The Trellis and the Vine (8 page)

Formal training programs are not incompatible with relational training. If a trainer is committed to a relational approach, training programs enhance rather than detract from the personal training. In fact, formal training sessions or programs are another opportunity for the trainer to see the trainee in action—relating to people, participating, completing set tasks, and so on.

All of which leads us to the place of skills and courses in training.

What about skills, courses and programs?

Perhaps with the biblical emphasis firmly in the right place—on the training of mind and heart and character by the word of God—we are now ready to talk about skills or competencies in training.

The Bible does talk about practical abilities. All Christians, for example, should be “prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15), and ought to “consider how to stir one another up to love and good works” (Heb 10:24). It is also essential that some have the ability to teach—for example, the overseers in 1 Timothy 3:2, or the elders in Titus 1:9, or the “faithful men” in 2 Timothy 2:2. We are also told that some have gifts of ‘leading’ in Romans 12:8 (cf. those who ‘manage’ in 1 Timothy 3:4).

Skills and competencies are not irrelevant. In fact, they are necessary for communicating the gospel message, shepherding God’s people and leading the church. However, skills must never be separated from the gospel—from the truth of sound doctrine, and the godly character that accords with it. It’s very easy to get carried away with ‘competencies’—to think that if only we get the skills and techniques right then everything will fall into place, and growth will be assured. It’s easy to focus on skills as an end in themselves, and to put too much trust in them.

However, if we keep the gospel first and central, then learning to do particular activities more effectively can simply be a godly part of our service of Christ and other people. We can desire to become a better Bible teacher, for example, not out of self-glorification, or a misplaced trust in our own importance, but simply because we want to communicate the life-changing message of the Bible more clearly and compellingly to our hearers. And the same, of course, is true of our plans to train others in particular skills.

The nature and goal of training can be very usefully summarized by three Cs. Through personal relationship, prayer, teaching, modelling and practical instruction, we want to see people grow in:

• c
  onviction
  —their knowledge of God and understanding of the Bible
  
• c
  haracter
  —the godly character and life that accords with sound doctrine
  
• c
  ompetency
  —the ability to prayerfully speak God’s word to others in a variety of ways.
  

With a more biblical perspective about the nature of ‘training’ under our belts, we’re in a better position to make use of the large variety of training courses and resources that are now available. If we remember that training is inescapably personal and relational, that it involves teaching and modelling sound doctrine
and
a way of life
and
the ability to serve others, then structures for training can be very useful indeed—whether we are talking about formal training programs, like the two-year apprenticeship model developed by the Ministry Training Strategy (MTS; more on this in chapter 11), or the various short training courses produced by Matthias Media, the publishers of this book (see appendix 2 for a list).

These programs and packages can provide a very helpful framework for training, so long as the structures and resources provided aren’t seen as a replacement for the real work of personal training and modelling. Take a short training course like Matthias Media’s
Six Steps to Encouragement
, for example. This is a six-week program (with DVD input and a booklet for each participant), which deals with the basics of personal ministry—of how one Christian can encourage another. It’s the kind of thing a small home Bible study group would very usefully do as part of their regular pattern, or that a church would put on as a special training course over six Monday nights.

Now the temptation is simply to ‘run the course’—by directing your small groups to do it, or by issuing a general invitation for interested people to sign up. And having run a group or groups of people through the course, you can pat yourself on the back for having done some ‘training’. And there is no question that working through this material will be of benefit to those involved.

However, to make real progress in helping the Christians in your congregation become ‘encouragers’, they need more than a six-week course. They need the example of seeing it done; and they need the personal instruction and mentoring and prayer that addresses the spiritual issues at the heart of becoming an ‘encourager’. This takes time and personal attention—before, during and after the structured training opportunity.

How might such a thing happen in the life of a busy pastor and his congregation? We will look at this in the chapters to follow, but first we need to lay down some other groundwork.

[
1
] EA Judge, ‘The Teacher as Moral Exemplar in Paul and in the Inscriptions of Ephesus’, in D Peterson and J Pryor (eds),
In the Fullness of Time: Biblical Studies in Honour of Archbishop Donald Robinson
, Anzea, Homebush West, NSW, 1992, p. 199.

Chapter 7.
Training and gospel growth

The biblical idea of training we’ve been exploring so far assumes that gospel work is a ‘growth industry’—that when the gospel is preached, and the Spirit is at work, then ‘growth’ is what happens.

We see this in Paul’s warm greeting to the Colossians:

“We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth…” (Col 1:3-6)

The growth Paul has in mind here seems to have two facets. At one level, the gospel is growing throughout the world like a vine whose tendrils keep spreading across the fence, and over the fence, and into the neighbour’s backyard. Even in Colossae, where Paul has never been, the gospel has been taught (by the noble Epaphras) and has taken root.

But it’s also growing in another sense—in people’s lives. Where the “word of truth” is taught and believed, it bears fruit. People are changed. They are transferred from one kingdom to another (as Paul later puts it in verse 13). They begin to have a faith in Christ Jesus and a love for all the saints, and to long for their heavenly inheritance. Their priorities change, their world view changes, and their lives, bit by bit, are remade in the image of God’s own Son. This is what Paul prays would keep happening in the lives of the Colossians: “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col 1:9-10).

Now presumably there is nothing very shocking or revolutionary in these ideas. The gospel by its very nature produces growth. We all know that. However, there are three very important implications of this simple idea.

The
first
is that the growth of the gospel happens in the lives of people, not in the structures of my church. Or to put it in terms of our opening metaphor, the growth of the trellis is not the growth of the vine. We may multiply the number of programs, events, committees and other activities that our church is engaged in; we may enlarge and modernize our buildings; we may re-cast our regular meetings to be attractive and effective in communicating to our culture; we may congratulate ourselves that numbers are up. And all of these are good things! But if
people
are not growing in their knowledge of God’s will so that they walk ever more worthily of the Lord, seeking to please him in all things and bearing fruit in every good work, then there is no growth to speak of happening at all.

There are many ways to get more people along to your church. In fact, some of the largest churches in the world are the least faithful to the gospel and the Bible. The Bible itself warns us that people will congregate wherever there are teachers who are willing to tell them what they want to hear (2 Tim 4:3-4). Numerical or structural growth is not necessarily an indicator of
gospel
growth. (Mind you, numerical failure is not an indicator of gospel growth either—we are not suggesting that small churches inherently foster more gospel growth than larger ones!)

Secondly
, this means that we must be willing to lose people from our own congregation if that is better for the growth of the gospel. We must be happy to send members off to other places so that the gospel may grow there as well. And be warned: this will happen if you take gospel growth and training seriously. If you pour your time into people, and mentor and train them, the consequence will often be that some of your best people—in whom you have invested countless hours—will leave you. They will go to the mission field. They will join a church-planting team in another part of your city. They will take a job in a different part of the country because the gospel need is so great there. They will undertake further training, perhaps at theological college or seminary. A commitment to the growth of the gospel will mean that we train people towards maturity not for the benefit of our own churches or fellowships but for the benefit of Christ’s kingdom.

The
third
radical implication of this understanding of ‘gospel growth’ lies in the way we think about people. We see people not as cogs in our wheel, or as resources for our projects, but as individuals each at their own stage of gospel growth. And our goal for each person is that they advance, that they make progress, that they move one step forward from where they are now.

Let’s think about this in more detail.

Stages in gospel growth

Thinking broadly, there are four basic stages in the growth of the gospel in someone’s life. We might call them:

• Outreach

• Follow-up

• Growth

• Training

At the
outreach
stage, people come into contact with the word of truth for the first time. It might initially be through a conversation about some issue in their lives or in the world. But somehow, in some context (large or small), someone explains the gospel to them. The seed takes root, and in God’s time and by his Spirit, it bears fruit.

Once people respond to the gospel message and put their faith in Christ, some sort of initial
follow-up
is needed to establish them in the faith and teach them the basics. Depending on their background and circumstances, this initial stage of becoming firm in the faith can take a few months or several years; but however long it takes, it is vital that
someone
is sticking with the new Christian to teach, care for, and pray for them.

Then follows the lifelong process of
growth
as a Christian disciple—growing in the knowledge of God and the godly character that flows from that knowledge. This process of growth is not a cakewalk. It’s a straight and narrow path, like Christian’s in
The Pilgrim’s Progress
, with plenty of hills, valleys, enemies and sidetracks along the way. At various points in their walk along this road, Christians will get into trouble and will need particular help, counsel and prayer. A great sickness or trial may overtake them; a particular sin may start to get the better of them; a season of spiritual weakness or dryness may come upon them. In all of these circumstances—in both good times and bad—the formula for growth is the same: the ministry of the word and Spirit. As the Bible’s truth is prayerfully spoken and applied and heard, and as the Spirit works within, growth occurs.

The fourth stage—
training
—is not a sequential one, as if it happens after the growth is all finished. (How could it, since we never stop growing?) In fact, the ‘training’ stage happens as part of Christian growth, because Christian maturity is not individualistic and self-focused—as if we have reached the pinnacle of Christlike godliness when we have a one-hour quiet time each day. To grow like Christ is to grow in love and a desire to serve and minister to others.
We are using the word ‘training’ to describe the growth of all Christians in conviction, character and competency, so that in love they might minister to others by prayerfully bringing the word of God to them—whether to non-Christians in outreach, new Christians in follow-up, or all other Christians in daily growth.
If every Christian is a potential vine-worker (see chapter 4), then ‘training’ is that stage of Christian growth in which people are equipped and mobilized and resourced and encouraged to do that work. It is that stage in which their growth in conviction (beliefs), character (godliness) and competencies (skills/abilities) leads them to minister effectively to others.

Now it is vital to remember two things.
Firstly
, while all Christians can and should be trained as vine-workers, not all will be gifted to minister in exactly the same way or to the same extent. Some will be preachers and teachers, others will be Bible study leaders, some will be very good at reaching out to non-Christians and answering their questions, others will focus on meeting one to one with new Christians and following them up, and still others will be fathers or mothers teaching their children. There are a myriad of contexts and opportunities for vine work, and each Christian will have his or her God-given part to play.

Secondly
, training Christians to be vine-workers does not simply mean the impartation of certain skills and abilities (as we’ve already discussed at length above). Christian discipleship is about sound doctrine and a godly life, and so to train or equip someone to minister to others means training and equipping them with godliness and right thinking, not just with a set of skills—because that in turn is how they will need to minister to others. In order to follow up a new Christian, for example, a more mature believer needs not only to know how to run through a set of basic Bible studies; they also need to be able to model mature Christian faith and life.

Thinking about people

One enormous benefit of thinking about Christian growth in stages like this is that it helps us to think about, pray for and minister to people where they are at. If gospel growth really happens at the level of people’s individual lives, how can we help each person move forward? How can we bring the word of God to bear for each one?

Here’s a little diagnostic tool that will help us think about people. Jot down a list of seven people you know, both non-Christians and Christians in your church. Where is each of them up to in gospel growth? Let’s see if we can visualize it by mapping out the various ‘gospel growth’ stages.
[1]

You’ll notice that we’ve subdivided most of the stages to help our thinking.

Bob, for example, is not yet a Christian. He’s definitely in the outreach stage, but in your discussions with him you haven’t really got around to actually sharing the gospel with him. So far, it’s been raising various issues that are connected with God and faith and the Bible, but it’s early days. Mark, on the other hand, has come along to a guest service at church and has heard the gospel clearly explained. He still hasn’t become a Christian, but he’s further along than Bob.

Likewise, under the growth stage, you’ll notice that Jean is in the ‘need help’ category whereas Barry is ‘solid’. Both have been Christians for a number of years. Neither of them needs initial follow-up. But Jean is having a really tough time: her non-Christian husband has a gambling problem, and she is battling to raise her teenage kids virtually on her own. She has always been strong in faith, but in recent times has started to become bitter and angry with God, and been seen less often at church and Bible study group. Jean really needs help. She needs someone (or more than one person) to get alongside her, care for her, pray with her, encourage her from the Bible to keep going, and so on. Barry, on the other hand, is motoring along reasonably well. It’s not all smooth sailing, of course, but at the moment he is making good, solid progress in the Lord.

Now, again, these are not simple, black-and-white, or strictly sequential categories. Nearly all Christians will move in and out of the ‘need help’ category at different points in their lives. Next year, it might be Barry’s turn to go through the wringer. But for the sake of thinking through what each of them needs at the moment in order to grow in the gospel, it’s useful to make a distinction.

In the training stage, there are also a couple of useful sub-categories: general and specific. These refer to equipping or training that is applicable to just about every Christian, and that which relates to specific ministries. Don, for example, is a solid mature Christian who is learning how to understand and share his faith with his non-Christian workmates. This is general training—it’s something that all Christians should be equipped to do. Sarah, on the other hand, is a very capable and caring woman who has a real knack for explaining the Bible clearly. She is currently being trained to lead one of the women’s Bible study groups that meet on Thursday mornings.