One of the training options that we offer to churches is our Learning Communities. These are generally 4 immersions spaced out over 2 years and are an intensive way of getting teaching, process time and strategic planning for church leaders and their teams. The Tunbridge Wells Learning Community have just finished their 3rd immersion and Sean Dooley sent us this story about how they’ve been raising other leaders up to run LCs themselves.
“One of the great things about the Tunbridge Wells LC is that it has been the vehicle for Frontier Leader Training. We are clearly modelling to all the participants on the LC the taking of LC leaders around the discipleship square (see diagram). We deliberately point out to the participants on the LC that, for example, ‘Andy Strajnic is now doing L3 as a LC leader on this third immersion. Please encourage and support him.’
We call it Frontier Leader Training because we are taking a select group of people who have not only internalised missional discipleship, but are living it and have the anointing to coach others in it. Our hope is that they will be the guys that will develop missional discipleship training for other church leaders in their relational networks, using the 3DM material. In other words, that they would be leaders on the frontier of training church leaders in mission and discipleship. In turn doing what I have done with them – training other Frontier Leaders. In fact, Phil Stokes is doing that as I write!
I
spoke to Paul Maconochie (Director of 3DM USA) recently and he reminded me that getting a movement going requires doing the same things, in the same way, over and over, until people ‘get it’ and begin to run with it themselves. The guys we are training are leaders on the frontier of making that happen in our nation and that is no overstatement. There are still thousands of churches in our nation that have not even begun to ask the right questions about what is wrong with the church, let alone begun to search for the answers. There is still massive scope for Learning Communities.
spoke to Paul Maconochie (Director of 3DM USA) recently and he reminded me that getting a movement going requires doing the same things, in the same way, over and over, until people ‘get it’ and begin to run with it themselves. The guys we are training are leaders on the frontier of making that happen in our nation and that is no overstatement. There are still thousands of churches in our nation that have not even begun to ask the right questions about what is wrong with the church, let alone begun to search for the answers. There is still massive scope for Learning Communities.
Those currently on Frontier Leaders Training are Andy Strajnic, Phil Stokes, Nic Bradshaw and Richard Glazier.”
Sean Dooley
