Teacher Training at FBC

So as a teacher at FBC, I’ve been invited to the teacher training seminar. Nothing unusual in that, we’ve been doing these things for awhile now, but I took a closer look and things have indeed changed.

Please consider this my personal invitation and recommendation to attend the Teacher Training event on Saturday, June 28 from 9 am to 4 pm in Rm E201 (lunch will be provided).

With the completion of the modular project and the arrival of a new Senior Pastor who is passionate about discipleship, FBC faces an unprecedented opportunity to reach our community. This is going to take workers for the harvest (teachers and leaders who are dedicated, passionate and united in their efforts). This kind of unity requires common experience, language and purpose, which is the goal of the day.

This event will be led by David Brown. David is one of our own. He and his wife Liz have been a part of FBC for the last 5 years, and he comes to us with 10 years of teaching experience as a professor at the University of San Francisco and more than 8 years of experience in Christian teacher training and development. In addition, his personal Biblical research in the area of spiritual maturity and stages of spiritual growth is extensive. This will be an informative, inspiriting and challenging seminar based on Disciple-Making Teachers, by Josh Hunt and Dr. Larry Mays. We will consider the integration of what we have already gleaned from the stages of maturity found in the book MOVE and the Biblical mandate to make disciples with proven principles that will influence individuals to take the next step in their relationship with Jesus.

So please say yes, and join us as we continue to prepare to launch a year focused on equipping adults for discipleship, spiritual growth and next steps toward maturity.

There is more to this than it first appears. It starts with the first underlined sentence which gives the game away. Actually it starts with the second paragraph not being truthful. The modulars are not ready yet, but that’s okay. The new senior pastor is indeed passionate about getting everyone to have a common language and testimony, and that’s less okay, but whatever, it’s still mostly accurate. The killer is the purpose of the all day event as to create a unity of language across FBC, because that language is Willow Creek. In other words, the purpose of the all day training is to get us to think and speak like a Willow Creek mega church staff. And that’s bad.

Continuing on we find out we’re being led by a Mr. David Brown, so far so good, whose leading qualification is a secular university professorship at one of the most insane cities in America. Things just soured a little bit. Now we come to the underlined phrase, we will be using the book Disciple Making teachers. I look up the book on Amazon, and here’s the preview:

… Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church, for example, has led the way with the seeker-driven paradigm, the seven-step strategy, networking, and various other innovative ministry strategies. But when I hear Bill Hybels preach his average weekend seeker message or midweek New Community message, I think to myself, “Willow Creek’s strategy could be dead wrong, and he would still fill the auditorium.

You see, it’s really not about networking or the seven-step strategy or all the rest of those excellent approaches. It is about the fact that Bill Hybels puts it together on stage. When he talks, people listen. I just smile when I hear that Midwestern accent because I know he will probably deliver another great message.

It’s the same with Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church…

 It goes downhill from there, believe it or not. So the game’s up now, FBC is hosting an all day event where we are going to learn how to do mega church, Willow Creek style. Traditional Bible based teaching has fully gone out now, and what has arrived to take its place is the pale horse of community group facilitating. As it is written, “Come out of her My people, lest you share in her punishment.”