It was a strange, deflating kind of day. I was a 24-year-old seminary student, eager to share my knowledge about the New Testament. I walked into the small church classroom well prepared with notes and PowerPoint slides. I plugged in my computer and eagerly awaited people to show up for my class at church. Hoping for over 10, I had two people show up. Next week, zero. Tumbleweed blew across the floor, and dust blew. (Not really, but that’s how I remember it.)
Months prior, knowing I needed church experience, I had created for myself an internship at a church for young professionals in Denver, Colorado. I had essentially no guidance or oversight, but undeterred, I advertised a class I could teach, prepared it, and showed up. I essentially tried to recreate seminary in a church context, because this is what I knew. And it flopped. Like a balloon pricked by a pin, I left feeling defeated.
Years later, I found myself in my first job after seminary: associate pastor of a Spanish-speaking congregation in Brighton, Colorado. In less than a year, I knew I was in way over my head. Navigating cultural differences, handling church conflicts, and trying to raise my own young family, my anxiety levels were climbing. And though I knew theology, I didn’t know the craft of being a pastor. I didn’t know how to lead. And I didn’t know myself.
The Seminary-Church Challenge
It’s no secret that the American church is facing tremendous challenges. Church membership is declining, as are numbers of seminarians pursuing an MDiv (the degree traditionally designed for pastoral leadership). Anecdotally, nearly all of my friends in church or denominational leadership are looking for one thing: leaders. And they are finding that recruiting talented young people into church ministry has become much more difficult than it was only 10 years ago.
Now, there could be many reasons for this; indeed, there are many reasons. Rising student debt, more options open to young people, church scandals deterring future pastoral leaders, and extreme competition for online theological education all play a role. But I believe we have a large, systemic issue.
Here’s what I mean: Seminary students are trained by scholars who are professionally prepared to do research—and sometimes to teach in a classroom. And this is fitting for academia. But it doesn’t look much like the daily life of a pastor. And churches are designed to, well, do church. They’re not training or educational organizations; they’re shepherding, worshiping organizations. There’s a large, systemic gap between theological higher education and the local church. By and large, the people whom higher ed is producing are not what churches need. Churches don’t need just good theologians; they need spiritually mature, emotionally healthy leaders who can build healthy, vibrant organizations. Theological education is a necessary component of pastoral education, but not sufficient.
This gap, of course, is nothing new in other industries. For many years, philanthropic and industry leaders have noted in conversations about workforce development that they see the need to better align education with work. Whether it’s to train a new welder or a health care technician, leaders have called for a new effort to provide young leaders with work-based learning opportunities. I believe this is the future of pastoral education as well.
Designing 3 Streams Institute
How might a work-based learning experience look for those open to exploring pastoral leadership?
That was the question I faced last year when considering how to design what’s become 3 Streams Institute. I knew what I didn’t want it to be: a place where interns make copies and fill coffee cups but aren’t known, appreciated, or invested in. I also knew that it couldn’t just be “seminary in another location”—existing models trying to solve new problems. I knew it needed to provide a holistic experience for both professional and interior growth. But what should it look like?
To answer that, I started where all great businesses begin: talking to our “customers.” I spent months talking to not just Anglican pastors but also over 15 past interns, apprentices, and residents. I wanted to hear: “What’s your story? What are you looking for? What was great about your experience? What would you change? What gift might you give to future learners?”
Broken down into five categories, here’s what I heard:
- “Give us a place to discern our future.” Nobody I talked to said, “I’m 100 percent committed to a lifetime of pastoral ministry.” What I did hear, however, was interest, curiosity, openness, and some hesitancy. The interns wanted a place to test the waters before diving in.
- “Give us practical experience.” Interns wanted a chance to lead and take on real responsibility in a supportive environment.
- “Give us mentors and feedback.” I also heard how important a community of trusted leaders was to the interns. They wanted people to process their life and calling with, as well as to give them professional feedback.
- “Give us a community to process real life with.” Each intern I interviewed was kindly vulnerable with me. After I spent hours listening, they shared the desire for a healthy, early-career work environment and community of peers to process their own spiritual, emotional, and relational issues.
- “Give us a career path.” Interns were looking for an income—like the rest of us! But more importantly, they wanted to take graduated steps toward a career in church ministry. They were looking for a way to learn that wouldn’t put them further in debt and could result in both long-term and short-time gainful employment.
So, that’s what I set out to build: a work-based learning experience that would offer a healthy context for career discernment; practical work experience in a local church; mentored professional development; a community of peers and leaders to help them grow emotionally, relationally, and spiritually; and a career pathway for future leadership in the Anglican church.
How It Works
Interns start with a nine-month role working 10 to 12 hours per week that includes rotating through different departments and learning with a cohort in six broad areas: emotional and relational health, spiritual formation, management and leadership, pastoral training, career discernment, and the Anglican tradition. The main goal of the first year is exposure to church leadership and genuine spiritual, relational, and emotional growth.
Year two features a 15- to 20-hour-per-week apprenticeship focused on working in a particular department in the church, getting real-life pastoral experience, and deepening discernment about pursuing full-time occupational ministry. Years three and four feature our full-time residency program (launching spring 2026), which focuses on the ordination process and provides holistic professional, spiritual, emotional, and ecclesiastical formation for future senior leaders.
We’re just getting started, and we have lots to learn from those we’re privileged to serve, but here’s what we’re excited about for 3 Streams.
It benefits our learners. The program provides both work experience and contextualized learning experiences that grow students’ interior lives and relationships—with God and others. It provides a scholarship (or a taxable stipend) to offset the cost of seminary education—which means that rather than getting interns into debt, we pay them to learn and grow. And it does so in a peer environment so interns have a place to process their careers, lives, and faith.
It benefits churches. This program creates a leadership pipeline for future church leaders, which nearly all churches are looking for. Now, it does cost the church. But it provides them a way to get to know future leaders before hiring them to lead and fills the seminary-church gap that is often a barrier to developing strong church leadership.
It’s holistic. We remain big fans of seminary education. But 3 Streams provides practical, mentored, hands-on experience and formation in six areas that are often overlooked: emotional and relational health, spiritual formation, management and leadership, pastoral training, career discernment, and the Anglican tradition.
It’s true to our mission. 3 Streams is “rooted in the gospel, alive in the Spirit, and formed by the liturgy.” We provide a context for learning that is theologically orthodox, connected to the historic church, and alive with the life of God.
It’s designed for adult learners. Rather than offering only a classroom setting or online class, we provide for our learners with environments that help them take charge of their own learning. For example, we’ve identified seven learning environments (thanks to my previous work with the brilliant people at Denver Institute for Faith & Work) that facilitate holistic learning: “come and see” experiences with leaders, reading and discussion in cohorts, practiced spiritual disciplines, relational processing with mentors, new professional experiences, formal teaching, and self-directed learning activities.
It provides on-ramps to pastoral ministry for any stage of life. We’ve designed the internship for either students or early-career professionals who are considering pastoral leadership. Starting in the spring of 2026, we’ll also have a residency program that will provide an on-ramp for mid- or later-career professionals considering an industry change. (More details are to come.)
It’s scalable. We’re just starting at Wellspring Church this fall, but we believe we could explore models to help other churches recruit, train, form, and send their own leaders.
If what we’ve designed feels like a mix of many worlds, well, it is! Just as corporations invest in research and development and venture capital firms take big bets on startups, we’re innovating new ways to think about pastoral education. And like design thinking teaches, we’ll continue to empathize, define, ideate, design prototypes, and test our curriculum, experiences, and program.
This launch is just the beginning. But we’re hopeful that, through prayer, generosity, and hard work, this could be a good, beautiful beginning.
The Early Career Arc
Leaving school can be hard. It means losing the predictability of a syllabus and the well-worn pathway of learning, writing, taking tests, and getting grades. This was the wilderness that I confronted in my 20s and that so many people face today. What did I need? Well, what 3 Streams is offering. A community. A deeper understanding of myself. Practice in the professional world. Patient mentors. The freedom to try things out, fail, and start again—albeit a bit wiser.
D. Michael Lindsay, the president of Taylor University, once studied over 500 “platinum leaders”—very senior leaders in the marketplace, government, higher education, and media—to understand what most formed them and helped them get into positions of influence. Interestingly enough, the main factor wasn’t what college they attended. It wasn’t what family they grew up in or their cultural background. It was what happened to them in their 20s that shaped their career trajectories.
I suppose that’s why I’ve spent much of my career designing holistic, formative experiences for young people in their 20s. Here’s where we can make an impact. Here’s how we can serve. And here’s how we can come alongside idealistic young people with PowerPoint slides, notes, and world-changing plans in hand and help them grow into the wise, seasoned leaders the Church truly needs today.
This is the second post in a series of articles about the newly created 3 Streams Institute. To learn more about 3 Streams or support its mission, visit 3StreamsInstitute.com.