Schedule for Leader Training

Northern Training Institute, through Porterbrook Network in Sheffield UK has some great ideas on how to train and mobilize men for ministry.
Some of their ideas include:

A schedule of

• Yearly: two residential weeks with intensive lectures, seminars, and occasional guest lecturers
  
• Monthly: one day of seminars with students presenting papers for discussion and critique
  
• Ongoing: guided reading
  

Those participating in the Institute are expected to set aside 10-15 hours a week (one day and evening or two days) in addition to the residential weeks.

Institute students opt to study with the Institute for one, two or three years:

• biblical study year
• doctrine and church history year
• mission and ministry year
  

Institute students must be graduates (of any discipline) or have significant experience of gospel ministry. All applicants must be commended by their local church.

The institute is Reformed and evangelical, believing in the sovereign grace of God in salvation, the inerrancy of Scripture and substitutionary atonement and subscribes to a doctrinal basis of Affinty

The institue emphasises participation in a local church, and the integration of theology and practice

Thanks Andy for turning me on to this.

Now if we can only get Ryan Franchuk to pioneer this ministry in South Dakota.

Congregational Leadership

So what is the role of leaders in the congregation? Consider the following:

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. 1 Timothy 5:17
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Hebrews 13:7
Therefore an overseer must be above reproach... able to teach.1 Timothy 3:2
For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach… He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. Titus 1:7, 9

New Testament apostolic authority is given to the congregation. Leaders are never appointed to serve not in the place of this authority that is properly held by the assembled body. Leaders are appointed to serve the congregation through the Word of God. Leaders in the church are to be about the business of teaching the scriptures, studying, correcting and training the people in the scriptures, rebuking those who are in error, and exhortation by the scriptures.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 2 Timothy 3:16-4:2

Leading from the Inside

Do we really need leaders? Do we need Christians to walk at a faster pace than the rest? To run to the front? The great missions movements of the 19th century began with shoemaker/botanist/baptist/missionary William Carey's, "Expect great things; attempt great things." Carey used this phrase in a 1792 sermon to urge his Baptist colleagues to enter the missionary enterprise. Many other movements withing Christendom have followed suit. Run to the front lines and see if God will meet you there. What he did not say was "Expect great things for God; attempt great things for God." Maybe I should take a second look at William Carey.

At the end of last year Wesley Autry jumped off a train platform to save a stranger who had fallen on to the tracks. This heroic act has been turned in to a good salvation metaphor. I like it. Christ jumps off the tracks, runs to the battle, walks deliberately toward the cross--all to save us.

But the logic is flawed. I agree with the thought that "we must do more to reach lost people for Christ." In and of itself you can't argue with working everyday, every moment toward a life that gives all for the Lord so that never an opportunity is lost to share and witness and help other to encounter the Risen One. But... for William Carey, he was so focused, so far out in front, so "into" his goal that many were appalled at the neglect with which Carey looked after his four boys and his wife. Carey simply ignored them. Is it possible to want to "reach lost people for Christ" to the point that we ignore those who have fallen on to the tracks around us?

This is where the story of William Carey and Wesley Autry intersect. Maybe William Carey's dream of a mission to India became an idol? Maybe running to the front is not the example Christians leaders are to portray. "I'm still saying I'm not a hero ... 'cause I believe all New Yorkers should get into that type of mode," Wesley Autry said on CBS' The Early Show. "You should do the right thing...I was like, 'Maybe I was in the right place at the right time, and a good thing happened for good people.'" A leader is not a heroic explorer, because a leader wants everyone to get into the type of mode their in. And if they are in the right type of mode then they can say follow me as I follow Christ.

Godly leaders don't always need to run to the front. Maybe a godly leader is always in the right place. For godly leaders maybe it is always the right time. I believe a godly leader will be driven, not by something outside themselves, visible in time and place, but by a fire in our heart that can't be held back no matter how hard we try. Our passion, our dream, our fire should not be "ours" alone.

From another Wesley...
Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.
John Wesley

Keep jumping