I find myself struggling this morning with the challenge of reproducing myself as a church vitality trainer and consultant. The need for training and consulting in this ministry specialty is immense and hundreds of specialists such as I are needed.
The challenge is two-fold: 1. Where is this army of consulting trainers to be found? 2. How will I transfer what I now know to them?
Let me make something clear up front: it’s not that I think I’m particularly smart or gifted, but I have devoted 20+ years of my life to this particular discipline. It’s easy enough to transfer the training material itself, and even to share guidelines for consulting, but it’s not so easy to transfer the intangibles that come from years and years of ministry involving dozens of churches, hundreds of leaders, and virtually every imaginable scenario there is and some not so imaginable.
There are common denominators in working with churches, but then there are those times when the common denominators aren’t so common and I sense something that is not showing up on paper, something between the lines. It’s at these times that I have to go outside the box and truly look at more than what can be seen.
Over the years I have developed what I think of as spiritual intuition, perhaps discernment would be the word. I’ve learned to trust that intuition and act authoritatively on this spiritual “gut feel.” But how do I teach this to someone else? How can I pour this insight, gained over a couple of decades, into someone else who needs to be on the field ASAP?
I know that the time is now to make this happen. The decline in the American evangelical church continues and I’m only one guy and not getting any younger. My spiritual intuition is telling me this is a Holy Spirit thing and that maybe I should pray more and scheme less. I should know that already.
OK – let’s turn this thing around. Why don’t I set a goal of training 12 trainer consultants in 2014, and then double that number every year until, say, 2020 when I turn 70 years old. Let me do the math . . .
12 in 2014
24 in 2015
48 in 2016
96 in 2017
192 in 2018
384 in 2019
768 in 2020
Wow! That’s 1524 in the next seven years – OK – let’s round that off to an even 1500. In truth, it’s unlikely that I could train that many myself, but those that I train could train others, etc., and combined we could hit 1500 by the end of 2020.
So, that’s my new 2020 vision – 1500 leaders running around the country serving a church vitality catalysts to the glory of God. I feel better already.
