IFES Worldwide Training Consultation Ghana - Day 2

Challenges for this consultation (Daniel Bourdanné)

• While we are here what is the vision that we have?
• Who is going to determine the direction to our strategy of training?
• Who is going to direct into the recruitment of people we train?

Some memorable quotes

• We need to spend some time in the desert to develop a vision, to construct goals, to talk to God and clarify what we want to do.
• Jesus had an intentionality in the development of leadership.
• Jesus had a very clear vision in the process of training: he was going to start by identifying the people.
• When thinking about training we need to find a way to accomplish the two purposes of both training the students and staff we are training and training ourselves.
• Jesus did not establish an academy but a community of followers.
• Community of followers imply communities of relationship.
• We maybe have to reinvent the “corridors”. We maybe have to reinvent the restaurants, open our houses. We cannot make a spiritual real impact if we do not want to open our homes to our staff and students, so that they can learn, unlearn, etc.
• We need to have a core of men and women in which we invest. It is the best multiplication method.
• Most people will learn their theology from hymns not sermons. So you have to get them right!
• Give evangelism a disproportionate time in training because it is tougher.
• The danger for us as trainers, is the modelling. Evangelism is important and needs to be done not just say that it is important.
• The claims of a doctrinal basis are the anchors and the channels of life.
• We expect God to speak through Scripture. It is not a mere “academic” exercise.

Provocative Questions and challenges

• Why do you want to be trained? Why do you need training? What can we do to serve best our students? What do they need?
• How to be a radical Christian in a setting where everyone is Christian?
• Find out what is the curriculum that Jesus used by looking into the Gospels. 
• How do will build prayer in all we do?
• Do our students know how to feed themselves from the Word of God?
• What are your training programs: the end or means to an end? If they are means to and end, then what is the end? How do we know that our programs will move us toward that end?
• Is there any brokenness that does not really deserves your (Christian) attention in community of influence?
• What is preventing God’s people from growing to the full potential that God wants then to grow?
• Which of these brokenness IFES should be responding to or should respond to?
• What is God’s will for people in respect of this brokenness?
• Who are the change agents that IFES will work with?
• How would you deliver content?

Questions to Ponder

• How do we not spread ourselves too thin as to loose focus, get exhausted, make bad decisions, etc.?
• How to think strategically about all the priorities we need to take into consideration?