Innovative Focus: Training Leaders Over the past several months I have coined a term that seems to have resonated well with people, as I have shared about the state of the Church in America. I call it: The Missing Middle. This “missing middle” is really just a way of expressing the observation that the Church in America today is missing strong lay leadership. Specifically, most churches have one or more formally-trained, professional ministers. Many of them have been through 7 years of Biblical and Ministry training, including the study of original biblical languages. Contrast that with the training and education that most small group leaders, key volunteers, elders, and lay leaders receive outside of regular Sunday church attendance. In my experience, the training of this group of lay leaders typically doesn’t amount to much more than a few hours a year. The lack of well trained lay leaders is highly problematic because they typically, by necessity, fulfill the role of frontline shepherds. This is because of the often unreasonable expectations placed upon church pastors, including sermon prep, outreach, and church leadership, which leaves them little time to truly shepherd their congregations, especially when considering the ratio is usually significantly higher than 50+ congregants/pastor. The only reasonable and biblical way to combat this problem, which leaves pastors burned out and congregants under-cared for, is through a strong middle layer of well-trained, non-vocational leaders. There is an overwhelming need to build back the ranks of this missing middle within the American Church. To help address this, I have been working on several projects, but the one highlighted here is a free Ministry Leader Training Framework. The goal of this is simply to help ministry leaders think through how to build back an army of well trained lay leaders, for the health and vitality of all! You can learn more by clicking the button below.
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