Most pastors know the feeling: there's only one of you, and Sunday's always coming. That's a real constraint, not an excuse. It's also shortsighted to think you'll just do the ministry yourself, because that's how a leader stays stuck in a rut for good. The alternative costs something up front. It also multiplies a ministry far beyond what any one person could carry alone.
Leadership Development Is Bigger Than Staffing
Leadership development often gets reduced to training future staff members. A better, more biblical definition is broader: identifying, equipping, and deploying people into spiritual service or spiritual leadership. That definition covers a greeter as much as it covers a future pastor. It's also not far from what every church is already called to in the Great Commission. Multiplying disciples means winning people to Christ and investing in them so they can invest in others. Leadership development is the same instinct pointed at ministry: invest in people so they can invest in others.
Every Staff Member Is in the People-Development Business
Ephesians 4:11-12 says God gave the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, not to do the work of the ministry themselves, but "to equip the saints for the work of ministry" (Ephesians 4:12). Whatever a person's role on staff, that verse puts them in the people-development business. That's true even for ministry areas that don't look like people development on the surface. Worship, students, missions, and children's ministry are all people development work. The context just changes.
Five Things to Look for Before You Ask Someone to Lead
Before anyone steps into a leadership role, it's worth watching for five things, a framework drawn largely from Mack Lake's book, The Multiplication Effect:
Character. None of us is perfect, but Scripture holds leaders to a higher standard, and character comes first.
Competencies. Does this person have the basic skills for the role, or at least the raw material to develop?
Commitment. Are they willing to actually do what the role requires, week in and week out?
Calling. It's tempting to skip this question when a church is desperate for warm bodies. Ask it anyway. It saves headaches later.
Culture. Do they fit how your church actually does things?
The Filling-Holes Trap
The most common mistake churches make is what might be called the filling-holes problem. A third-grade teacher moves away, a hole opens up, and the instinct is to grab whoever's available to fill it. The better approach is to always be developing the next leader before you need one. A simple habit helps: regularly ask current leaders who in their group has the character, competencies, and commitment to lead next. Staying ahead of that curve means never scrambling. Skip it, and a church ends up in constant survival mode, always one departure away from an emergency.
Give Away What You Love Doing
Leadership development isn't primarily about delegation. It starts with modeling the work and staying hands-on. But it doesn't stop there. Eventually, it means giving away even the parts of ministry a leader genuinely enjoys, the things they're good at and hesitant to hand off because they're not sure anyone else will do it the same way. That fear is usually misplaced. Leaders who let go often find the people they've raised up outperform them in that area. Letting go of that control isn't a loss. It's where a leader finds a different kind of fulfillment, watching someone else use a gift they don't have.
What Ten Residency Cohorts Taught Brentwood Baptist
Brentwood Baptist's ministry residency, a program for bivocational and full-time residents, mostly young adults, has now run for 10 cohorts, giving residents two years of hands-on experience in the church. The first four cohorts ran for a single year, and the timing didn't work. Residents landed at a ministry site in November, barely got their feet wet before Christmas, and by January were already thinking about what came after an August graduation. Supervisors, meanwhile, hesitated to hand over real ownership to someone who'd be gone within months.
The fix wasn't more upfront teaching. It was a longer on-ramp to actual, hands-on ministry. With two years instead of one, residents now have enough runway to genuinely own a ministry area, whether that's student ministry, worship, or pastoral care, and their confidence has grown accordingly.
For any church considering a residency of its own, three questions narrow the decision down to what matters: what do you want them to know, who do you want them to be, and what do you want them to do. Answer those honestly, and the length of a program becomes a detail, not a guessing game.
Developing leaders takes time and intentionality, but investing in people is one of the greatest ways a church can invest in its own future. Church leaders looking to grow further in this area can learn more about the Elevate Church Conference, September 21-22, 2026, at Brentwood Baptist, and register at elevatechurchconference.com.