Ordinary Trainers Make Training More Accessible

When it comes to accessibility, there are less helpful trainers and there are more helpful trainers.

This overly sharp contrast will highlight how trainers who are current practitioners make ministry more understandable, easily applicable and lead to greater results.

Less Helpful Trainers

You have seen them. Although they are extraordinary people with inspiring ministry stories, most likely it has been a while since they have done the ministry for which they are providing training. Nevertheless, they are the recognized experts, ministry celebrities, and have a wealth of resources.

Their presentations are refined and their stage presence is polished. The systems and solutions offered appear simple and easy to use. However, at the book table the program details and pricing overwhelm. But people buy in because they want the grand ministry success promised. Or they sign up to learn how to become a certified system trainer themselves.

When the participants get back home to their own ministries they are frustrated the new system doesn’t work as easily as they thought it would. Some wisely dump the materials and do what they know works, while others keep signing up for more and more help from the ministry franchise.

More Helpful Trainers

You have met them. They are ordinary ministers and people doing the same type of ministry for which they providing training. They are current practitioners. They know well the needs and struggles of their ministry colleagues personally and identify with them as partners, even friends.

Their presentations are encouraging and they carry themselves with humble credibility. The participants leave knowing that they can improve their ministry on their own by what they have learned. The trainers share ministry tools freely and allow them to be modified to fit a variety of ministry contexts.

There are more of these types of trainers available because these people are the ordinary ministers who serve all around the world. This group has greater potential because of their sheer number, personable influence and much broader networks.

Still, many more of these types of trainers could be mobilized. Maybe some of them need to understand how much they really do have to offer. Maybe some of them just need a quality opportunity to get involved.

Certainly, the global Church needs many types of training and trainers, from the extraordinary to the ordinary, as the Lord gifts and provides. Pray that the Lord will move upon many more of His ordinary ministers with confidence in their gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit to train others.

These ordinary men and women are even more likely to make far greater and deeper impact on the way Gospel ministry is actually accomplished around the world than the few extraordinary ones.


[See a related blog entry: Customization Over Standardization]