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Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This January we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re joined by Dave Miller, co-founder of Leadership Pathway, and are talking about how the next generation will matter more.

Are you curious about how your church can effectively engage and empower the next generation of leaders? Tune in to learn how your church can benefit from a residency program and how to set young leaders up for success for the health and growth of the church.

• Empowering Gen Z. // The success of young leaders depends not on their education or even their passion for Christ, but rather on the quality of coaching they receive from their supervisors. Strong mentorship and intentional development are pivotal in helping these leaders thrive in their roles. Unfortunately, many churches struggle to provide this support due to full schedules and generational disconnects among staff.
• Age of authority. // Gen Z is more self-reliant, skilled, and innovative, with access to tools and platforms that were unavailable to previous generations. These leaders are reshaping the dynamics of leadership by seeking opportunities that align with their unique talents and ambitions. For example, Dave recalls a young leader who considered social media monetization a viable alternative to being a youth pastor, reflecting a broader trend of independence and resourcefulness.
• Listen to young leaders. // Churches need to rethink their strategies for engaging young leaders. Start with simple, meaningful conversations to understand their ideas, values, and motivations. Invite them to participate in strategic decision-making or leadership discussions to foster a sense of ownership and make them feel valued.
• Create a customized residency. // Leadership Pathway’s residency programs address the challenges churches face by providing structured mentorship for young leaders. The two-year program is customized to fit the unique needs of each church, whether they are launching new campuses, planning for succession, or addressing internal growth challenges. These residencies go beyond internships by emphasizing coaching and practical experience, with the goal of producing highly desired, hireable leaders by the program’s end. Leadership Pathway also equips supervisors with coaching skills so they can effectively mentor their residents.
• Build a leadership pipeline now. // Church leaders constantly face the need to replace team members. Many leaders get caught in a cycle of reactive hiring rather than proactively building a pipeline of future leaders. Start the conversation about developing a residency program now, even if you don’t have an urgent need at the moment. Even a basic landing page on your church website can serve as a starting point for attracting potential residents.

Visit leadershippathway.org to start a conversation about what residency could look like at your church. Plus download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode here.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you decided to tune in here early 2025. We are in the midst of this Un… these Unpredictions episodes. Super excited for these conversations. Today we’re we’re all month long. We’re focusing on these ideas that all of us, really they’re Unpredictions. These were true last year. They’re going to be true next year. We need you to focus on these things. And today we’re talking about the next generation will matter more. That was true last year. It’s even more true this year. The the you know the with lower church attendance rates among millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, it’s critical for us to engage and empower this next generation.

Rich Birch — We want to be focusing our efforts we should be focusing our efforts on uh really bringing this group into leadership bring them as a part of our um our leadership circles, and today I couldn’t think of anybody better than my friend Dave Miller to be a part of this. He runs an organization called Leadership Pathway. They offer a two-year residency program for future church leaders, as well as training, coaching, and consulting services. They match future leaders to the right church and find the ah that find the best team fit.

Rich Birch — Dave Miller has served as a worship and creative arts pastor at churches in Las Vegas, Central Kentucky, and Western Michigan. He’s also spent the last 15 years on the go helping churches at a variety of topics from strategy, technology, facility, redesign. He’s super passionate. He’s a good friend. Dave, so glad you’re on the show today.

Dave Miller — It is great to be here. And when I’m on your podcast, two things happen. One is you pray for us before you hit record. I’m on a lot of podcasts. You’re the only person that does that. Secondly, I just want to talk faster, faster, faster, faster. And I wonder where do you get this content that you read after you hit record? Because half is any of that true, I don’t know, but I appreciate it. And I’m happy to be here talking to you about this topic.

Rich Birch — Well, yeah, Dave, ah Dave’s a friend, ah is a great leader. You should follow Dave and everything Leadership Pathway does, but I just.

Dave Miller — Not a great leader. Why do you say that? Cause listen…

Rich Birch — Stop, stop. I’m cutting you off this and but behind your back to mutual friends, whenever we talk about you, one of my standard go-to lines is I’m like, you know, Dave does this thing where he’s like, I’m just a good old boy from Kentucky. I I don’t know. What do I know? But then when you lean in, you’re like, This guy has got he’s got so much to say on this, you know, on so many things. He’s a he’s a great leader. And so I’m I’m excited to have you on.

Rich Birch — Fill in the picture. Tell us a little bit. You readjust our writing on Leadership Pathway and on you. Tell us the story.

Dave Miller — Well, Leadership Pathway started with some friends. And like a lot of things that start, I, in my arrogance, I was like, well, surely by year five, Vanderbloemen or Slingshot will buy this, right? And I’ll get out of it and run. I want to go work for a cycling shop or something. And, uh, you know, and it started with surely they’ll buy it to surely they’ll take it off my, to like, what what would it cost for me to get out of it? So leaders, we’re crying. People say to me, man, you guys are killing it. Well, I think we’re trying. I think we’re reaping, for those people out there today, and there’s a lot of them starting something, I’m reaping the benefit of being able to say, we just celebrated our seventh year in ministry.

Rich Birch — Amazing. That’s amazing.

Dave Miller — …trying to make it work. We are now, I think our team, it’s not me, it’s the smart people on the other side of the wall, we’re at the point where now that we’ve launched 150 of these, man, the first 40 were rough. And mainly because it was me and a buddy trying to do it. And then we were able to add in some expertise and some smart people with grit and determination and a different thinking genius than the rest of us. And so the last hundred and so have been have gone much, much better and we are trying.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Dave Miller — So anybody out there starting something, launching something in my church or anything, you know this idea of getting beyond year four, so you can now start looking a little longer game, it makes me excited for the next decade. And I have never thought that very much in about 20 years.

Rich Birch — Amazing.

Dave Miller — I’m excited for the next 10 years to see where this is going. I mean, when you talk about something that has been true forever, right? This what we’re gonna talk about today has been true for 2,000 years.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — Paul said to Timothy, try it like this. Do it, like I was reading Titus this morning.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Dave Miller — He’s like, try do this, Titus. And you know in 2,000 years from now, all of the theorists have their ideas of what the church is gonna be. Is it underground, or is it only Life Church? Craig cloned them and it’s little Craig Groeshel’s and we’re all singing Elevation songs. There’s only three songs left. Rich, we’re singing that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dave Miller — Who knows what it or it’s underground, right? It’s underground, um it’s subversive.

Rich Birch — Right, right. Right.

Dave Miller — We’re but in 2000 years, we will need an older leader. And by old, I mean 33, telling the younger leader. Do it like this, try it like this, avoid this, avoid this pothole. That’s all we’re doing. We’re bringing intentionality to what most of us benefited from, but we’ve lost the handle on for sure. It is getting getting harder and harder. And at the summation of it, we have a we have the most dynamic, talented, express… I mean, this generation is amazing.

Rich Birch — For sure. Yeah.

Dave Miller — We don’t know what to do with them. We don’t, and it’s in athletics. It’s in big business and it’s in the church and small business and startups. We don’t know what to do. And we can go back years and take a lesson for sure.

Rich Birch — So much there. Yeah, I love it.

Rich Birch — So this is why you can tell already, friends, why I love to have Dave here. Now, this is again, you just rolled right over it. Like you offer residency, you coach. And like, I know lots of churches and organizations that celebrate, like we just had our fourth resident and you just rolled over.

Rich Birch — Hey, we’ve done this 150 times. That’s incredible.

Dave Miller — We’ve onboarded, these numbers aren’t big, right? It’s another thing about starting stuff. I am the worst at this. I don’t want to talk about how small it is, right? Last year, we onboarded 10 residents.

Dave Miller — The year before that, we onboarded 11. This year, we’ve onboarded 29.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — We don’t know why, by the way, which is a problem. So I always, I’m telling people, I tell other people like coach, you got to know why you lose, but you really got to know why you’re winning. So you can repeat that. My team is sick of me drilling. Somebody asked me this week, is this baseball? Like how many stats do you want of the common that are making this thing roll? So I don’t know. I would just say we’re going with it.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Dave Miller — We’re going with it in more and more churches. And our assumptions, ah some I actually some, it’d be my, I wouldn’t say our. My assumptions a decade ago on this topic, before long before Leadership Pathway was a thing. I think I have shed a few of those in the last couple of years, last year for sure.

Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, so bring us up to speed. Like you’re in the thing I love about what you you do is you have your pulse on both churches that are trying to wrestle with this issue. They’re coming to you. They’re saying, hey, we’re trying to figure out how to create some sort of structure where we can have younger leaders be in the mix and coach them well and all that. But then you also have a connection to young leaders who are who are in that those circles and trying to make that happen. So so we can save everybody who’s listening, pull back the, what are the two or three kind of latest ideas that you’re seeing in working with churches or with young leaders as they’re trying to, you know, as churches particularly are trying to create space for young leaders. What are the couple of things that come to top of mind for you?

Dave Miller — Okay, number one, I heard this about 10 months ago. Kristin, who does leads all of our coaches. She’s the frontline of ah helping leaders. She does about 40 a month. It’s unbelievable.

Rich Birch — Amazing, amazing.

Dave Miller — Her grit just stays on Zoom talking to pastors. She said, your resident’s success is going to rise or fall with their supervisor’s ability to coach them, period.

Rich Birch — Yep, that’s good.

Dave Miller — It’s not hinged on level of education. It’s not even hinged on do they love Jesus. Now, people will call me a heretic, right? Where we’ve got some baseline things like, of course, we assume about Christ and his role in our lives and who we are as believers and all those things. But for a couple thousand years, we’ve been wired up to do education and spiritual formation in churches, right? It starts with a sermon. And there’s a Wednesday night or Thursday night thing with the kids. And then in kids ministry on Sunday morning, there’s lessons. And then we’re circling them up groups one on one, whatever it is at your church. We’re forming our spiritual life. And so why are we in this? Why are we in the spot that we’re in, right? It’s that along the way we have like good. Gosh, if I just spoke at the highest level, I just think we hire amazing people at these churches. These people we work with are amazing.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — What do amazing people do? A lot of stuff. They cram 60 hours of work into their 46 hour calendar.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — They are running at such a pace, they’re killing… this is my own story through my 20s and 30s, killing it.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Dave Miller — Probably it might, at least I don’t want to project this, but in my story, workaholism and [inaudible] got me great promotions and pats on the back through my 20s.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — I will tell you.

Rich Birch — But didn’t necessarily make you a good coach. Is that, is that what you’re saying?

Dave Miller — Don’t call people who work for me in those days. There are a few interns who are still in the ministry. And I can tell the story of how I’m proud of that. I can also tell the story of how, probably how they developed, they just kept up. You know, it’s not because I woke up on Wednesday going, what am I going to do to strategically invest in the next generation?

Dave Miller — And more and more when we hear when we hear kids these days, you know?

Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.

Dave Miller — It’s not 50-year-olds saying that. It’s 35-year-olds who are a little, they’re a little, ah the nice word would be angered. They’re a little bit triggered that this 20-year-old twenty is not going to have to go through, they believe, the same hoops and walk uphill both ways to to get the approval. And nobody did that for me. You know, we hear that a lot. And we’re like, well, you came to the school of hard knocks, right? For every one of you…

Rich Birch — Right. We don’t want to pass that on. Yeah.

Dave Miller — No. We don’t.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Dave Miller — Anyways.

Dave Miller — Oh, 2000, you know, your, for, for, and this is louder and louder and louder. That person’s success is will rise and will crash on your supervisor’s ability to coach them, not instruct them or teach them or pray with them. Its discipleship is in there, but it’s it it’s bigger than that, man. It’s bigger than that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so so if I’m a church leader today, I’m listening in and I’m like, hey, there aren’t enough young leaders around the table. Like I I was saying to this to you earlier, like one of the things that has struck me with this last year, just the way my stuff has evolved, I’ve ended up at some of the leadership tables of some name brand churches. Insert name brand church that you people who are listening would know. And the thing that has struck me is, man, those the people around those tables are in their 20s and early 30s. The people that are actually running these organizations, they’re very young leaders. Now, I might be listening in, I’m i’m a i’m a leader at a church and I look around and I’m like, that’s just not what’s happening here. What I hear you saying is it could be our issue. We’re just not coaching them well. We’re not, we’re, we’re not… what would be some of those telltale signs of a leader that is coaching next generation leaders well? They’re, they’re, you know, they’re leaning in, they’re doing this. I know there’s a ton that we could talk about there, but what would be some of those, those things?

Dave Miller — I would say number one is their boss, where where it really takes root well, is their boss has an expectation on them. So your your youth group grew by 30% and you baptized a bunch of kids, and you but your intern quit, and your resident has decided suddenly they’d rather be an astronaut than be the next you, right?

Dave Miller — You’re not doing it. It shows up on whatever it is, the scorecard, of the KPI. I’m going to evaluate you on how you’re doing in this area. So where it really takes root, in other words, if there’s more than four people on the team. So we’re, I’m not talking about churches of 15,000. I’m saying 500, 300…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Miller — …some of our favorite places are some of these small places.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Dave Miller — Their boss has an expectation, which would imply somehow they have carved out time. Every church talks for a year about what they’re going to spend per resident, and they’re going to spend about 20 grand. It’s not very much money.

By the sixth month, no church is talking about the money. They’re all talking about once we begin…

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Dave Miller — …leaders go, wow, this is, I’m talking to them again. I’m developing, I’m getting, well, when we say a feedback loop, when we say a developmental conversation, once you dig into those conversations, what does that create? More conversation, more conversation.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — So how can we carve out time? When these things go sideways, we’ve learned, you know, this might be the second one. We’ve learned when they go sideways, it’s really not on whereas the young resident. That’s another thing I heard from one of one of our people in a room with someone raising their hand, Q and A.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Dave Miller — So what’s the number one reason why when these things go sideways, what’s happening? It’s not the curriculum. It’s not the level of education. It’s not that we all love Jesus. And some of these people get up early and pray more than you and I combined, Rich. They know the word.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Dave Miller — It’s they haven’t had a conversation with their intern for a month.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — Where I’m like, what? She did what she hadn’t said. Yeah, the last one on one, she was on FaceTime heading to the airport, calling it…

Rich Birch — Yeah, right.

Dave Miller — …calling it a development. No, all you’re doing, all you’re doing at that point is just you’re trying to get more out of them than you’re putting in.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — We’ve learned for 2000 years, that doesn’t work.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — It really doesn’t. The thing that’s different today. This generation is smarter. Dr. Tim Elmore, Gen Z Unfiltered. It is the Bible around here. Dr. Tim Elmore, Gen Z Unfiltered. He’s sort of our go-to and he worked for John Maxwell and he lives in Atlanta, you know, not far from. And these amazing churches have been doing this. Now he talks about the the age of authority is lower than ever.

Dave Miller — Here’s how I see this. I’m a huge baseball fan. Rookies come up to Major League Baseball—look it up—younger and younger, what happens? They root for each other. In the 70s, I’m unfortunately a Big Red machine, Cincinnati Reds fan. I was a child. I studied that team.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Dave Miller — They went all the way.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Dave Miller — They would haze each other. It was a miserable experience to be a young baseball player. And Young was 24, 28. These guys today were 18, 19, 20 years old. They’re rooting for each other. There’s no hazing anymore. The age of authority has dropped.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Dave Miller — They’re they show up. They’re smarter than me.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — They’re better than me. They understand they use language that I don’t understand. They get things. They’re watching television. I’m still using Cheers and Friends in my sermons as illustrations. They’re talking about platforms that I don’t even know exist, right?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — That’s what’s going on.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — It’s frustrating. So for the first time ever, my generation, your, we looked at our bosses and thought we maybe not could have verbalized this, but our parents, or our grandparents, they showed up to the institutions and they saluted because the… We showed up and we kind of rolled our eyes, but we knew we had to put up with our boss.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — This generation, they’re wondering, why do I need a boss?

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — You know, seven out of 10, they’re already monetizing their social media [inaudible]. Kristen was at a thing in Nashville put on by Think last week about the next…

Rich Birch — Yep, yep.

Dave Miller — She met a young leader and he’s he literally said to her, Well, if I don’t get a youth ministry job, I do have 140,000 Instagram followers. I’ll just I’ll fall back on that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — And I think five years ago, she might have stiffened up and been insulted and wanted to reach out and discipline that kid like it was one of her own. Today, she’s like, yeah, he’s right.

Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, let’s do his own thing.

Dave Miller — He’s right. How are we going to get him to show up at a church and go to staff meetings and sit through things where people 20 years older than him, 10 years old. When I was his age, my boss was super old, Gene Appel, and he was a decade older than me. Think about that.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — I was 25, he was super old, 35.

Rich Birch — Yes. He was. Yes, yes.

Dave Miller — Not a 22 year old, their boss is 40, sometimes older, and the bosses are like, what’s wrong with these kids? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the kids.

Rich Birch — Nothing wrong with the kids. It’s you. Interesting.

Dave Miller — Yeah. I mean, Forbes this month, Forbes go just look up Gen Z getting fired. I mean, and I’m assuming Forbes is talking to major employers, right?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — Like large places with really smart ah HR departments with developmental plans. 75% of the Gen Z hires in the last year, they’re dissatisfied with. They believe are unprepared. Six out of 10, 60% of these employers admit firing a Gen Z already.

Dave Miller — I mean, where they just graduated in May, or the May before, already fired.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Dave Miller — Now, I would just say any stat you read like that, I don’t know how much of it’s made up or I don’t know…

Rich Birch — Right. 62% of stats are made up.

Dave Miller — So yeah, and I would say our stats are worse because every church, the small business outside of the top, you know, 20 or 30 in America.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — We’re all small business and small business is harder. It is hard. Small business, we don’t have three HR people to help us with this stuff.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — It’s on us to get it done.

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good. That’s super clear. I get that. um Again, you’re I know you’re blowing some people’s minds today, which is super helpful. Glad that you’re, you know, on the call. So the first, this whole idea of like, okay, if, you know, the residents that aren’t working out um or if, you know, put it the other way around, the residents that are working out, they’re working out because their boss are coaching them. They’re they’re leaning in on that conversation. So the corollary of that is, hey, if you’re looking around and things are not working out with next generation leaders, we need to be looking in internally at ourselves.

Rich Birch — What other, you know, on this whole area of saying, let’s say I’m a church again, 500 people, and I’m like, okay, I want to create a bigger table. I saw Rich post on this last year and we haven’t done anything on trying to get young leaders around. What would be some practical steps that you would think to try to create that, that early momentum to try to make some space for some, you know, next generation leaders?

Dave Miller — Well, if you could find them, if you can find people younger than 25, college kids. I don’t know how you find, I mean, in a lot of, in a normal church, they, uh, it’s like rare white tigers. I mean, there aren’t very many.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — But if you can get them around the table and just engage, just talk.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — What do you listen to?

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — What are you reading? What do you believe? What do you believe? How, why are you showing up here? You know, my church is not the hippest. We’re up here in Tacoma, Washington, outside of Seattle. There aren’t, there’s not a prevailing church. There are in Seattle, but you know it’s geographic and you gotta get there, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — But but I would say our church is not the hippest place in the world, but there’s a few 20 something year olds. They struggle, they struggle. When you actually engage them, they struggle because they they they have all sorts of ideas, they know how the world works. They have friends that they would never invite to this thing. Never. We still think about, and and you do a great job at this, creating an invite culture whether it’s Sunday morning or in anywhere any at any place in this organization…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Dave Miller — …are we inviting friends?

Dave Miller — And they’re struggling to do that. They have ideas, but what I think they’re hearing is ah, you know, take the trash out. We’ll let you will let you do this piece of it. We just forget.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — We just forget. I mean I think of back in my 20s, there was the super old 35 year old. There was one guy that was like probably 50.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — I think of being like 90.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Dave Miller — He probably, he did the hospitals. You know, we all love these people.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Dave Miller — There are the people when it’s hitting the fan, I’m going in his office, closing the door, having long conversations cause he has time for me.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes.

Dave Miller — And the rest of it, there were 12 people around the table and the rest of us, I don’t think there was a 30 year old.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — But we were all 22 to 26 leading this big church in a big thing, kind of a leading tip of the spear sort of existence in that era.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Dave Miller — None of us were thinking we don’t know what we’re doing.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Dave Miller — We’re just clueless, we’re just getting up thinking well of course we can do this. How much more times 100 this generation but actually was smart.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Dave Miller — Man, they are smarter than ever. I was sensing this, yeah gosh, 12 years ago, I was running for a small college. These kids, they’d show up already more talented than the grads going out of there.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — They could speak, they could sing, they could write songs, they knew technology. They also um, you know, maybe they were immature as ever, but they understood what their Enneagram was and their Strength Finders. They were well aware of things that I probably didn’t even get into until my mid to late thirties.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — They’re already there. Now I’m watching them as super old 30 year olds.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — And they’re doing things like leading some of the name brand church production areas or the ones that have continued to walk…

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

Dave Miller — …they are in some chairs influencing things at the highest level. That’s who we’re dealing with.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — Why would I say in that person’s way?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — We’re afraid, we’re afraid.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Dave Miller — Here’s the number three, who’s caused more harm to the cause of Christ? Name one that’s younger than 30.

Rich Birch — Oh gosh. Oh my goodness. That is a…

Dave Miller — Dude, the public tanks that have taken us down are guys like us, 50, 50-year-old.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s true. Yep.

Dave Miller — I mean, like four in one month in Dallas or something this past summer.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — The though though one in a couple in Chicago, right? One up in Seattle.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Dave Miller — It’s a bunch of white guys that are in their 50s and 60s.

Rich Birch — Yep. Right.

Dave Miller — It’s not the 23-year-old.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — The ones I meet that are doing stuff, man, they’re amazing. So…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Dave Miller — Why would we?

Rich Birch — No, that’s a good insight. That’s a good insight. And and I think, you know, we we have to figure out, you know, I would put myself in this camp for sure. I was I was born in 1974, do the math friends, the lowest birthright year of the 20th century. And so I am classic Gen X. Literally, I am like middle of the, I am like right down the center Gen X. every All that stuff about Gen X is me. And you know we I’ve spent a lot of my time you know trying to take stuff from the Boomers and give it to the next generation, but we’ve got to accelerate that. We’ve got to figure out, okay, we we can’t we can’t wait. You know, we can’t just keep kind of wondering about these issues. We’ve got to keep you know taking some steps on this. Why don’t we talk ah specifically about Leadership Pathway? Talk to me about, I’m not sure why my dog is barking at me. It’s the you know…

Dave Miller — You’re such a pro.

Rich Birch — …Grizzly, the ah the podcasting dog dog. The yeah it’s my That’s my 20-something daughters dog who’s at our house today. So ah very appropriate. That’s why she’s that’s why he’s barking at us, I’m sure.

Dave Miller — It’s very authentic unSeminary.

Rich Birch — Anyway anyways, yeah, very authentic, very, yeah. So Leadership Pathway, talk to us about what you actually do. We’ve kind of danced around a little bit. What what is the, how do you help churches with this issue? I’m sure there’s people that are, man, gosh, I got to figure out how to get young leaders around me. How do you help, you know, from that perspective, from the church’s side, say, we got to, we got to fix this this year. We’re not, we want to leave this year with more young leaders engaged in the conversation, leading in our church. What does Leadership Pathway do?

Dave Miller — We convince them to start. That’s what we do. And we call it residency because we know what an intern is.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Dave Miller — People are like, this is a residency? What, is there a master’s involved? If you want there to be, there’s a master’s involved.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — We work with churches offering masters and MDivs and full on accredited courses in their building or online or just paying for whatever level of education they want to pay for with these residents. But a residency is a two-year process of coaching by which they are landed, we would say, highly desired and hireable at the end of that.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

Dave Miller — It’s a conversation. It really is. It is a coaching um platform. I was talking to one of those large, what’d you call them, name brand, one of the top 45.

Rich Birch — Name name brand churches. Yep.

Dave Miller — And he’s like, so what are you monetizing and what are we getting? And I’m like, we’re gonna push you off the diving board. We’re like the people that walk up behind, you’ve been thinking about this for years.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — And I mean, for years. We’ve had conversations now for seven years. And they’re still like, well, we’re praying about it. And the 30 something year old is now a 40 something year old. And the last four rookies all quit.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — You don’t have to follow them. They’re going to quit. Because, it’s you know, they’re like, why am I doing this?

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — Um, so we help churches architect a customized, very custom to their location, who it is beyond even denomination and geography and temperature and size of the church. What’s going on right now? Did your, are you going through succession plan?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Dave Miller — Are you launching four campuses in the next four years or are you in decline? We’re working with all of those places. We’re working with all.

Dave Miller — It’s one of the assumptions I probably made a decade ago that I’ve backed off of, which is, well, we’re only gonna work with the best and brightest and name brand, big… No. Some of our favorite best success stories, are churches smaller than 500, if they’ll commit to it. The ones that are desperate, honestly. They’ve hired a couple of rookies, they didn’t make it for a number of reasons. They’ve tried internships. They didn’t like what they got out of it. They’re still doing internships, but they want to take it up and not lose them.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — So it’s all of that. It’s a conversation. There are general, I would say, um markers along the way. But man, when we say pathway, it’s like we’re all going to the summit up there, and there’s a bunch of us, and some go east, some go, and we circle a few times this mountain…

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — …some take the well-worn path, others are just, they need ropes, and it gets crazy. We’re all We all sort of get there, and I think our coaches would say, ah they’re very talented, they start on a sprint. At some point in the first 90 days, we need to have a we we need to have a safe fail.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Dave Miller — And we start talking, and then it’s a a lot of talking and coaching. First Christmas, first Easter, first summer…

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — …all of those things that we all forget.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.

Dave Miller — We all forget. It’s moving faster, and it’s harder than ever, by the way. It’s harder today than when you and I started. Expectations are through the roof. Oh my goodness. The pay hasn’t moved, by the way. But the expectations are, times three, add 50%.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — The second-year, Rich, why do churches only do 10 months, I don’t know, or a year? Because the second year is the payoff.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — It’s the payoff for the people who now believes and trusts. They believe and they trust these people actually do want more for them, and now the deeper work gets to happen in their personal life.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — And the payoff for those church leaders who now, they might be paying, you know, 20 grand, they might be spending 20 grand on this person, and they’re making, up in air quotes, a full-time contribution, running, we’ve seen them run guest services, lead worship at a campus, lead production at a campus.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — They are, in essence, functioning like a middle school pastor.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — Or they they’ve architected and now launched the fifth grade ministry to help kids transition to middle school in these churches, but they’re a resident.

Rich Birch — Love it. Right.

Dave Miller — And it’s sort of like, it’s sort of like the last few months of a medical residency where this person is doing everything the doctor’s doing.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Dave Miller — They’re just clocking time until they sign the paperwork…

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — …and they are officially now the doctor, but they’ve really been doing this once.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Dave Miller — That’s what we see in the second month. I’m sorry, in the second year.

Rich Birch — In the second year.

Dave Miller — That’s what we see. That’s what we do.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Dave Miller — It is It’s a coaching platform. We coach the coaches. We coach your downline leaders, how to develop Gen Z, how to develop young leaders.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Dave Miller — And we’ve learned we have to sort of hand it out over time. Like if I just back the truck up and unload it, they’ll never do it. It’s like…

Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Right, right.

Dave Miller — It’s like, if you knew what we’re going into, when you and Chrissy first got married, would you have ever had, kids? You love your kids, would you have ever done it?

Rich Birch — Yes. Right. That’s true.

Dave Miller — If you could have really seen the future. And I think a lot of college, I mean, I’m sorry, a lot of church leaders were like, they haven’t started a residency yet, but it’s sort of like a young couple saying, so what is it, what’s up with how to choose a high school in college?

Dave Miller — No, we’ll get there, we’ll get there. Just start.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Let’s just start now. Start start baby steps and…

Dave Miller — And so we, gosh, we’re on our 11th, eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th resident. with Some of these churches were in our fourth and fifth year.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — They start with one. They add two. They add five. One doesn’t make it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — They add four. And these-term relationships where this stuff has taken root in this church, it’s sort of like they can’t go back. It’s it’s like a lot of these things.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — Organizationally, we will never go back to just cramming as much as we can get done in a week.Because we’ll never multiply our… I got the company shirt on. Who’s the next you? This idea, you know John and Dave Ferguson, you know multiplication instead of addition.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yes. Yes.

Dave Miller — The base level, the number one place we’re missing it. We expect this to happen in our groups or our campuses.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — But the youth, kids, worship, production, guest services person, have they is there anyone on their team that could do their job tomorrow? Because that’s really what we mean.

Rich Birch — That’s what we’re talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Long term for sure.

Dave Miller — And that we struggle right there to give it away…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Dave Miller — …and then know how to follow up. It takes grit. It takes some grit to get there…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Dave Miller — …to have developmental conversations every week on difficult topics. Once they learn how to do it, it’s like these organizations are not going to go back to just banging it out and getting it done.

Rich Birch — Right. No.

Dave Miller — Everybody is looking at who’s the next them. And it goes back to Paul and Timothy.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — The stuff I, 2 Timothy 2:2… the things I’ve shown you, go show to somebody else. And maybe in the eighties, we missed that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Dave Miller — I don’t know.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Well, and the thing that I love about what you guys do is, listen, I’ve spent a lot of time in that you know executive pastor seat. And it you know once your church gets to a certain size, it feels like we are constantly looking for team members. Like we are every Monday morning, we’re waking up thinking, okay, who we who do I got to replace? Who do I need to go find? And but but what happens is we get caught on this treadmill. We don’t get up and over and look at ah at ah the bigger issue, which is, okay, well where like we need to be building a pipeline or maybe even a leadership pathway, one would say, of you know leaders that are coming in that could be ready two years from now, three years from now.

Rich Birch — And friends, if you’re listening in, what I know is even if today you’re not, here we are, January, 2025, you don’t have like a burning hole in your organization you need to fill, but I can guarantee you, at the end of the next two years, you’re going to have one. And so what if we started now, got a couple of residents in and started that that conversation. So I want to encourage people to drop by leadershippathway.org. What you should do is actually schedule a call with Dave and his team. Just click on the link there. You can jump onto a call. They’ll get specific with you. Today, we’ve kind of talked at the philosophical level, you you know, kind of the high level 30,000 feet. Let’s get into your specific issues. Tell them that on the call. Say, hey, I heard you guys on the unSeminary.

Rich Birch — Just cut out all that stuff. I want to talk to you about my issues I got. And leverage that time to actually get to the to the heart of it. What other ways do we want to point people to kind of connect with you guys to connect with Leadership Pathway?

Dave Miller — Yeah, they should they should literally go to that website. There’s a connect button. I don’t…

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — Talking is free and it’s inexpensive.

Rich Birch — Right.

Dave Miller — Whether it’s an hour or a 30 minute phone call on the way in the car, it’s fine. It’s fine.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Miller — Starting talking about it is the thing.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Dave Miller — It is not the canyon to get… I tell church at least twice a week, I’m in a conversation.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Dave Miller — And it’s like, you have a Squarespace website? Yeah, okay. A ninth grader could put a landing page up by 3 p.m. today that says, my church’s residency, click here, name and email, start talking.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. That’s good.

Dave Miller — I mean… And you’re like, really? That’s it? What about accreditation with the state? You know If you go down that road, I’ll see you in three years, but start talking about your residency right now. And we get there by…

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Dave Miller — …you know, taking our own advice. We’ll talk really about it because it’s talking is what it is. And so go to the website and click the contact button or something. It’s there.

Rich Birch — Dude, so good. So good. All right. Well, I really appreciate this. Appreciate you, Dave. Cheering for you. I’m a fan. I love, I’m also, you know, on this advisory board team, whatever that is. And it’s happy to get your emails and say, this is great. More people should do this, um which you know which is which is wonderful. So ah thanks so much, Dave. Appreciate you being here today.

Dave Miller — All right, man. Thanks for having me. Go unSeminary. We’re fans, we’re big fans.