Church Planters are Better Trained than Taught

I’m not here to offend my teacher friends. In fact, I believe they’d agree that there’s a crucial difference between knowledge and skill—and, correspondingly, between teaching and training.

Consider the rules of baseball: that’s knowledge. But hitting a 90-mile-per-hour curveball? That’s a skill. One can be taught; the other must be trained.

Similarly, the content of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is knowledge. Yet, gathering people into a community and leading them to live like Jesus is a skill. Again, one can be taught; the other must be trained.

Jesus embodied both approaches. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God. But when his disciples suggested sending people away to find food, he instructed them to feed the crowd themselves. That was training.

Both teaching and training have the power to transform. Teaching changes the way you think, while training changes what you do and how well you do it. Both are valuable when applied correctly. However, teaching what should be trained rarely achieves the desired outcomes. I could attend a class every day and be taught the Major League Baseball rulebook until I memorized it, yet I still wouldn’t be able to hit a 90 mph curveball. Similarly, I could be taught the Sermon on the Mount until I memorized it, but that wouldn’t make me any better at gathering people, creating community, and training them to live like Jesus—key aspects of church planting.

At Multiply Project, our vision is to produce more church planters through training.

• Our training is church-based, so people are learning in the context where they will eventually serve.
• We focus on developing the habits and skills necessary to start a faithful, fruitful, and multiplying church.
• Our training is experiential, encouraging participants to go and do, so they become more adept at the tasks essential to church planting.

Do you want your church to become a training center where future church planters are equipped to gather people, create community, and lead them to live like Jesus? We want that too. Let’s talk.