Church planting residency
Real-world ministry training to prepare you for starting a healthy, multiplying, gospel-centered church.
what we do
Called to plant a church?
Let us invest in your leadership.
A Converge church planting residency gives you meaningful leadership and work experiences, a safe place to succeed and fail and an empowered launch into ministry. You’ll be able to clarify your call to ministry, pursue and thrive in your God-given strengths and abilities and learn from experience to strengthen the future of the ministry to which God has called you. By doing so, you’ll set yourself up for long-term ministry success.
Why Converge?
Converge’s church residency program combines hands-on ministry experience and education to give you the most complete church planting training available. You will:
- Gain meaningful leadership and work experiences
- Be prepared and empowered as you launch into ministry
Pursue and thrive in your God-given strengths and abilities - Learn from experience to strengthen the future of your ministry
- Set yourself up for long-term success as a church planter
Do ministry
Through hands-on experience, your church planting residency training will prepare you for the rigors of church planting and ministry leadership.
When you enter the residency process, we know you don’t want to just learn a bunch of facts, figures and theories about what might work somewhere. The priority is for you to take the content and interpret it through your ministry context. You should be able to immediately apply the content to help people meet, know and follow Jesus where you are.
- You’ll be given meaningful work and build healthy leadership habits
- You’ll be trusted to direct ministry projects
- You’ll have an on-site champion (coach) who will serve as your emotional and spiritual supporter throughout your residency.
Learn about ministry
A Converge church planting residency is about much more than just learning facts, figures and theories. The priority is for you to take the content and interpret it through—and apply it to—your ministry context.
In additional to doing ministry, you will spend 2-3 hours per week focusing on the academic component of your residency. The one-year vocational training also counts as 10 credits of advance standing at the Wheaton College Graduate School, where you can follow one of the multiple tracks to earn a Certificate of Missional Leadership and/or an MA in Ministry Leadership.
You’ll also learn from some of the most experienced, well-respected and well-known leaders in the field, including pastors, authors and educators such as Ed Stetzer, Daniel Im and Daniel Yang.
• Take online courses from Wheaton College Graduate School
• Earn a Certificate of Missional Leadership and/or an MA in Ministry Leadership
What church planters are saying about Converge
Dating back to shepherds on the Middle Eastern plains (Genesis 29:2–3), feeding, protecting and growing a flock works best when we coordinate and collaborate with others. I’m grateful for and better because of fellow Converge leaders and churches.
Great videos. Short, sweet and challenging. Looking forward to growing together as a board using this tool to help us be a unified team moving in God’s direction for his people.
This residency has provided room for me to recruit, train, organize and lead a team toward preparing to plant a church.
6 ways to effectively build community in your church plant
Church planting, in a nutshell, is about creating a community that’s on mission with Jesus Christ. Sometimes it’s easy to put the mission piece together, but building community can be more difficult than we think. So, here are six ideas on how you can effectively build community. 1. Have a defined cause A cause is […]
The end of an era
It’s the end of an era for the Unfiltered podcast. We explain why and share what’s next. 00:32 Lee lets listeners know this surreal episode to say good-bye is the last for Unfiltered. 01:28 Lee explains a couple different reasons why Danny and Lee are hanging up the microphones. 03:19 Danny thanks Lee for his […]
Why is church planting so hard?
Starting anything new from the ground up can be difficult. Whether it’s a new business or a new church, nothing is 100% fail-proof. But why is church planting so difficult? Let’s pull back the curtain and have a real and candid conversation about it. 0:28 Lee introduces the topic, which is a subject he and […]
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