// Poor Onboarding
The second major mistake is poor onboarding. The first 30 to 90 days of a residency are decisive in shaping how a young leader feels about your church and their calling. This season answers questions like: Do I belong here? Do they really want me? Is this a healthy place to grow? Simple, practical hospitality matters more than many leaders realize. Being there when they arrive in town, helping them unload a moving truck, making the first day feel like a celebration, and ensuring they know key people and rhythms all send a powerful message. Onboarding is not just logistics; it is ministry. It should also be tailored to the resident’s personality. Extroverts may thrive with a full schedule of meet-and-greets, while introverts may need more structure during the workday and more margin in the evenings. Those first 90 days are the warm-up, but they should be intentional and structured, not random.
// Letting the Honeymoon Phase Go Too Long
A third mistake is allowing the honeymoon phase to stretch on indefinitely. At the beginning, everything is new, fun, and full of grace. There is very little pressure and lots of “just watch and learn.” That is healthy for a short period, but if you never transition into real responsibility, the resident will not grow. By around month three, a resident should begin to feel the actual weight of ministry. That weight is not just showing up to assignments; it is owning responsibility for volunteers, building relationships, recruiting, scheduling, and feeling the pressure that “if my people do not show up, ministry suffers.” Helping residents experience this in a gradual, supported way is essential. If the honeymoon never ends, expectations stay fuzzy and the inevitable hard conversations later become much more difficult.
// Ignoring the Multiple Roles a Resident Needs
The fourth common mistake is treating a resident as if they only need a boss. In reality, every young leader needs at least two distinct roles around them: a supervisor and a coach. Sometimes that is the same person, but often it is not. Healthy residency environments often include several voices: a direct boss, a development coach, a spiritual mentor, and even a host home or personal support figure. Especially with Gen Z, there is effectively no management without mentorship. You cannot reduce residency leadership to task lists and performance reviews. True development touches spiritual formation, character, soft skills, mental wellness, and practical ministry competence. Treating a 22-year-old first-time staff member like a 32-year-old with a decade of experience creates frustration for both the church and the resident.
// Quitting Too Soon on the Coaching Process
The fifth mistake sits on the leader’s side: quitting too soon on the coaching process. Many senior leaders are highly vision oriented. They love to dream, cast direction, and launch new initiatives. But residency coaching often looks like slow, repetitive, unglamorous work. You may find yourself having the same conversation at month six that you had at month one. If a leader is not emotionally prepared for that, they can become discouraged and quietly disengage from the resident. Sometimes the best resident coach is not the most charismatic visionary in the room but the steady, incremental builder who has proven they can show up week after week and develop people over time. When leaders give up too early, it costs the resident, the church’s pipeline, and the broader culture of development.
// Confusing Your Personal Story with Universal Truth
Finally, a subtle but significant mistake is confusing your personal journey with a universal pattern. Every leader has a unique path into ministry, often including surprising detours, failures, and redemptive turning points. Those stories are powerful and worth sharing, but they are not a template that everyone else should follow. When you have interviewed and coached hundreds or thousands of young leaders, consistent patterns start to emerge: common timelines for growth, predictable “quit or get fired” moments in the first nine months, and typical challenges between year one and year two. Wise churches respect both story and data. They celebrate God’s unique work in their own life while designing residencies around what tends to be generally true, not just what was true for them personally. That perspective allows them to create a development process that is both realistic and hopeful.
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