My daughter and I practiced her spelling bee words as I drove her to school this morning. Abby is a 10-year old. On the drive home, I pondered what Abby might do when she grows up. Every now and again you hear that most of the jobs today will radically change within a generation. Most of the jobs available to me today will not be for my 5th grader.
So what does that mean for church? What new jobs are we likely to see? How will the best practice staffing continue to evolve?
If we look in the rear view mirror we can observe a few trends in the last decade:
- The shift from senior pastor to "lead pastor" in describing the point leader
- The development of the "teaching pastor" and the increasing use of teaching teams
- The emergence of the campus pastor with the growth of the multi-site movement
- The ongoing importance of all things technology and media forging into top leadership
As I continue to visit with churches and watch the horizon, I believe that the trends above as well as others will keep fueling change. What will this look like ten years from now? Here are four new pastoral titles for the church of the future. I will provide some initial thoughts now and drill down with follow-up posts.
I leave you with a final thought from Dan Pink, author of Whole New Mind: "The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind - creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers." He describes these people as "artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, and big picture thinkers."
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