Workers for the harvest : producing and training the leaders the church needs to fulfil its missionary task

Abstract

In order to fulfil its missionary task the church needs good leaders. However, there is a huge shortage of leaders and many of the people who step forward to fill the gap, are not trained. This study looks at what is needed in a training system to produce enough of the right kind of leaders to lead the church in fulfilling its missionary task. However, training people has little value if they are not going to be given the opportunity to take part in the ministry. This leads to the conclusion that the church does not only need the right training system, it also has to break with the Professional Church Model, so that the priesthood of all believers will not continue to be a theological assertion only, but become an experiential reality. In this light the study then evaluates the two major models used by the church to prepare its leaders, namely the Traditional Residential Academic Model and Theological Education by Extension. The evaluation shows that the Traditional Residential Academic Model has serious weaknesses. Theological Education by Extension introduced a new paradigm, namely in-service training. It overcomes many of the weaknesses of the Traditional Residential Academic Model, but it also has its share of problems. The Daystar Training Model is then introduced and evaluated. It takes the in-service paradigm further and overcomes some of the problems that Theological Education by Extension could not solve. The evaluation shows that Daystar has the potential to provide the leaders the church needs to fulfil its missionary task.