Thoughts on placing younger pastors

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about young pastors in their twenties—these leaders are in what demographers call the “Millennial generation“.

This is the “baby-on-board” generation that has been frantically hauled around to various activities all their short lives. They are used to being busy, and they are used to being on teams. Tball; soccer; football; basketball; cheer; academic competition teams; band…there has been no shortage of group involvement in their world.

This provides me with a couple of observations about potential pathways to motivate this generation into ministry (or if you are in this generation, how to motivate your friends):

First, we can be thinking teams, not just individuals.

In the past when there was a ministry opening, we would go after the gifted, qualified, and high capacity leader/pastor who might be able to do a great job. Though we would have set up some kind of support system, in many ways, in the day-to-day process, they were on their own. It’s the way I stepped into a lot of ministry: Sink or swim!

So it may be difficult for older generations (including mine) to understand that this doesn’t work as well now. If there is a pastoral ministry opportunity, it may be effective to look for  a young leader or two and find out if they have a group of friends who might be interested in taking it on together to collaboratively lead. There still needs to be a point person (and they are used to having team captains), but they find energy and creativity in close community, and this partnership and alliance of various gift-mixes may be a way to re-energize a failing or new ministry.

Second, we need to make sure these team have coaches. I’m not talking about heavy-handed micromanagers, but elders who can come alongside and provide guidance, prayer, encouragement, and care to those teams that are getting after it.

Some in the older generations might have hated this kind of coach; they just wanted to be pointed in the right direction, released, and then left alone. But those in the younger generation may feel abandoned if they are just given an assignment and then left to fend for themselves. They are hoping for a mentor—a spiritual father or mother or grandfather or grandmother—to come alongside of them while they are fulfilling their ministry calling.

So if I were trying to fill a pastoral opening (lead pastor, youth pastor, kids pastor…whatever) with a young twenty-something from outside of that church, I may consider finding a point person and encouraging them to build a small team who would commit to one-to-two years of helping pastor that congregation or ministry. The team may not all stay, but having partnership may help a young leader make it through those first couple of critical years (and it better equips those team members for future ministry, too). And I would try hard to set up a structure to ensure there were at least a couple of elders who would lovingly be there for that team and ensure a pattern of authentic mentoring and coaching during that two year period.This way, I could contextualize the ministry task to the specific cultural realities of the Millennial Generation.

Question: If you are a Millennial, how does that suggestion sound? If you are older and are trying to fill ministry assignments, would you be interested in experimenting with this idea? What are some issues I may have missed here?