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!
