MOLDI Dinners

Ben Pfahlert's post today on the Sola Panel brought back some happy memories:

MOLDI dinners: In the late 1990s, the Sydney University Christian group realized that it was difficult to get ‘not-yet believers’ to come to outreach events. So they decided to go to them. They organized dinners in King Street, Newtown, which were designed for the express purpose of discussing the meaning of life. Dinner and discussion took place in a neutral territory: a restaurant. A campus in Melbourne adopted this idea, and gave them the name ‘MOLDI dinners’. M.O.L.D.I stands for ‘meaning of life discussed intelligently’. In 2007, this campus ran nine dinners which were attended by 45 ‘not-yet believing’ Uni students.

I never went to one of these but I remember sitting around with Andrew Katay, staffworker with the Sydney Uni Christian group at the time, talking about these things, and what a great relaxed opportunity they were for talking about the gospel and all sorts of things. He mentioned one particular faculty member, a Christian who had realized he was somewhat awkward in matters of conversation, keen as he was to talk about things Christian. But he hadn't left it at that. He offered to sponsor a number of these dinners, ie pay for poor students to go to restaurants in Newtown, so that they could keep on happening. It was his way of both realizing his limitations and capitalizing on his strengths, so that people might hear about salvation in Jesus.

What a brilliant example of teamwork! It put me in mind of Philippians 1:3-5

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

where at least part of the partnership is that these guys gave money so that gospel work could continue.

Watching Ben Pfahlert

I am currently reviewing hours and hours of material taped by Col Marshall as he interviews leaders who have been involved in training apprentices in ministry.

There is some marvellous pragmatic stuff from Ben Pfahlert (current national director of the MTS, Ministry Training Strategy) about why it is actually efficient to add two years to your training for ministry before going on to enter theological college. It looks like a waste of time to spend six years rather than four in training, before you even hit your first longterm paid ministry role. But Ben makes the point that heaps of pastors drop out of ministry over the years, and for a good number of them (in Ben's observation) it has to do with them just not really knowing what it was going to be like before they started the long and arduous process of training for it. A two year MTS-style apprenticeship is going to give a pretty solid sense of what it will be like.

I also really appreciated his statement of the big lesson he says he learned as a ministry apprentice: that it is God's job to fill ministry holes (whether Bible study leaders or others), and so the best response is not to panic but to pray.

This material is pure gold—wonderful practical and theological thinking from Tara Thornley, Joshua Ng, Phillip Jensen and a heap of others (I'm in there too). And Col Marshall is, seriously, one of the best interviewers I have seen. There is a mountain of material here that will certainly repay the effort of trainee trainers in watching them. I have the job of ensuring that the material ends up well indexed, edited and accessible; as well as linking it to the MTS training manual I'm working on with Col Marshall.

The process is going to take a while. I believe that by the time we've finished working on this resource we're going to have something that will be of extraordinary gospel benefit for our generation of gospel workers. Also, I am hoping that Col will keep interviewing and adding to what we have.