Taught people Teaching - the Discipling Cycle

I was thick with cold last Saturday, so I took my duvet to the training seminar I was supposed to be running at the Calvin Protestant Church in Kewtown. Everybody else did all the work, I only gave the occasional snotty comment from my warm cocoon in the icy church building. It worked really well!

People were initially alarmed to be tasked with leading a section of the seminar (it is a small preparation module with six parts, presented by PowerPoint).  But they had most of them been through the presentation last time when I went there with my Discipling Nations colleague and friend, Leon Davids. So this was their chance to gain a little skill, and more importantly, a little confidence, in actually presenting the seminar themselves. It was also an opportunity for me to check whether I was getting the shape of the seminar right - so that it would be easy for another person to present it. Mostly it was OK - although it does need refining. I know the sort of things I will want to say when I use my rather unique materials. All that has to be specified or eliminated! 

Anyway...the mission team at the church trained themselves, organised themselves, and then went out and painted a Bible story and chatted with people in teams of four, and came back later with wonderful stories and happy experiences of communicating the Gospel in a gentle, respectful and effective way :). One thing I like about this seminar is that it goes together with an immediate practical component...the theory gets put to test as an integral part of the learning experience.

But the kicker is, the mission team are going to take this course with them on a "mission trip" they have scheduled to Mosselbaai...so they are going to take it one step further - independently using the material to empower another group of Christians to do what they have been empowered to do :)...and hopefully also use the same material to train yet others!



Malihambe, as we Methodists say (let it spread). :)