Workshops

WORKSHOPS: One of the major challenges in church planting missions is training leaders when there are no good colleges or seminaries nearby. One approach has been to send men back to the States to study. But that creates many difficulties and is a poor option for multiple reasons. Church planters don't normally want to raise the millions of dollars to buy property, build buildings and fill libraries. And even if a missionary were to do that, it normally means that there will forever be a need to finance and man the institution with foreign resources. Because of these challenges, many church planting missionaries opt for CHURCH BASED NONFORMAL TRAINING of pastors. "Church based" means that the training takes place within the local church for the people in that local church. "Nonformal" means it is structured, deliberate and with high academic standards, but not restricted to institutional norms. "Training" means that it goes beyond the classroom to actually equip people to "do" the ministry… not just learn about the ministry. So this approach to training church leaders is a powerful educational model and is being used effectively all over the world. The problem is that most of us never saw or experienced "nonformal church based training" before going to the mission field. We are asked to go and do something we have never experienced. Therefore, BMW is investing considerable resources in helping churches here in North America to do just this. Our theory is that if future missionaries have been trained in a church based program, they will hit the ground running when they get to the field. Since they have been trained that way they will know how to train others that way. The potential in the pew is huge. But a church must provide the avenue to make this happen. That is where we come in. This weekend, I have been co-facilitating a workshop in a church in North Carolina. Our goal is to help them develop church based training for their church. BMW has a series of workshops that help a local church design a program and launch a vision and strategy to make this happen. These are a series of 8 hour workshops aimed at the leadership team of a church. Part of my ministry is helping sending churches be more effective in training and launching the next generation of missionaries.