The most common request we get about our training center is “can I see your curriculum?” However the question assumes that the content drives the process. Though we care more about process, we make a stab at answering, “how do you match content to your training process?”

Topics Addressed

• 0:45  What’s behind the question, “Can I see your curriculum?”
• 4:10   If you were starting to design a training process, what content questions would you be thinking through?
• 11:00  What foundational issues need to come into the design?
• 13:50 What drives your content choices?
• 19:50 How do you assess what books to use in training?
• 27:15  What’s planned for season 2 this fall?
  

Show Notes

Resources mentioned today are listed at www.trainthechurch.com

Most every month, a pastor or seminary student drives down to our church to spend some time talking through training and discipleship, then watching our Training Center. This podcast began because we realized that certain questions were being asked every time we met.

Today, we tackle one of the most popular.  In dialog with other pastors, after we’ve described the overall process for training men in the church that we practice, there is a question we hear pretty quickly. “How much is reasonable to expect of Christian men who work and have a family?”

Because every church context is unique, we strive to talk through both our practice and the principles involved.

Key Questions

• 1:00 What is the baseline character requirements of a man you’re going to train for ministry?
• 3:50 Would you train a man if there are known marital issues?
• 7:35 Does the reputation of his children affect his readiness for training?
• 9:57 Should ministry involvement be a prerequisite to extended ministry training?
• 12:36 A deep dive on ‘How much workload can a man reasonably handle as part of the training process?’
• 31:00 What’s the minimum workload? What’s a good starting point?
• 36:28 What are the liabilities to a monthly meeting for training?
• 38:37 How do you respond to pastors who say, “I don’t have the time”?
• 39:55 How should a pastor respond to a man who says, “I don’t have the time”?

One of the core strengths of FBC’s Training Center is helping men to determine their gifting. That determination doesn’t come from the pastors and their input, but from the community that develops within the group itself.  Today we talk about how effective ministry training involves understanding how God specifically and uniquely gifted each man.

Key Questions

• 2:04  Why are so many people unclear about what their spiritual gifts are?
• 3:28  Are spiritual gift tests helpful or not?
• 15:33 Explain how finding your gifts fits into what we do in ministry training.
• 21:13 What do we practically to cultivate the discovery of gifts in the context of training?
• 25:10 Chris lists new spiritual gifts ex-cathedra   ;-)
• 27:48 What dangers should we beware of as we help men determine their spiritual gifts?