It's wonderful to see The Trellis and the Vine getting attention amongst friends.
Here is a link to various workshops that are being organized around the book, which is really about how you help your church to get on with the gospel ministry it should be getting on with.
Showing posts with label Col Marshall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Col Marshall. Show all posts
Friday, 5 November 2010
Tuesday, 4 September 2007
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.
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.
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