Apprenticeship

by Jonathan Kindberg

This last week I went with several of my leaders to the Anglican 1000 conference in Plano, Texas (http://anglican1000.org/). This conference was birthed out of Archbishop Duncan’s call just over a year ago to plant 1000 new Anglican churches in the next 5 years. So far, we have planted 100. This is a great start, but much work remains.

This year my leaders and I assisted Fr. William in a workshop he gave on the topic of a “Lay church planting movement.” In essence he said that a movement starts with one on one apprenticeship: Jesus and Peter, Barnabas and Paul, Paul and Timothy. Apprenticeship, rather than a curriculum or a program, is organic; it’s life on life. It can be boiled down to 5 steps (as taught by the Furgeson brothers): 1) I do, you watch, we talk. 2) I do, you help, we talk.  3) You do, I help, we talk. 4) You do, I watch, we talk. 5) You do, third person watches, you talk….and so on. Pretty simple, hu?
It’s been my aim, and I’ve challenged all my leaders to do so as well, to always be doing this with someone else in every aspect of my ministry. Apprenticeship….a key ingredient in starting a movement.