EQUIP-ment

I've had a recent revelation, and it's stupid that this hasn't come to me any sooner than now. I'm throwing out the word "training" from my vocabulary. It doesn't belong in church, and it doesn't belong in the mouth of one of its leaders.

The Red Cross provides training for its volunteers; the YMCA provides training for its employees. I worked as a "Trainer" for a corporation for 2.5 years during college where I trained other managers and employees to perform their job with excellence.

I just don't think that training adequately describes what we're about as architects of Christ communities. Training seems to be a rather technical approach to passing on instruction to others to perform their duties well. We follow manuals; we sketch out scenarios; we show, teach, do, and repeat. All of this is important in the learning process as one assumes a new role to perform.

Yet, it just doesn't quite translate to the church. When we gather leaders together for any of our various ministries, we gather for equipping. I could very well be splitting hairs on this one, but the posture of our approach is what matters as we lead. It's the same as a batter's stance before she smacks a softball out of the park; and the same as the golfer's posture as he swings away for the greens. If you're off in your stance, you're definitely not going to hit one out of the park. You'll pop one up for an easy out, or you'll slice your way into the rough.

Equipping comes to us from the Koine Greek of "katarismo". A little research showed me that this is a medical term meaning, "setting the bone." When the followers of the Christ community gather together to discern how they will participate in God's reign in our world (doing ministry), they gather before the Spirit who equips them with the tools necessary to participate. They discover that God has given them specific gifts for specific tasks in their participation. They discover how the Spirit "sets us in place" to be the body of Christ for the sake of our world. We move from dis-location and into location through equipping.

Equipping happens in a multitude of ways--through small groups, through individual coaching, through sermon and worship time, through coffee hour conversations that spill over superficiality and into mission, etc. But what is being done is more than training, it's being set in place to carry out God's mission for us in the world and be the witnesses God calls us to be.

I've let training take too large a spot in my approach to my call; let equipping pave the way.