Choose Training Materials that Fit
a Spreading Movement

Yes, beloved apprentice, you can begin now to shepherd new believers. We’ll help you learn just what you need for instant action.

Yes, Lord Jesus, we will free up new shepherds from paralyzing abstraction as we train them in the way You and Your apostles did. Help us choose materials that fit the urgent needs of new churches, of new leaders and of new mentors.

Equip new leaders in the way Jesus and His apostles did, training them on the job.

Choose training materials that give clear direction and lead to action.

Always link truth to a practical task, as the apostles did.

If trainees had a conventional education, then help them shift from theory to action. Give them practical simple tasks and studies that are linked to what they actually face in daily life. Make sure that what you give them to study and to do are helping them be more effective at meeting needs and training others.

God is more like a vibrant verb than like a static noun. In one Spanish Bible, an expert translated John 1:1 (as read in English): “In the beginning was the Verb, and the Verb was with God, and the Verb was God”.

Yes! God lives, pulsates, acts, ever creating and loving; He will not be stuffed into the cage of a static, abstract noun. “The Word” (ho Logos), in its New Testament contexts, carries a much wider variety of meanings than what English translators could conceive from their Aristotelian worldview.

Provide a curriculum menu by which to choose materials.

Avoid any step-by-step curriculum that dictates a new trainee’s course within a new church; that is, start here, then step 2, then step 3, and so on. Jesus and His apostles did not teach in that way.

Rather, they taught in response to immediate needs, questions and challenges. New churches, like newborn babies, have urgent needs that require instant attention. A good menu enables both mentors and apprentices to choose studies that fit needs and opportunities that arise in a trainee’s church or cell.

For less-educated readers, provide short studies or pocket-sized booklets that they can carry about and read during free moments.

 

JIT Resources For While You …

Urgently need basic, pastoral training. Shepherd’s Storybook prepares shepherds quickly. Despite its small size and story format, this document contains a complete pastoral training course. This storybook covers essentials, posing study questions to help apply key truths and tasks. It covers evangelism, discipling, leading a church, initiating vital ministries, and starting churches. Its index enables users to find Bible stories that teach all major doctrines and duties.

jit 4a 86 Shepherd’s Storybook, complete pastoral training, 100 pages

jit 4a 85 Shepherd’s Storybook, overview, ½ page

Multiply a hundredfold. Start and sustain a church-planting movement nearby or afar. Patrick O’Connor has compiled and indexed church multiplication and pastoral training principles that George Patterson taught over many years, making it easy to find action steps to take as needs arises. Victor Choudhrie, MD (India), wrote: “Reproducible Pastoral Training is an impressive, up-to-date manual on church planting that should be studied by all who are involved in church planting movements. The principles laid are universal and scriptural.”

Order Reproducible Pastoral Training in English from www.WCLBooks.com In other languages, write to [email protected]

Train with Paul-Timothy menu-driven curriculum to multiply. Paul-Timothy studies (www.Paul-Timothy.net) meet the most demanding criteria to prepare leaders in an expanding movement:

Jit 2d 05 How to use Paul-Timothy studies, 2 pages

Make reading easy for those who speak a regional dialect:

Vernacular language hastens church planting

Prepare cross-cultural workers by simulation. This interactive e-textbook, a fast-paced novel, lets users vie with an adversary, choosing options voiced by characters in the story. If the adversary outscores you in an episode, he appears, sneers and laughs at you; then you must do it over. Outcomes depend on your choices as you journey through increasingly-hard skill levels, with abundant adventures in arctic wastes, high Andes, and Asian mysteries:

Come, Let us Disciple the Nations, with George Patterson
(Download at no cost at http://paul-timothy.net/dn/index.html)

Write your own training material. Compose simple, practical studies for leaders and churches, when needs arise that existing studies do not treat adequately:

Write training studies for special needs

Write for translation. Practical guidelines:

Writing studies that will be translated

Need advanced training for long-term planning. Church Multiplication Guide by George Patterson and Richard Scoggins, the classic work that God is using to mold global strategy, remains a thorough, strategic exposition of how churches can multiply.

Order Church Multiplication Guide, George Patterson & Richard Scoggins, William Carey Library, in English from wclBooks.com 

An easy-to-translate version is provided at no cost for those who translate Church Multiplication Guide into other languages: http://paul-timothy.net/pages/cmg/

Combine evangelism, mercy ministry, church planting and pastoral training. See how to integrate pastoral training with all vital church ministries in this eye-opening case study:

Obedience Oriented Education, Patterson

Common Traps To Avoid

Choose materials only because they are free, on hand, or recommended by friends.

Many movements stagnate when new leaders acquire attitudes and procedures from studies written for another culture or for old, institutional churches.

Choose books and curriculum you like, because you are more educated than your trainees are.

Nearly all new pastoral-training programs in developing fields start with materials written on a level beyond the ability of most potential trainees. Start where they are!