Getting Traineeships Going
By Pete Hughes
It’s very easy to think that training the next generation of church leaders is someone else’s problem.
To keep planting churches at the rate we need to reach Australia, we need at least another 731 new leaders in the next two years. If every church in the Reach Australia network raised up and trained one new trainee in the next two years we would be able to reach that number and exceed it.
However, raising up new leaders is not easy. It’s easy for the focus of ministry to be about “the next thing” rather than long-term leadership development. It’s very easy to think that this is someone else’s problem like a bigger church or a university campus ministry.
And then there is the training aspect. We need to take time to train people to do the tasks that we could be doing ourselves faster. But we need to remember that trainees are great assets to what we are doing day to day. Traineeships are an important part of the leadership pipeline in terms of raising up leaders, developing and testing leaders and helping trainees learn to develop other leaders themselves.
Here are some resources to help get you going:
Where do we start? It can be an overwhelming task to even think about establishing a traineeship if your church does not have a history of the culture of traineeships. As Rhett Harris (EV Church) points out, trainees don’t just fall into your lap. The recruiting process is an important part of the training program.
What are we looking for? Three key indicators:
Of course they are trainees and they are not perfect, but Rhett Harris reminds us that “past performance is a good indicator of future success”. So we need to be looking for people who show potential in these areas. For trainers this means taking time to look and see what people are doing, and looking at people over a number of years rather than simply looking around and seeing who is here.
Here are some podcasts to get you started:
Ministry Training Strategy is not the only organisation that will help you set up a traineeship, but they are one of the biggest and best. They have heaps of great resources to help you think about how to get started. If you have questions, give them a call.
Recruiting does not happen overnight. It takes planning and work throughout the year. A simple yearly plan could be:
But as we mentioned above, watching people as they grow and develop can take months and years.
If you haven’t started conversations with people this is the time of the year to get this going and it is not too late to get to some of the conferences. One of the most life changing moments for me was to attend a conference to work out if I should change my career to ministry (okay, it is also where I met my wife, but that’s another story). There was nothing like standing in a room with other people as we heard, prayed and sung about changing the world through the gospel. We are currently in the middle of conference season. Even if you don’t have anyone to go with, I want to encourage you to get along to one of them, just to get the idea rolling of thinking about traineeships, perhaps talking with others about how they have done it.
Once you have a trainee, what do you do now? Training can be mistaken for merely letting people have a go and seeing what happens in which case trainees are nothing but cheap, albeit immature, labour. Giving people opportunities to try things in ministry is an essential part of training but training takes time as a part of the leadership process.
Once again, MTS has a great range of free resources to help you train someone in ministry. Including a number of papers to read through together.
Rhett’s new ebook on the leadership pipeline is not merely about traineeships, but they feature as an important part in the process of setting up an effective leadership pipeline. As people work alongside you, they will develop as leaders, develop leaders around them and give you an opportunity to see if they really do have what it takes to be a long term gospel worker.
Col Marshall, previously of MTS, and really the godfather of the whole process, has also written Passing the Baton on traineeships. Col goes through all the nuts and bolts of why and how of traineeships, as well as some of the basics in developing a training program of what you and the trainee do together. He also includes advice on raising money.
“It is a great privilege and responsibility to train someone in ministry. Not only are you participating as one of God’s fellow workers in training up more hands for his harvest field, you also get to witness God at work in your apprentice as he or she learns and grows. In addition, you learn as much from them as they learn from you as you do the work of sowing, cultivating and reaping alongside one another.” – Col Marshall, Passing the Baton.
At Reach Australia, we don’t want you to carry the whole burden yourself, and we have our own resources to help. Learn to Lead is a one-year program of ten masterclass sessions for ministry apprentices and church volunteers that we run online at Reach Australia. If you are worried about making sure that your trainees are not getting all the training they could, we can help you. We look at everything from output thinking to how to run your diary. This is also an important opportunity for trainees to spend time with other trainees from around the country.
“Learn to Lead has been great: my heart has been moved, my ministry skills have been strengthened, and I’ve been able to deeply think about important topics. I’d absolutely recommend this program to all apprentices who are keen to be equipped to do church ministry in a sustainable, healthy, and logical way” – Learn to Lead 2024 participant
Raising up the next generation of leaders is not something we can simply put aside to someone else and hope that they will do it, we need to all be looking for the next set of leaders to pass on the work of making God known until the return of his Son.
“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” 2 Timothy 2:2
