The Quality of the Trainer Impacts the Outcome

The Quality of the Trainer Impacts the Outcome of the Program

Matthew 10:24

A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

Last week we looked at how the quality of trainees in a program will directly impact or effect the training outcomes for every student.  Trainers also impact the process in significant ways.  Programs employing ineffective trainers will produce unsatisfactory results.  The training will always be less than ideal and could have otherwise achieved greater success.  Developing quality training staff should be a priority of every institution.

Yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but that is the point – they are exceptions.  A young prodigy like Mozart can soon leave his teacher behind, and this has little bearing on the effectiveness of his teacher.  In most cases, an ineffective teacher leaves his or her mark on the program and, if we are keen stewards, we will attempt to minimize that negative impact.

Think of it this way.  If a training program can anticipate that its alumni will not exceed the quality of the trainers, what is the best that can be expected?  The best that can be hoped for is that the program reproduces what it models.  You might expect that the trainees will come to look like the trainers.  The character deficiencies evident in trainers will likewise be seen in the trainees.  The spiritual depth of the trainer will be mirrored in the spiritual depth of the trainees.  Jesus said, “it is enough for the student to be like his teacher (Matthew 10:25),” but what if that level of training does not achieve the desired outcomes?

In the same way that care should be taken to select quality students, trainers need to be chosen with the utmost consideration.

Character Qualities, Spirituality and Attitudes

I am not aware of any qualitative studies that research the causes of pastoral ministry attrition and/or retention.  The two research projects conducted by the Mission Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance, now published in the books Too Valuable to Lose (book or PDF)  and Worth Keeping, demonstrate that the primary causes of attrition from the field of service are brought on by issues relating to character qualities, attitudes and spirituality.  This says nothing about effectiveness.  However, effective people will make effective ministers.  It has now been clear in the minds of missionary trainers that academic learning does not produce the kinds of results that will impact the longevity of service or effectiveness in ministry.

Debates in education have frequently vented about the significance of the Null and the Hidden curricula.  These are the things that students learn by a) not teaching them at all (Null, meaning by not teaching something we are implicitly teaching something else.), and b) by accidentally passing on learning unwittingly (Hidden, meaning not intentional and more likely an accidental by-product).  It is precisely in the areas of character, spirituality and attitudes that we should be concerned about what we teach accidentally or by not teaching them at all.  For example, if our sense of modesty does not permit us to raise the problem of internet addiction to pornography, we are failing our trainees to be aware of this evil and to fight it in their lives and the lives of others.

Our programs may suffer from the greater evil of reinforcing negative character traits, attitudes and spirituality because our trainers do not model the outcomes we want to see achieved in our programs.  While we were short of personnel for our training program some suggestions were made to bring people on board who were available to help.  In one case, I was familiar with the people and felt an immediate concern because it was not clear that they really wanted to be missionaries.  There did not appear to be a happy and contented embracing of the missionary life and calling.  How could we have somebody training missionaries who did not really want to be a missionary?  Our best trainers are the ones who do not want to be here.  They would rather be over there, but for some reason are not able to and are therefore available to train.

There are other issues relating to the quality of training staff.  These will be considered next week!

Training Will Never Exceed the Quality of Trainees

Mark 3: 13-19 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.

We have been told that you are what you eat. Eventually, the food we eat impacts our physical state. Nutritionists remind us that a healthy diet should improve longevity and produce healthier lives.

 

When it comes to training our programs become what we put into them. The most significant resource we bring to training is the quality of student. The best learning interventions and planned skill development activities will never produce the desired outcomes if the student does not enjoy the innate giftedness, endowment and, in the case of Christian ministry, calling.

 

Jesus knew the importance of selection to the overall training outcome. The significance of the selection process in the lives of the Apostles is not new. Much has been made of the fact that Jesus spent the whole night in prayer prior to choosing the twelve apostles and calling them to him.

 

Luke 6: 12-13 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. (13) When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles.

 

Jesus appointed the twelve as Apostles, but they were apostles in training. Prior to the title and office came the in-service training. Jesus dedicated the remainder of his life on earth to the achievement of specific training outcomes. In order to ensure that the training was effective he spent a night in prayer and chose twelve men begin the process of equipping for ministry. After all, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. No training program will ever exceed the quality of student selected for equipping.

 

Mark’s Gospel tells us that Jesus called to him those he wanted (Mark 3:13). This statement determines that the selection process was also intentional. Not only was his training program intentionally designed to achieve specific outcomes, but the selection process was predetermined and premeditated to ensure that those outcomes would be safeguarded throughout the process. Imagine how different our ministry training programs would be if the selection process attempted to ensure that only called people were admitted?

This raises the additional problem or tension between access and excellence. How accessible is our training? Are the doors of our institutions flung wide open hailing any living soul with the ability to achieve a decent GPA (Grade Point Average)? Or worse, does our training assume that academic achievement is the best guarantee for the eventual selection of adequate quality of people for service in ministry? In other words, we might also ask, are our selection criteria too heavily dependent on the academic history of the candidate? Perhaps, the criteria for selection needs to be redefined in order to ensure that the program is accessible by those who are called into ministry and that excellence be defined as the demonstration of achieved desirable outcomes, not merely a high GPA.  In a perfect world, training programs would be accessible to those who demonstrate the capability and calling to excel in Christian service, not merely to those who demonstrate ability in academic achievement. 

Inadequate selection reduces the quality of the overall program. When a training program admits students who are not called into ministry the end product of the training is affected. Every student in the program is impacted by those who are not really called. The sum total of the trained students achieves a less desirable outcome. So, what do we do about this?

Every school has selection criteria. Administrators of training programs concerned about the excellence of training they offer will examine and evaluate the selection criteria to ensure that those entering the program are truly called into ministerial service. For example, Gateway Missionary Training Centre will only admit students who are sent as missionaries. There is not general admission. Every student must be sent by a missionary agency or by a church with the prior determination that this person will be commissioned and sent to the field. This selection criteria greatly reduces the number of students, but remarkably improves the quality of training for those admitted.

I should think that our selection process could use some improvement. Certainly a little more prayer would help!

Excellent Training Is Always Intentional

Mark 3: 13-19   Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.   14 He appointed twelve— designating them apostles— that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach    15 and to have authority to drive out demons.    16 These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter);    17 James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder);    18 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot    19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

The intentional trekking school of Jesus received its initiating class with the appointing of the twelve sent ones.  They had a mission – for this is what a sent one really is.  The mission had several stages, and the first priority stage was to receive adequate training.  So, as Jesus appointed the twelve he gave them a title and an immediate task.  This task was their training.  The intentionality with which Jesus appointed and designated his followers is no less applicable to the training program he developed for them.  Yes, Jesus, the master trainer, developed an intentional training program.

What did the training consist of?  How was the training completed?  What methodologies did Jesus use?  Can we really call this training?  The first hint about the content and methodology of the master training program begins half way through verse fourteen; “that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach (15) and to have authority to drive out demons.  If you read these verses and never imagined that they referred to training, don’t fret.  If it looked more like what we experienced as training we might have recognized it.

Those of us who have traversed through the many years of a formal educational system have come to view training as principally academic.  We associate learning with schools, schools with classrooms, classrooms with podiums, podiums with elevated levels of understanding and cognition. On occasion this is even accompanied by excellence in teaching and communication skills.  Yet, the training that Jesus developed for his sent ones did not look in the least like that.

How could it, of course, look like something so modern as a school?  Jesus was a product of his time, after all, and schools are modern things that eventually emerged from the monastic movement, or so our persuasive argument would go.  How preposterous are some of the assumptions we maintain about scripture, our Lord, and his methodologies!  Schools are not modern creations.  They did exist.  Jesus could have easily selected from at least five common models of schooling that were evident in the Ancient Near Eastern cultures of his day.  One such system was undoubtedly the one that he endured as a child … the synagogue.  Why would we ever assume that Jesus did not start a normal school because they did not exist yet?  The arrogance with which we dismiss his methodologies as antiquated or provincial is astounding.  More likely is the scenario that Jesus examined the possibility of training his disciple using a Greek system (The model from which our concept of academic education is derived) and determined it did not suit his needs.

Just because the training the disciples enjoyed looked different than modern missional training does not mean that Jesus was not intentional, nor that he was inexperienced or random in his methodologies.  On the contrary, the argument presented here is that Jesus intentionally developed a school that looked different than our own.  This school had observable predetermined training outcomes and most importantly, it was successful.  On the other hand, what else would we expect from the master trainer?  And, if he really is the master trainer, it would appear we have more learn about how to train people for ministry.

This requires a little more development and in the following musings I hope to examine what training outcomes Jesus targeted in his schooling system.  Furthermore, we will look at the results of that training.  During these developments I hope to establish that Jesus chose methods that suited the desired outcomes.

Happy reading!