Eight years ago, I, in fact, I was digging out some old documents that we done to pass to give to someone and I would say, I would have said eight years. We're only going to work with the best and the biggest and the most cutting edge. And you know, there are churches of 150 that have done. There are some of our favorite people. We've. So there are, there are great churches. It kind of, it kind of boils down to that. Senior pastor, are they, do, are they a developer? Do they, do they naturally. Not naturally. I don't use that word. Are they a developer? Have they grown in such a way that they see as part of their mission of doing this? And so whether they're a church of 60,000, 40,000 or 100, there are churches doing well. To answer your question, fundamentally, what are we getting wrong? I liken it to Mike Shealy in Indianapolis said in a masterclass that we do training, he said, I liken this generation. He's a youth pastor, veteran youth master. This generation is like an unreached people group. We don't, we don't conquer unreached people groups like we used to. The stories of right way Christians have done this right? Go in, we show up, make them sit in rows like Southern Baptist in Dallas in the jungle and teach them Sunday school curriculum last year. No, right? No. We go in, we sit with them, we learn their customs, we learn their language.
- [07:05]
B
That's good.
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C
We understand. We give them dignity, by the way. We give them little wins. We let them serve us as we're serving them right. And you can experience pieces of this. I'm not a mission missiologist a missions expert. But I've experienced pieces of this on old missions trips to Haiti where all the white people were on, you know, doing the work. And all the people that we should have hired, standing around the edge.
- [07:32]
B
Yes.
- [07:33]
C
Just totally taking their dignity from them. We don't do that anymore. No, we know better than that. If you can sit, if you can sit with this generation and learn their customs, learn their language, seek to understand would be a boomer way of saying that. Right? Then you're gonna have a shot. If the goal of an internship or residency is just to get the kids working, let's get them on our page like we would have done. Rich, I'm just a couple years ahead of you. There was this assumption you went to college no matter who was paying for it, you got that degree, you showed up in your. And then I don't think we, you and I might have said this, but we probably did not like our boss. But we were just waiting for them to move on so we can move on. I. This generation does not think like that. And Dr. Tim Elmore, Gen Z Unfiltered is like the. A book that has meant so much to us. He's a great friend and he talks about just the fundamental differences of the world they're coming from and how they view their bosses, how they view their coworkers. And it's not just church. So I think sometimes church people, we all think it's our fault or our. It's not. It's not just hop online and start reading up in, in Forbes and reading up in, in journals and things and business. It's not going well out there and it's not going well for the 35 year old middle managers. That's who's not. That's who not doing well. And in the church, that's who's not. That's who's struggling. My peers are the senior pastors who are beginning to think about legacy. You know, you're the oldest guy in the room now and yes, even though they've changed their glasses and they have cool shoes and the Baldwins, the Baldwins are the coolest because you can't. Is he 35 or 60? We can't tell. And maybe a little eye work done, but let's not get into that. The oldest guys in the room, they understand legacy. They understand. They're beginning to say, they're beginning to think things like you. And I think like if I sit still, who were the eight people from age 22 to 25 that just did they. They Meant everything to me. I still talk to a couple of them.
- [09:48]
B
Right.
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C
They're beginning to think about legacy. They're slowing down, getting their eyes on the horizon. All this. The 33 to 40 year old middle managers, the. And in church world, these are the next gen directors and the kids directors and pastors and worship.
- [10:02]
B
Yes.
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C
They are running hard, they are running fast. And now enter something new to their world, which is you must slow down, you must sit down, you must listen and talk. And you know, these people are, these people are amazing people who for 15 or 20 years have run at a pace and then people like us are saying, you got to sit down. And they're like, I don't have time to sit down and talk.
- [10:25]
B
Right.
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C
That's the long answer to what are we not doing? Well, it's, it's a systemic small business, right. Small business and even large churches are small businesses.
- [10:39]
B
Yes.
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C
I mean a church of 5,000 with 50 employees, that's a small business. They do not have systems and processes and they do not think like this. They think, get the job, hit the ground running. If you survive for three years, we'll advance you or something. And that's just not gonna work. It's not working period. It's not working anymore.
- [10:59]
B
Right.
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C
And it hasn't worked for a long. And we're just awakening to it. Right. Is that's what we're getting wrong. And so this book that's coming, this book that's coming, who's the next you like literally answering that question. And I was with an executive pastor this week. Like, hey, if your kid's pastor walked in and just quit, not in a mean way, but God called her to go do something amazing or her spouse was transferred. A lot of this is like very positive reasons. What would you do? And he's like, well, I'd hire one of the firms and we'd probably take a year.
- [11:35]
B
Yes.
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C
Like all of my friends, churches have taken a year and these job postings and then we would settle.
- [11:42]
B
Yeah, well, I was going to say that because that that's the real trend there. It's not just that it takes time. Like we go into all these, these hiring things and we have this like ideal scenario. We're gonna find this incredible person and we go an entire year and then really what we do is negotiate with ourselves at the end and we're like.
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C
Well these are some of my best friends in some of these groups. Right?
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B
Yeah.
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C
100 of that work and how many times the first handful of candidates.
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B
Yep.
- [12:12]
C
Pass on. Oh, there's gotta be something better. Nine months later, I'm literally.
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B
You're back at the same conversation.
- [12:18]
C
And I would call him a guy that worked for us for a while. He'd call it dumpster diving. You go dumpster diving and you're like, how about this one? We. We tossed this one away. It's so crude to think about people that way, but.
- [12:29]
B
Right.
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C
But now we're back and actually that was the best person we've looked at. Let's call them back and see if they're still available.
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B
Right.
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C
Of course, typically they weren't. They'd moved on. But so I would just, you know, this. This thing of going. It's just sort of a principle, isn't it? Like, you have to go a little slower so you can go faster and farther. And this shows up big time on this topic. It shows up in every area of our life. Right, right. People, you know, was it exponential? We're going to develop leaders like Jesus, like Paul did. I'm like, well, they walked everywhere, man.
- [13:07]
B
Yes.
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C
If you. If I'm like, hey, Rich, let's go hold a revival eight miles down the road. We'd get there tomorrow. You get there at 3 o'. Clock. We started walking. You would not need a therapist. You would not need a coach. You would not need.
- [13:18]
B
Right.
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C
Marital help. We would work it all out.
- [13:20]
B
Yes.
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C
Like to compare ourselves to that. Or Paul on these boats that took weeks to get where he was going. How many conversations could you have? You. We would be amazing leadership developers if we had. If we did not have any AI. Sorry, Kenny Zhang. If we had no modern tools, we would be amazing because we would be talking.
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B
Right. We'd slow down.
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C
And one thing we've discovered, you know, when a residence, there's always a quit moment or a get fired moment in the first six months. And when we start digging, we start picking at that. As coaches. Run towards the smoke is what Kristen tell her coaching.
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B
Love it.
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C
Run towards the smoke. Is it a barbecue or is the house on fire? We got to run over there and figure it out. Right.
- [14:03]
B
That's good.
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C
You know, we. And like, well, tell us about your one on ones. How have they been the last month? And you know, you start digging in, they've not been in the physical presence of their resident or their downline hire because of vacations and conferences and running fast and it's somewhere. So you're just like, okay. So to develop someone is not facetiming from the back of an Uber between airports or something.
- [14:30]
B
Yes. Or sending them A book and saying, you know, like, yeah.
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C
And I think of my own trends. I think of me age 25 to 33, thinking I was developing leaders. Right. Developing.
- [14:43]
B
Right.
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C
And it's just a different. It just doesn't work anymore. My intern, My intern, when I.
- [14:50]
B
Yes.
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C
She knew she had to sit there, Right. She had no options.
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B
She was compliant.
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C
This was probably. She thought this was as good as it was ever going to get. And it. I just think we're in a. We've got these amazing, highly leveraged, highly talented, smart, you know, all of these adjectives. We're trying to flip the script on all of this stuff, flip this change, changing the narrative on who this generation. They don't. The biggest, the biggest option is not doing it. It's not becoming an astronaut or a doctor. The biggest option is they'll just fall back on their 40, 000 Instagram followers and monetize that and do it. All of their friends, all of the go make. Go make three times as much money.
- [15:37]
B
Right through their twins and have more control and all that.
- [15:39]
C
More control in their weekends off. And they can do what they want. Anyway. Anyway.
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B
Yeah, it's interesting. So my daughter, she's been, you know, we've worked in and been led in, you know, great churches, large churches, and I would say healthy, thriving environments. And she's working for our city, which is, you know, is like exponentially larger organization our city than the largest churches we've worked for. And I've worked for, know, whatever three, four or five thousand person churches. And it's interesting watching her, the thing that she's loving is this development piece. It's the, you know, when she talks about it, she talks about her department head, who is two tiers up, coming down, sitting at the end of her desk, having a conversation at the end of the week reviewing, hey, what. How did this go? How did that go? Here's some stuff I would have done different if I was you. You know, it's that advocating for.
- [16:40]
C
Yeah.
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B
One of my. Let me test this hypothesis on you. I wonder if. Because in the church world, we're in the content business, like we make content. So and particularly our senior leaders, they think of the world through content. They think of the world through 35 minute, you know, talks. And so we think of, when we think of leadership development, we immediately go to 35 minute talks. What are the. I just need to put together a great talk and we'll get in front of people. But that's actually my experience is not, that's not what you're saying, you're not saying let's talk at them. It's, it's something deeper than that. Unpack that for me.
- [17:15]
C
Well, we would say there's seven ingredients. There's a chapter in the book seven ingredients. You can get it on our website right now. Seven ingredients of what we would say is leadership development. So what you're talking about, really a sermon, is training. If you think about it like in a, in a market sense. I'm going to talk at you for 35 minutes. There's four points. It's very good. It's inspired. It's like Ted, Ted long Ted talk every 52 times a year plus Christmas Eve and whatever. And I would just say we call that training. Churches for a long time have done really, really well with training, right? It's either it's the sermon or it's Sunday school. It's even the AI delivered. Small group questions I get from my men's group, right? Yes, it is. Staff. When I say, do you all do leadership development? Yeah, tell me about that. And they start talking about your book or Carrie's book or Craig Rochelle's book. It's a book of the month. It's a conversation even now. Now we've taken training and we're still delivering the content, but we're discussing it and we're filling in blanks, right. And we do this and, or spiritual formation. I had a well known keynote kind of person. We just need to disciple these kids and get out of their way. And I was like, oh, neat. Actually, we don't. We did that once. It's called the Jesus movement. I think that was the Jesus movement or the Jesus people in the early 70s, which kind of mirrors what's going on on college campuses. If you think about it. We don't need to just disciple them and get it. We got to go with them. So, so training, spiritual formation, soft skills, which is the pain point of all the bosses, the emotional lack of intelligence of things, Those would be the three core ones. And then we have to provide best practices. We have to, we have to provide ownership, which is a big thing for us in our small business, small church world. At the 12 month mark, when we're saying, well, she just doesn't get it. She doesn't. Oh, what doesn't she get? He just doesn't understand what we talk about, our downline people as if they're executive leaders with 20 years of experience. It would be totally fine for someone to accuse me of something like that. But like when we think of sports, we don't talk about individual players. We talk about the coaches. When the team's losing, whose fault is it? As a lifetime Cincinnati Reds fan, we change the manager. We don't talk about number 78 and 14.
- [19:48]
B
Right.
- [19:49]
C
When the team's doing amazing, it's about the player. He's killing it. She's killing it. He's killing. When the team is losing, we have to own it. Similarly, this is on us.
- [19:59]
B
Wow. Wow.
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C
Mental wellness. One of the seven things. Mental wellness. If you can't prove to me that, you know, I'm not. I'm not here giving you even a theological construct because we work with all sorts of churches that believe all sorts of things, right? But mental health, if you can't prove to me that you have a plan at least, or you've thought about it, that's gonna be a problem. We're checking in on it. And then finally, developmental conversations. This is not delivered only through training. To your point. Right, Right, Rich, if content was the key, I don't have to finish, we'd be fine.
- [20:38]
B
We'd be fine.
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C
From M divs at the finest seminaries in the world. Not just the country, but the world, all the way down to hack your way to being smart for free online. Right? Content is amazing. It's. What a world. What a world.
- [20:56]
B
Well, I know. I know that as a coach in the coaching that I do with churches, that the problem isn't the training. The problem isn't me coming up with great ideas. In fact, one of the things I've said with the clients I work with this year, because I had my own coach asked me that, they said, are you more interested in your clients results or them liking you? Which are you more interested in? And I was like, oh, no. And. And my coach was like, you've got to be way more interested in their results. You've got to lean in. And, And, And I. I can see this. I can out content my clients. I can out content the people I work with. And, And. But that doesn't mean that they'll necessarily make the changes that we're talking about. We've got to. I've got to actually slow down, ask the question, See them take a step. They won't. If they take the step, great. If they don't take the step, then I got a loop back around.
- [21:52]
C
Yeah.
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B
And say, hey, why did that. What happened there? Why didn't you do that? What did you do that, man, that's. That's convicting. So the thing I love, I had the honor of assuming you didn't delete it from the. Your process. I had the honor of writing the foreword for this book, which I just want to say thank you for, for letting me do that because I'm super passionate about this. I love this. The. The subtitle a call for 1,000 more churches to invest in Gen Z through residency. That is a giant thing to put on the front of your book. Tell me about that.
- [22:26]
C
Well, I. So when I first. We used to talk about the 3% of churches. So it depends on who you read and which piece of content you click on. But how many churches are there? 3% of them are, we would say, advancing. Right. Not just getting bigger, but advancing and, and all of all sizes. By the way, this church of 150 is definitely the one I'm thinking of in Atlanta. It's definitely advancing. It definitely is. There are more people who know Jesus this year. There are these marks that we all would talk about. So those. So 10,000 churches. 10,000 churches. So can we affect 10% of those churches? Can we affect a thousand?
- [23:09]
B
That's amazing. I love it.
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C
The other reason it's a thousand is I went to Bible college and I grew up in eastern Kentucky, so I can't really do complex math. So let's keep it simple. But that would be an amazing thing. Now, I will tell you, we're turning eight. We're turning eight. And it's taken us. We've worked with 150 at this point. So it's 80 years.
- [23:27]
B
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop this. I, you know what I'm gonna say. Did you hear yourself, Dave? Dave's like, well, gee, this is. I make fun of Dave all the time. I'm just a guy from eastern Kentucky. I don't really know. G. Shucks. We've only worked with 150 churches. We've only had however many residents. How many residents have you worked with?
- [23:50]
C
160 something at this point.
- [23:52]
B
Yeah. Which is amazing. I put that up against anybody's residency. Who, who else. Who out there has done this as much as you guys? You are the, the experts on this thing. And so, you know, I, I, well, I can't just let that float by.
- [24:06]
C
I can't let that float. Maybe, maybe your editor's like, should I cut this right now? I would also. Then on the other, I would be like, Kristen, who she's now got. She's onboarding coaches and handing work off. Right. But she does about 40amonth. She's been doing about 40amonth coaching.
- [24:22]
B
Wow.
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C
Sessions which you, anyone who's coached knows when the zoom turns off. There's the text tomorrow and the email. So it's not just 40 hours. Right. So. So 40 of these things a month. Which is if you, if you're at a great church with a couple of residents, that's, that's about what you'll do in a year.
- [24:42]
B
Right.
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C
So every month. So if you just think about it, my, my best AI is actually Kristen, when I want to know something. Because she's just sitting there, just curious.
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B
She's just in. Yes. In conversations. Yeah.
- [24:55]
C
In the conversation. So, so yeah, I would say she's the expert. She really is the expert. And it's not, it is forged through, you know, hitting potholes and then helping the next one. Not if, like a lot of, if you, if churches would just not make the same mistakes that we've made that we made. There was a resident who finished, he's the only one. He finished a two year residency and, and did not get hired. Said he wanted the job. I don't know. Right.
- [25:28]
B
Yes.
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C
And that was the last one that I coached that was like number nine out of 160 something.
- [25:36]
B
Right.
- [25:37]
C
He's the one. And so if we would just not make the same mistakes as. Just avoid, just avoid stupid tax. She says that over and over. Paige on our team says one size fits one. There's a lot in the book about recruiting. There's a lot of predicting success, which is still the hardest thing. She does all the candidate stuff. One size fits one. So when a church calls and says, hey, have you ever seen the senior pastor son be a good resident? Yes. The answer will always. We've seen most scenarios at this point.
- [26:10]
B
Right.
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C
But if you, if they ask, have you ever seen the senior pastor son be a complete disaster? As a. Yes, totally. Have you seen moving cross country? Gabby, one of our board members, she's now been full time three or four years at her church. She, she moved cross country, everything. She owned the trunk of her car. And I'm just like, this is crazy. She's going from Virginia to Denver and that same month we moved someone from Denver to Virginia. I'm like, this is so dumb. This is as bad as a headhunter.
- [26:39]
B
Yes.
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C
And. And she made it. She made it. She killed it in the middle of COVID All of this headwind and she just. Her origin story of growing up the way she just was. She'll be speaking at a master class with us in Denver next week. Success story. We've. Have you. Have we ever seen someone Move across the country and be lonely and completely implode. Yes. One size fits one every time. And so just, just at this point, as you know, in my work history, this is the first time I can say, yeah, I've been at this for eight years. The same job for eight years. I'm a big quitter. Like a lot of good consultants, I'm just a good quitter. And so I'm. We're living out of the abundance of that at this point I would say.
- [27:28]
B
Right.
- [27:29]
C
Will it grow and will it affect a thousand churches? I hope so, man. I pray, I pray that the Lord puts enough opportunities in front of us and we stay after it. But we're living the, the benefit of having now worked. We're having. We had our 1000th applicant in December.
- [27:47]
B
Wow, that's great.
- [27:49]
C
Amazing amount of talking and, and hearing people's stories and digging into why their enneagram plus their disc minus their whatever equals that. You know, the predictors of these things. We're living the abundance of that and a lot of that's in this book we took. This book is someone challenged us. Right when we. Well actually before we started. You gotta have a book. I'm so glad we didn't write some dumb book because we, it would have said completely different things. Right, right. Gen Z, don't Forget, is turning 28 this year.
- [28:21]
B
Right, right.
- [28:22]
C
So this, I think four or five years we've all, it's all. It has to change to alpha if we're gonna.
- [28:27]
B
Yes, yes. Yeah.
- [28:30]
C
So you know, we're, we're just living out of the abundance of that. We took our master class. That's what I was gonna say. We do these two day trainings. Deep dive. It's all day. I don't know how people sit there and do it, but they do. We took the nine sessions of that. We put it in a book, added a few things. So it really starts with what's a resident? Why should we do this? Takes you all the way into the deep weeds of legal things. HR concerns how to onboard and how to interview and how this is a little different than interviewing full time staff. First 90 days. First day. First 90 days. The one year thing, the six month. It's just a, from, from the beginning to the end. How do you launch them full time in the ministry? So that's what this book is. So, so people will say who should come to a masterclass? Well, if you're kicking the tires thinking about interns, you should definitely come. This one is going to be amazing. Just like the book, I would say, or if you. We've had people who've been at their thought leader, they, they truly are a thought leader and have been doing it at a local church for a decade.
- [29:37]
B
Right.
- [29:37]
C
And they leave this thing going. This has been so great. How do I get my other staff leaders right through this material though? Yeah, that's what this book is. So.
- [29:48]
B
Because you need, I would imagine, again, you're the expert on this, not me, but seeing this kind of operate in a number of churches, it's like, I would think you need like the subject matter expert internally. You need the person that's going to be the residency kind of flag bearer. Hey, we're going to run this thing. But then I also need everybody else to be on the same page to be like, no, these people aren't just free labor. No, these people aren't. You know, and this would be a great tool to kind of get everybody up to speed, you know, to kind of give a, an operating understanding of what we're trying to do.
- [30:22]
C
Totally. I mean a residency director, once they get more than two or three residents rolling right, they are dependent on half a dozen staff on their team to own this the way they own it. And right there it break. It's kind of like campuses. I forget you're the multi side. What number does the campus thing break? And you got to reinvent it. There's a way it works like one on one and then, and then the youth pastor at that campus or the worship leader or the production or guest service. I want one of those. You know, at some point we then hire a residency director who's now over the residency. They spend most of their time chasing staff around. It's kind of like, it's like an in house version of us. We're chasing them around, getting them to sit down, tell us what's going on. Trying to coach and handing this book, handing this book to someone on the team. Skim this. In fact, just skim Chapters three, seven and, and let's talk. You know, that could be an in house way of helping bring them up to speed. Each chapter has a little case study, a little victory story of a resident that went through something and almost quit or almost got fired. Yeah, yeah, they made good and now they're still on the team or they got hired up the street or back in their hometown or whatever. So I think I am hoping that the book is 30% inspiration, 70% instruction. There's some tools in it, tons of QR codes to resources. It's a Lot like that masterclass. It literally the first masterclass we did 18 months ago now, man, it was like our kitchen table was the war room for trying to, like. All right, what are we going to say?
- [32:08]
B
Yes, yes.
- [32:09]
C
It was so much work, and now we've done nine or 10 of them. It just. We just roll into town and it. It works, right? I think this book was similar. Like, of course. Okay, let's take. Let's take that content. How do we put this in a couple hundred pages that people will actually want to read, honestly. Hopefully people want to read it. Well, yes, we'll see.
- [32:31]
B
But no, they will for sure.
- [32:33]
C
Your mom will. Maybe your mom will get it.
- [32:35]
B
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So we want to. We could pick these up. Where can we pick these up? We want to go to your website, leadershippathway.org I'm assuming we can kind of find all the links there. Is there anywhere else we want to send people?
- [32:47]
C
You can go, definitely go to Amazon. If you go to our website, there's a big thing across the top of every page in an obnoxious color that you can definitely find the book that or Amazon and just search. Who's the next you? I think it's the only book with that title, which is helpful.
- [33:04]
B
Yeah, that is interesting. That's. As an author, that's actually hard to do.
- [33:07]
C
I have a good friend who just released a book, his story, and when you search it on Amazon, be careful what you click on because we got none of those problems. So it's out there.
- [33:21]
B
Great. Well, friends, I would strongly encourage you. Like I am biased. This is not like a, like, oh, I'm the sober second voice. I don't really care. I. I do on this one. I. I really think you should pick up Dave and Kristen's book. Dave's okay. Kristen's even better. You know, you're going to love this. It's. Who's the next you? A call for 1,000 more churches to invest in Gen Z through residency. This is. It's a fantastic resource. I think it'll be super helpful. Even if you're just on the fringes of thinking about residency. You know, the reality of it is, I think for so many of us, particularly, I'm thinking about executive leaders, executive pastors that are. That are listening in. You know, you get to any size and you are constantly dogged by your staff saying, I need to hire, I need to hire, I need to hire. And the reality of it is, man, what if we got up on top of that and said, what if we built a system for building young leaders that sure is not going to deliver somebody today, but two years from now, it's going to deliver some people. Two years after that, two years after that, two years after that, we're just going to keep finding, you know, and cultivating next gen leaders. I really do think that this could be super helpful for you. Well, Dave, appreciate you. Where. Where do we want to send people online to track with you Any other kind of final words as we wrap up today's episode?
- [34:31]
C
Oh, they just go to the website leadershippathway.org all they'll find all the stuff there would be the best.
- [34:37]
B
Great.
- [34:37]
C
Yeah.
- [34:38]
B
Thanks so much, Dave.
- [34:39]
C
You're such an encouragement. You're such an encouragement. Just like if we could just put all of that in a battery, you know, it'd probably be the last battery we would have to buy. And it was, you know what we call it? We'd call it hey friends, battery power the world.
- [34:55]
B
You're not the only person that's made fun of me for saying, hey friends. I really mean it. I know, right?
- [35:00]
C
You do actually mean it. I'm like, have you seen rich dude do? That's actually if you meet him in the hall or you sit down with him and have lunch, he actually is like that.
- [35:08]
B
That's funny. All right, well, thanks so much, Dave.
- [35:10]
C
Appreciate you.
- [35:11]
B
Take care.
- [35:12]
A
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Unseminary podcast. If you found today's conversation helpful, I'd share it with a friend. In ministry. It's a simple way to spark new ideas and grow together. Also, don't Forget to visit unseminary.com to sign up for our email list. You'll get exclusive resources and practical tools delivered straight to your inbox to help you lead your church more effectively. Most importantly, take what you learned today and put it into action this week. Ministry impact starts with small, intentional steps. See you next time.