9 Best Practices for Leading a Residency

On a recent trip to Legoland Florida with my family, I came across a mind-blowing stat about Lego brick combinations. A Danish mathematics professor, Søren Eilers, calculated that with only 6 identical 2×4 Lego bricks of the same color, you can come up with a whopping 915,103,765 unique combinations! Surrounding this stat poster was a floor-to-ceiling display featuring hundreds of different combinations of 6 blue Lego bricks made by theme park guests. Although each Lego combination on display around the room was uniquely put together, they all shared the same essential components—6 blue 2×4 Lego bricks.

Building and leading a residency is like assembling Lego bricks. We can utilize similar building blocks while embracing the freedom to design something to uniquely fit our passions, strengths, and ministry context.

From my experience coaching pastors to build and lead residencies, one trap I often see pastors fall into is the perfection trap. Pastors often stall out on the process because they feel this pressure to build a perfect residency, as though there is only one right way.

A residency is an intentional process for training qualified leaders to become church planters. There’s a lot of freedom in designing your residency. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach for residencies, I do believe there are evergreen principles and best practices that can help your church launch and lead an effective residency.

Send Network hosted a Residency Think Tank with several leading practitioners in church planting residencies from across North America to learn from one another and identify best practices for leading a residency. Though different residency models and strategies were represented, we were able to identify nine best practices for leading an effective church planting residency that you can utilize as you design your residency.

QUICK LINKS

→ Maryland church planter answers call to reach African diaspora

→ Enroll in the Theology Masterclass