I’ve been thinking a lot about the equipping leaders we are to be for the people God calls us to lead, Eph 4: 11-12. What I’ve found in my ministry’s is that I don’t understand enough about equipping and so the people (volunteers, elders, other leaders, parents and student leaders) are not being equipped to do the work we are called to do among the church body, in the community and throughout the world.
We have looked at the over arching issue in part 1 and in part 2 we talked about the misaligned focus of leaders and today I want to look at training and equipping lapses.
Last week Starbucks closed all of it’s American stores for 3 hours to retrain it’s employees how to make the perfect espresso. People complained, gripped, quipped that 3 hours of training was going to do anything. But they are wrong. When we get serious about training and making sure what we are trying to accomplish is happening we all win (the owners, employees and customers).
It can work the same way in the church if we (those named in Eph. 4:11) get serious about it. Part of getting serious is helping people in the church realize what the job of the minister is and is not. To much falls by default to the paid staff that the real ministry (things like process of thinking through training and equipping and then creating plans and systems to actually train and equip our people is put on hold) gets shelved so that the urgent is taken care of.
These lapses are forged by (1) this lack of understanding of what leaders in the church are called to do and the different roles that each play, (2) a lack of understanding that no one possesses all the gifts in vs. 11, (3) we do not take it (training and equipping) serious. We can work on the first 2 by getting back to the bible and seeing what it says about them, but I want to focus the remaining writing on number 3.
What would it look like if we took training and equipping serious? Open up the white cloud dream space that you use when you day dream and imagine with me a church that began to take it serious.
I see the leader(s) beginning by looking at what ministry roles they have in their church (worhsip leaders and musicians, nursery and children’s ministry volunteers, greeters and first impression volunteers, small group leaders, community service volunteers, etc.). Then taking the time to list out the gifts and talents for each (musical ability, stage presence, ability to lead others in praise and celebration of the Lord, filled with the Holy Spirit, I’m sure there are more), then making a list of trainable aspects (practice time to continue to get better at playing and learn new techniques, time to learn the new songs, etc.).
Now that we know what the job entails we can look at systems to put into place that train and equip this worship ministry volunteer. What kind of systems can we put into place, you might ask? What about things like application or interview, spiritual gifts tests, a basic handbook of expectations and procedures of how the worship ministry works, weekly practices as a team, daily practice time individually, you can bring in professional musicians to do training, take them to conferences, workshops or visit other churches that you connect with to watch how they do it. List these ideas out, try them with a batch of volunteers, and treat everything as an experiment and tweak what isn’t working and run with what it is.
Lapses in training and equipping doesn’t have to happen. We the leaders can and have to do something about it, it’s what we are called to do. You can take these ideas and apply them to any volunteer position and think through what it going to help them be the best they can be and glory can be brought to God through what they do, that is what training and equipping is all about.
Two examples of this comes to mind Community Christian Church and Reston Community Church. CCC regularly puts out training guides that they are producing and RCC went through a period where they worked through job descriptions and expectations for all the paid and volunteer positions. Make sure to check them out.
