The Church Needs A Farm System

What do German football and the church have in common? The need to develop the next generation of talent.

In 2000, Germany was one of 16 countries that sent teams to the Euro 2000 soccer tournament. Those teams played round-robin in groups of 4 to qualify for the knockout round. The German national team failed to qualify. In their first round-robin match, they tied Romania 1-1. In the second match, they lost to England 1-0. In the third match, they lost to Portugal 3-0. They played 3 matches, gave up 5 goals, and only scored 1. You don’t need to know much about soccer to know that’s bad.

In February 2001, the German Bundesliga (think NFL) made it mandatory for all 18 top-flight professional teams to run a youth academy — essentially a school for promising soccer players, with teams and coaches going all the way down to the under-12-year-old level. Later, academies became mandatory for all 36 professional teams in the top two German divisions. Between 2001 and 2011 professional teams in Germany spent ~€500 million on youth soccer development. By the 2011-12 season, more than half of all professional Bundesliga players were part of the German academy system at one time.

In 2014, the German national team won the World Cup.

The church in America has reached a similar crisis moment. There is a need to start thousands of new churches to replace those that are closing and reach a growing and increasingly diverse population. The number of churches being started is decreasing rapidly because there are not enough well-equipped leaders to start them. You don’t need to know much about church multiplication to know this is bad.

It’s not that long ago the number of new churches was increasing. Young leaders went to Bible colleges and seminaries, became youth pastors, and after gaining some experience, started new churches. I was one of them. I’ve helped hundreds of people like me follow the same path. Today that pathway is broken. That pipeline is empty. The American church (likely the church in the West) has arrived at a crisis moment. Just like German soccer, the talent needed to accomplish the mission just isn’t there. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

It’s time for the epicenter of developing leaders to shift from the college and university to the local church. Like the German soccer league, every church needs to invest in developing the next generation of new-church leaders. The church needs a holistic church-based training system that develops the calling, character, competency, and capacity needed to start faithful, fruitful, multiplying churches.

The church needs a farm system.

Let’s build one together.