Todd Proctor was still a young pastor when a theologian asked him a question that’s stuck with him ever since: “Do you want to be the best?”

“There was kind of a dramatic pause where my heart was saying, ‘Well, yeah, I mean, who wouldn't, right?’” Proctor recalls.

But then his theologian friend finished the question.

“He said, ‘Do you want to be the best or do you want to raise up 20 better?’” Proctor continues. “‘Because the call of Jesus is to raise up 20 better than you.’”

The harvest is plenty, and data suggests that the workers remain relatively few These days, Proctor is on the executive leadership team of Alpha USA, where he’s working to help leaders across the country become better. The harvest is plenty, and data suggests that the workers—in this case, pastors who are trying to train a new generation of leaders to pick up where they leave off—remain relatively few.

As we’ve seen, pastors in the U.S. are getting older, and a major transfer of leadership is looming. If the Church wants incoming leaders to be built better,” it’s time to start taking the job of training them seriously. While Barna research indicates that this has not been a major priority for most pastors over the last few years, it’s not too late to start equipping tomorrow’s pastors for the challenges they’ll face.

When asked what traits are most important for the success of future pastors, pastors’ top three responses are a deep connection to God (87%), the ability to communicate well (72%) and personal discipline (71%). Toward the bottom of the list are things related to a pastor’s public image, such as cultural relevance (23%), personal charisma (15%) and their leaning toward either conservatism or progressivism (13% and 5%, respectively).

It’s worth noting that men and women in ministry have different ideas about what makes a successful pastor. For example, male pastors are quite a bit more likely to say future pastors need things like personal discipline (76% vs. 48% of women) and perseverance (71% vs. 48%). Female pastors are more likely to highlight emotional intelligence (88% vs. 59% of men) and adaptability (75% vs. 61%).

Sharon Hodde Miller is an author and pastor who leads Bright City Church in Durham, North Carolina, along with her husband, Ike. On the Resilient Pastor podcast, she talked about how important adaptability was to keeping their church not just surviving, but thriving, during the pandemic. Having planted their church with a very “Sunday morning-centric” model, they were suddenly asking, “If that's taken away, what's the strategy?”

A big part of equipping future leaders will be figuring out the intersection of innovation and true improvement While Miller says this question put her husband in a “dark place” for a season, she jumped at the chance to rethink the model. “I was more like, this is great. This is an opportunity. We can innovate. There are problems with the other model. Now, we can try other things and see if it disciples people better.” In the face of the challenges brought on by the pandemic, Miller’s focus on adaptability was an enormous asset.

A big part of equipping future leaders and continuing to respond to the disruptions of COVID-19 will be figuring out the intersection of innovation and true improvement. Since 2020, 74 percent of pastors say they’ve upgraded their technology, and 57 percent now offer a hybrid service to increase accessibility to sermons and other ministries for people who want to continue to engage from home. Yet, only 28 percent of pastors say this hybrid model has allowed them to “offer more” to congregants.

Meanwhile, three-quarters of pastors say their congregation has gotten “too comfortable” with online or digital services (76%) or that attendance has dropped in the years since the first wave of COVID (72%). In short, as many churches have scrambled to make necessary adjustments in a changing landscape, they aren’t sure yet if these shifts are an overall improvement to their ministry.

The good news is, most pastors say they are willing to rethink their current structure. Forty-eight percent of pastors are “very open” and another 44 percent are “somewhat open” to new ways of conducting church ministry. Interestingly, pastors who have thought about quitting are some of the most willing to consider new ways of doing ministry, likely because they are acutely feeling pain points of “church as usual.” Willingness to explore new ways of ministry requires creativity, agility and grit, but it could pay dividends in the future if it opens avenues for churches to connect with new people and cultivate new partnerships that can bolster the ministry and its leaders.

Well, you might be thinking, what kinds of new ways of doing ministry? When polled on several different ideas, pastors gravitated toward intergenerational friendships (58%) and community-centered churches (45%) as some of the most beneficial paths forward.

Some churches are already putting some of these ideas into practice, and while the experimentation period can be a little turbulent, the end results can be thrilling. Jenni Clayville is a pastor at National Community Church in Washington D.C. She says their church’s early explorations of multisite campuses struggled to connect the satellite locations to central resources. But by the time the pandemic forced their hand, the leadership team had already initiated discussions around how decentralization could actually improve congregational unity.

Some churches are already putting some of these ideas into practice, and while the experimentation period can be a little turbulent, the end results can be thrilling “It looks different, but it is very much all of us working in different areas and collaborating together on a weekly basis,” she explains. “It's very campus- or location-driven now.”

Noemi and Joshua Chavez pastor Revive Church in Los Angeles, California, where they’ve worked hard to cultivate a multiethnic faith community. “We figured this church needs to look like the people who live around it,” Noemi says, saying they’ve tried to make sure their congregation is as racially diverse as the schools and workplaces around them. “I think it's only a matter of time before our kids are smart enough to be like, ‘Why does my church look different than my school?’ If we do want our kids to grow up to be influencers in the marketplace with the gospel, then they need to be able to grow in their faith among people who look different from them.”

These are just some windows into the ways that modern church leadership is evolving—and it will inevitably do so, with or without pastors’ intention and enthusiasm. If today’s pastors are right, the success of those efforts will also depend on maintaining connection with God, strong communication and personal discipline.

Many new ministry models represent areas of future inquiry for Barna. In recent years, we’ve also been able to research some of the models that pastors see as most beneficial to the future. Inspired by the paths that pastors tell us they are most interested in exploring, here are some more resources to help you and your team educate yourselves and discern how your church might grow its representation and reach.

- Beyond Diversity: What the future of racial justice will require of U.S. churches

- Better Together: How Christians can be a welcome influence in their neighborhoods

- Making Space for Inspiration: Vol. 1 of a three-part series on why church design matters in ministry

- The Future of Missions: 10 questions about global ministry the Church must answer with the next generation

- Children’s Ministry in a New Reality: Building church communities that cultivate lasting faith

- Six Questions About the Future of the Hybrid Church Experience

This Resilient Pastor series is produced in partnership with World Vision, Brotherhood Mutual and Gloo.

About the Research:

- 2015 data: Barna conducted 901 interviews with Protestant senior pastors in the U.S. between April and December 2015. The interviews were conducted through a mix of online and phone. Quotas were set to ensure representation by denomination, church size and region. Minimal statistical weighting was applied to maximize representation and the margin of error is +/- 3.1% at the 95% confidence level.

- 2020 data: Barna conducted 408 online interviews with Protestant senior pastors in the U.S. from September 16–October 8, 2020. Quotas were set to ensure representation by denomination, church size and region. Minimal statistical weighting was applied to maximize representation and the sample error is +/- 4.8% at the 95% confidence level.

- 2022 data: Barna conducted 585 online interviews with Protestant senior pastors in the U.S. from September 6–16, 2022. Quotas were set to ensure representation by denomination, church size and region and oversampling was conducted to reach female senior pastors. Minimal statistical weighting was applied to maximize representation and the sample error is +/- 3.8% at the 95% confidence level.