Elijah Zehyoue has been building toward ministry for nearly a decade.
Growing up in the church in Baton Rouge, La., he began discerning God’s call as a 16-year-old. He graduated from Morehouse College as part of the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society, the nation’s most prestigious honor society. He continued to the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he also studied public policy, and graduated in 2014.
Finally out of seminary, he entered the pastoral residency program at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, a move that an entire generation of ministers is making as part of a palpable trend across the United States. But if you ask Elijah Zehyoue why he entered a pastoral residency, he’ll tell you he’s not playing into any trend; he’s simply doing what he must.
“It’s just too easy to get chewed up by the church,” Zehyoue says. “I know that sounds harsh, but so many of us have grown up in churches and seen firsthand just how hard of a job being a minister really is.
“So I think this desire to be in formal mentoring roles, frankly, comes from this place of seeing so many ministers fail and not wanting to fail like they did. When I look back on my own experience in church, I really felt for so many ministers. Failure is a very real possibility in ministry and we have to be prepared as best we can on as many fronts as we can.”
Zehyoue is hardly an anomaly, as young ministers across the country are increasingly using pastoral residencies to widen the gap between their seminary education and their first official ministry position or pastorate. Converging in that space is a growing number of churches seeking the role of “teaching congregation” as well as grant-makers such as the Lilly Endowment Inc., which are foaming at the mouth to invest in the training of young clergy. Pastoral residencies abound in the center of that vortex.
George Mason, pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, first spearheaded Wilshire’s pastoral residency program in 2002 with a grant from the Lilly Endowment’s “Transitions to Ministry” program. Since that initial seeding, the program has grown to host and mentor four recent seminary graduates at any given time — sets of two in two-year rotations — to fill the gap between seminary academics and the delicate dance of pastoring a church. Yet, the root of such a powerful trend runs deeper than a mere gap in skill acquisition, Mason says, right down to the complex deadlock of the 21st-century pastorate itself.
“Ministry is more complicated, more challenging than it ever was, and young ministers know that,” Mason explains.
“I don’t want to disparage any previous generation, but we have had a breakdown of cultural consensus, where belief is no longer taken for granted in our culture, where church attendance is not culturally expected. And yet, congregations continue to long for the kind of ministry they once had during the time of Christendom. So now, pastors not only have to think about how to maintain a church they have inherited, but furthermore to have the answers to how to make church something people want to be part of again, all the while having to simultaneously challenge and comfort their congregation.”
Mason says the fundamental desire for mentoring is the desire to put these pieces together within the church in a way that makes sense.
Britt Carlson graduated from Duke Divinity School in 2013 and spent the following two years in the pastoral residency at Wilshire. She says what most helped her in her journey to put the pieces together was a tangible chance to pastor, to counsel and especially to preach, rather than be seen as just another set of hands.
“What works really well for me is actually getting to be a pastor,” Carlson laughs.
“The bond of love that forms between you and the congregation, where you get to love them through the preaching of the word and you can see them as you’re looking out respond also with love, is the thing that will probably keep me in ministry longer than anything else. It’s the word of God creating the beloved community.”
Not to mention, she says, the entire church’s fundamental commitment to a resident’s growth as a minister, especially financially, is one of the most life-giving things she experienced in her time as a resident, and one of the most sustaining things a teaching congregation can do for young clergy.
Now on the other side of the pastoral residency and settled at home in Oregon, Carlson recalls times, however, when that commitment became almost too strong, and a thick culture of constant critique began to work against her own sense of herself as a minister. She says more than anything else the most unsustainable aspect of her residency was balancing her receptivity to criticism with her sense of intrinsic giftedness, a circumstance that many young clergy face.
“It’s so hard knowing how much feedback to take in a mentoring role, especially as a young minister.” Carlson says.
“Feedback is a wonderful thing and you get a lot of feedback from a lot of people, in my email inbox, my mailbox downstairs, notes written on the back of the order of worship, people stopping me in the hallway, from ministers, from my lay support team, and they’re all talking about how I am as a minister. Eventually, you have to know when to step back and get a sense of yourself again.”
In another decisive commitment to young clergy, First Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C., completed renovation on a house for its residents in August, the final piece in commencing a new pastoral residency program this fall. Because of its regional location, proximity to divinity schools and resources as a large Baptist congregation, First Baptist, Greensboro, has been preparing to implement a residency program for a few years. Though the church’s original intent for the residential property was to create additional parking, the congregation eventually commissioned the building committee to create apartments instead as they began to discern a less conventional calling from God.
A crucial step in that calling came in 2013 when the church welcomed Alan Sherouse, a young minister with uncommon nerve, as senior pastor of the large congregation with an imposing legacy. Sherouse, who will be mentoring two residents in overlapping two-year terms, says at the end of the day the true goal of any residency program is to create space for more young ministers to develop the same grit and love for the church.
“So many seminarians are increasingly asking themselves, ‘Is my future really in the church?’” Sherouse explains.
“That question is rooted in how our generation views the institution, distrusts the institution and doubts that the institution can hold them. I love the idea of our church being a place with a lot of the trappings of traditional, institutional church life but a place that can say to young ministers, ‘There is enough space here, even with the pillars and bricks, to house your imagination, your sense of call and your conviction, and here’s how to navigate institutional life while still staying true to yourself.’”
As influential churches like First Baptist, Greensboro, continue to seek ways to grow young ministers, congregations are increasingly stumbling upon their own opportunities for growth through pastoral residencies. Creating space through a pastoral residency, Sherouse adds, helps build a church’s identity as well as the resident’s, and might just be a step toward the renewal that so many churches seek.
“Having a resident helps to keep the church on the edge of theological education and keeps the church current,” Sherouse adds.
“We want our resident to come in and help us think through some of the critical issues facing the church and help us know where the bigger conversation is heading — to bring the spark, the gifts and the imagination.”
Steve Booth leads the pastoral residency program at First Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., and says that ultimately, one of those most critical issues the church must think through is how to provide the space for conversations around health and emotional intelligence in a new generation of ministers. In weekly conversations with First Baptist, Richmond’s, pastoral resident Nick Deere, Booth says he continually engages the idea of understanding a congregation as a complicated emotional system. It’s the failure to grasp and navigate this system, Booth adds, that leads to the “chewing up” to which Elijah Zehyoue refers.
“The research points very clearly to a high prevalence of loneliness, isolation and burnout in young ministers,” Booth says.
“Even though they have training and preparation for skills that they need, actually living into the emotional system of a congregation is a whole different animal. A congregation is an emotional system like an organic nuclear family is, and understanding that system and how it really works is infinitely more complex than we might typically see.”
With another year left in his residency, Zehyoue hopes to understand that emotional system, as well as become a better preacher, church leader, teacher, counselor, writer, listener. He wants to be capable and prepared to pastor a congregation. But above all, he hopes to be considered as such by the church, which has a pivotal opportunity in pastoral residencies to respond to a radically new environment in the U.S., he says.
“Even though I’m young, I want them to see me as a minister who is capable and has something to offer their congregation; I want to be taken seriously as a minister,” Zehyoue says.
“It’s so encouraging to know that the church is committed to cultivating young ministers. But the question is, will churches be ready to listen to their voices? It’s one thing for the church to say it wants Millennial leaders, but can we exercise our leadership in the ways we see are most crucial? Can we actually think critically and boldly about race issues, about issues of sexuality or justice? Can we be taken seriously in the most legitimate sense of the word?”
That is where a trend in pastoral residencies will lead us, Zehyoue says, if the church is committed to growing a new generation of leaders in the church.
This article was first published in the September/October 2015 issue of Herald, BNG’s magazine sent five times a year to donors to the Annual Fund. Bulk copies are also mailed to BNG’s Church Champion congregations.