Vineyard Church North Phoenix | Basic Training in the Vineyard

Our mission is to train emerging Vineyard leaders to become effective leaders of Christian ministries. We want not only to give people the Biblical and theological material they need—the sort of thing they might get at a Christian college or seminary—but we also want to make sure it is integrated with actual practice and spiritual formation.

Putting It All Together

The aspect of integration is so important. American education in general, and theological education in particular, is not integrated. Seminaries all realize this is a problem, so they try to create remedies. The best-known is “field education.” Of course, anyone who has been through seminary understands how field education actually works—you get a pastor to approve you leading a ministry or an outreach group—he or she says, “Fine. Let me know how it went,” and you talk to them briefly at the end. It rarely has much relationship to any kind of true mentoring or internship.

Seminaries are heavily weighted toward academic credit and research papers—and there is nothing wrong with that. But if that is the bulk of a potential leader’s training—as it unfortunately is for many going into pastoral ministry—they will find it inadequate. The research that reviews the seminary process is pretty condemning. And, statistically, few people who go that route actually stay in the ministry.

That’s one reason why VLI has leadership projects instead of research papers. Most pastors aren’t writing research papers for their congregation. I certainly value being able to read critically, express oneself well, and know how to do research. VLI is not at all anti-academic. We’re just wanting to keep people’s experience out ahead of their information, because the tension experienced in that gap can create a high learning curve. Educational Theory 101 reminds us that the “need to know” becomes extremely high when your experience is always just a little ahead of what you know theoretically.

Basic Training

On the practical side of things, we have a number of courses in “vintage Vineyard practices”—leadership development, church planting, models of ministry. Last winter we had Steve Nicholson, a veteran church planter and Vineyard’s national church planting coordinator, come and do a church planting intensive that the students absolutely ate up. One month later, we had another intensive on church growth with Rich Nathan using Christian Schwartz’ book, Natural Church Development. We have a class on how to Identify-Recruit-Train-Deploy-Monitor-Nurture leaders, and I regularly bring staff members from the Vineyard Columbus who oversee dominant infrastructures like small groups or children’s ministry.

Every quarter the student has a major leadership project to be accomplished. By the second year, they have to be leading a weekly small group as well as serving in the church. They are mentored by a staff pastor, and various staff members work with them practically in areas such as preaching, evangelism, and pastoral care. The program is very flexible, and the students can participate whether it is a one-pastor staff (such as with VLI At a Distance) or a large, multiple-staff context.

Learning to Think Well

On the academic side of things, we have classes on theology and interpreting Scripture, with certain perspectives that are continually modeled throughout the whole program. A key value we want to teach is contextualization. Can you break a book down into literary units? Can you see how that sentence you are reading fits into the flow of the whole thing? If a student says, “I think this text means x,” we ask, “Based on what? Have you taken into account the ever-widening circles of context here, not only literary but historical?” We try to put people in touch with excellent resources. We try to create mental habits over those two years, habits of asking the right questions and going to the right sources. We regularly have top scholars like Dr. Don Williams and Dr. Peter Davids come teach for us, and it always creates a real buzz with the students.

The Right Kind of Student

As for the type of student who takes part in VLI (whether our residential or distance program), the two groups we see most in VLI are young adults just ramping-up into ministry, or older mid-career people who are now eager to try something that has more significance and meaning for them than their current profession, even if it means a lower income. We learned early on that an 18 year old straight out of high school is not a good prospect for us. Our students need to have at least two years of university experience or four to five years in the workplace—where they have lived a little, and have some ministry experience at the local church level. It’s important that they are coming into the program with some experiences that have taught them, “This doesn’t work, and this does.” If they come to VLI from that background, they do very well.

Info

Email Dave McPherson at Vineyard Church North Phoenix dave@vcfnp.com for more information. The next enrollment period will be for Winter 2009. Registration for 2009-2010 academic year will begin November 2008.

For more information about Vineyard Leadership Institute, visit www.vli.org.