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!
