Video Transcript: Who is included in being a minister?

Who is included in being a minister

Henry Reyenga: We're back. So far, we've been talking about important things relative to ministry calling. And now we're talking about competence.

Steve Elzinga: Matthew 28. Okay this is the great commission, "And Jesus came to them and said,"

Henry Reyenga: 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore,'

Steve Elzinga: 'Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.'

Henry Reyenga:  'And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'

Steve Elzinga: So, what did Jesus do for three years with 12 ordinary men of wildly different backgrounds? He made disciples. Okay. And what are disciples supposed to do? That's really what this commission was all about. 

Henry Reyenga: Make disciples.

Steve Elzinga: Well, how did Jesus do it? So, we go back to the great commission, teaching them to obey. Now I think it's interesting. It's not just teaching. Jesus could have said teaching them everything I've commanded you - but teaching them to obey. So, you can go to school and be taught all kinds of things but that doesn't mean you do any of them. When you train your children, for example, you try to tell them this is a good way to live and these are some of the rules of our household, but then parents every day in their interaction sort of help them to obey what they've learn. And that's really what vocational training is sort of about. 

Henry Reyenga: And I think the passion that we have is that it's teaching for serviceable insight, teaching for ministry, teaching for doing the will of the Lord and being free to reproduce that in others.

Steve Elzinga: Right. In some ways, the teaching we have at Christian Leaders is to help you either become a disciple or become a better disciple. And what do disciples do? You go out and make disciples. So, we're equipping you, really, as a definition of ministry, trying to help others.

Henry Reyenga: Steve it's interesting. This is a little history lesson here. In the early church, that was a methodology that was practiced; it was practiced with everybody. Everybody was a disciple and a discipler, whether it was in your family-- unfortunately, slavery was in back then. There is record how the Christian movement spread amongst slaves, and they discipled each other. And there were wealthy people who were in the empire and when they became Christian, they reproduced it. And there were ordinary people; everyone was reproducing, and hardly anyone was paid to do it.

Steve Elzinga:  Right. These first disciples, they weren't like the priests of the day. They were varied backgrounds

Henry Reyenga: Ordinary.

Steve Elzinga: Fishermen, laborers, common laborers

Henry Reyenga: Unexpected leaders of the new movement were the early Christians.

Steve Elzinga: But they were discipled, taught to obey, and then they went out and did the same thing. So, Christian Leaders Ministry Training for all. We believe that everyone is called to be a minister at some level or another, and we have the example of the fire department - at least in North America.

Henry Reyenga: Well, it is really interesting. My cousin Melvin, right after high school started volunteering for the fire department, Larry and Eli all these cousins. And I remember one time going back 10 years after high school and hearing all about it. And they're talking about the nature of fire departments and well we're a volunteer fire department, but then in Jamesville is a part-time fire department, but Milwaukee is a full-time.

Steve Elzinga: Yeah, my father was a full-time firefighter.

Henry Reyenga: Your father was a full-time one?

Steve Elzinga: Yeah, right. That was his full-time job.

Henry Reyenga: But one thing that was interesting is that with whether you're a volunteer, a part-time, or a full-time, you all had the same training.

Steve Elzinga: Right.

Henry Reyenga: But that would make sense if you're to go into burning houses. You're going to all be trained.

Steve Elzinga: Yeah. I'm going to volunteer and I'm going to get burned up.

Henry Reyenga: Or I'm not going to do my work so the full career people are frustrated.

Steve Elzinga: Yes. So, we are going to look at each one of these and sort of extrapolate this as a metaphor to talk about ministry. So, we have the non-paid volunteer firefighters. 

Henry Reyenga: Volunteer fire departments are the bedrock of fire and rescue services throughout the United States of America. The vast number of fire departments are volunteers. Many fire departments are completely volunteer, with no one getting financial support beyond any incurred expense. The firefights in these types of departments have other careers that support the needs of their families. 

Steve Elzinga: Right.

Henry Reyenga: Like my cousin Melvin and Eli and all those. 

Steve Elzinga: They just have a passion for this, and so they volunteer. So, non-paid volunteer ministry leaders. 

Henry Reyenga: Volunteers are responsible for most of the ministry that happens in the world. It was interesting. last Sunday, I was in my hometown interestingly my wife's 40th high school reunion, and we went to commissioning Sunday at my home church, the original church that I went to as a child. And on that service, there was the one minister - so, the career - and he asked all the people that were doing volunteer: Sunday school, marriage ministry, youth ministry, they even had the homeschool moms come up there. So, one by one these various categories of community ministers, prayer ministers, they called them all different things. I'm using our terms. So, they all came up, and I saw this group of people, like 70 people in front, one minister, 70 people, one career guy (one career firefighter), and all these volunteers all upfront and then they had a prayer service, commission service. And then afterwards, we went to a relative, and one thing became clear. There was very little training for all those firefighters.

Steve Elzinga: Right. Which is on our next point. Henry. Volunteers, for the most part, receive very little ministry training. It's too expensive, often to time and place constraining. For a church it's hard, because let's say you had a training thing for marriage people, and then a year later, you have other issues or that person left. Now what? Are you going to train another? It's just, you know one trained guy to run around trying to train all. And he has to be an expert on all these different areas. Maybe he's just a great preacher, but he's not great at pastoral care or some of these other areas. So, what happens is in the churches, they're so desperate to get volunteers they just take anyone and they just throw them at it.

Henry Reyenga: Do you remember the phrase, "you just need warm bodies"?

Steve Elzinga: Yeah. Somebody needs to man this rig. But that's like sending someone into a burning thing, and they're not prepared whatsoever.

Henry Reyenga: And ministry can be challenging. It can be filled with spiritual warfare, and the training is needed.

Steve Elzinga: Right. So, the non-paid volunteer ministry leaders with Christian Leaders, how do we try to address this problem? 

Henry Reyenga: Well, we make it free, because if you're a volunteer, often you don't have the budget to get the training.

Steve Elzinga: Or churches don't have the budget to train someone. It's your place, your schedule.

Henry Reyenga: Especially if, in that volunteer ministry, you have five, six, ten hours a week to offer and you're now getting trained for that, you need very flexible-- because you don't have a lot of time if you're working another job.

Steve Elzinga: Back in our church planting days, we would take some key people on a conference, but they would have to take a whole week off, which cost them how much? And then you're going to fly somewhere. How many people can you actually train like that?

Henry Reyenga: Right.

Steve Elzinga: You can't do the 70, that's for sure.

Henry Reyenga: No. You can't.

Steve Elzinga: We have three credit, one credit. We have mini-courses. So, in some ways we try to tailor it to the volunteer.

Henry Reyenga: Right. And we even have a Christian Leaders College. We call them three-credit, one-credit. But we're even, at the instant, calling them points. So, you get so many points. We have different ways that we organize it. But I just wanted you to be clear and not confused later if you see three-credit, one-credit. Don't worry about that. The key issue is we have a lot of classes and courses that you can take to be ready to minister.

Steve Elzinga: It's vocational-style training, which means sort of on-the-job. So, again, you might be already a volunteer, and you just haven't been trained in this area. You can keep doing, plugging along with what you're doing as a volunteer and learning on the side to do what you're doing better.

Henry Reyenga: I'll give you an example of what we mean by vocational. We have a class called Influence Smart and a sister class called People Smart for Ministry. Now in ministry, whether you're a volunteer or a part-time or a full-time people, people, people the crown of God's creation and guess what? You minister to people. So, if to be an effective minister, that is to firefight and know the best practices of ministering to people, we are very intentional about making those kinds of classes as well as some of the theological classes that are also important. The theory of firefighting, theological things, we also have those classes as well.

Steve Elzinga: Biblical things

Henry Reyenga: Biblical things 

Steve Elzinga: Knowing your bible - Old Testament, New Testament 

Henry Reyenga: Yep. We have skills classes. We have intellectual based type classes, philosophy, ministry skills training. All of these things are here at Christian Leaders. 

Steve Elzinga: So, we've talked about the volunteer. Now we're talking to the second option, which is paid bi-vocational firefighters.

Henry Reyenga: Bi-vocational firefighters are paid part-time salaries though they report as income for services completed. The firefighter in these types of departments have other careers that support the needs of their families. 

Steve Elzinga: Right. Paid vocational ministry leaders paid by vocational ministry leaders are responsible for most of the organizing of ministry that happens in the world. A lot of volunteers will volunteer for a specific role or service. But then a lot of times, you need someone that's a little bit more involved, and so, they have to put more effort and time into it. So, we pay them a little bit.  But they are sort of organizing the volunteers.

Henry Reyenga: Like they might be in charge of the youth program for the entire church.

Steve Elzinga: Right. Or a small-group Bible studies.

Henry Reyenga: Yeah exactly. 

Steve Elzinga: And we both experienced that in our church plants that we had several volunteer staff and several part-time staff. Because churches put all that money into one paid guy, and they only have so much left.

Henry Reyenga: Right. Exactly.

Steve Elzinga: Paid bi-vocational ministry leaders, for the most part, receive very little training. Again, it's the same problem; it's too expensive. If the guy is only getting paid for doing 10 hours a week, he can't afford to go off somewhere. He's got a family, he's got another job, he's probably working, burning the candle at both ends. And so, it's time and place constraining. 

Henry Reyenga: I remember - and you probably have stories too - when we were pastoring and planting and whatnot. It was almost like the volunteer part-time farm system, so someone would come in as a volunteer first - maybe out of the work world or as a mom - volunteer a little bit, and there would be all sorts of them. But then our default setting was to look for that special person that had special gifts, so then we'd hire that person. But again, they didn't have a lot of training. So, so much of time was to figure out how to give the training. And as I look back soberly at that is I realize at how many part-timers blew up, because they got more responsibility, but they didn't get the training. And then they became cynical forever, wanting to be doing that thing even though they had a dream. They know they had a calling and then many of them left the church because we threw them into the fire of ministry with no training.

Steve Elzinga: Into the burning flames. We didn't teach them how to put that mask on and the thing and then they suffocated.

Henry Reyenga: Honestly, some of my sad thoughts about things that I did wrong and we did wrong and many ministers did wrong. We didn't know we were doing wrong. We were just like the building is burning we're trying to do our best.

Steve Elzinga: We were busy doing ministry; we didn't have time to train people basically.

Henry Reyenga: We had this training so in the sense. We knew how to put the mask on, and many of the part-timers and the volunteers did not. But I especially think about the part-timers, the ones that really had that dream, and we never offered them training. Like they were into the youth ministry, no training. But you're going to be the youth pastor, and then it just blew up. We have two courses - full courses - on youth ministry. If I could have had them take those courses.

Steve Elzinga: Right. And then the time to train them fully. You could ask well how's it going. What did you learn? You could go over things. But it's being mitigated by somebody else who knows a lot about it. 

Henry Reyenga: Yeah. Just powerful.

Steve Elzinga: So, paid bi-vocational ministry leaders. How does Christian Leaders Ministry training help with this? Well, it's free again. It's your place, your schedule. Again, we have all these different tiers of how hard the training might be or how long it takes to do it. And again, it's vocational. In other words, you can give people training while they are doing the job.

Henry Reyenga: Yeah. That's right. And if your pastor can mentor you, you're getting this training, so if you come to your mentor (your pastor), you have great questions. It's a game-changer.

Steve Elzinga: And so, yeah, you're getting a lot more done when you meet together.

Henry Reyenga: Yes.

Steve Elzinga: Then we have number three. The third option is the vocational career firefighters. 

Henry Reyenga: At a career fire department, like your father--

Steve Elzinga: Yes.

Henry Reyenga: --all firefighters and staff are full-time staff personnel. So, your dad lived at the station there?

Steve Elzinga: Yeah. It was 24-hour shift. He'd go there for 24 hours, then he'd be off 24, then back 24. That was kind of the system. Yeah, it was a full-time thing.

Henry Reyenga: So, career ministry leaders are doing their best to lead ministry around the world, but there are not enough of them to do what is needed.

Steve Elzinga: So, because there isn't enough of them, then they try to find the part-time people and they offload way too much responsibility per training. And then the part-time people offload a lot of the responsibility to the volunteers.

Henry Reyenga: With no training.

Steve Elzinga: So, what we have is a system of burnout. And so, you see this. A church is doing well, there's a lot of enthusiasm, but people can't sustain it. And so, you see churches go up like this, and then they kind of plateau, and then the people are grumpy. And then some of those good leaders don't really engage. Maybe they go to another church, but they never step up into leadership again, because maybe they hurt their families, they started ignoring their families, their parenting, all of those things.

Henry Reyenga: Well full-time ministry is beautiful. Our entire adult life, we were called to full-time ministry, and we've loved it. We have just loved it. And if you're called to really pursue full-time ministry-- now maybe you don't even know if there will be a position, maybe not, maybe you'll be a part-time, or maybe you'll be a volunteer. I don't know what God has for you, but I know this. We want to give you the training needed to be that career minister if that's what the calling and opportunities are presented for you. 

Steve Elzinga: There aren't enough career people. And career ministry leaders are too few, because ministry training is too expensive, too time and place constraining. You and I both went to a seminary; it was a four-year thing. 

Henry Reyenga: First was four years of college then four years of seminary.

Steve Elzinga: Yeah, it was an eight-year thing that in some ways we got taken out of ministry for eight years. Then we got thrown in, and by then we didn't know the football teams. We couldn't relate to the ordinary person, because we had been estranged studier people, isolated in our little cocoon of learning.

Henry Reyenga: We were fortunate to go and not have a lot of debt. I just heard a story of someone at Christian Leaders Institute going into ministry who had over $70,000 of debt and then six months before the end, something happened where they shifted, and now five years later they want to finish up. We have some options, but they are given a lot of debt.

Steve Elzinga: Then, for example, church planting, you have to find a denomination that will pay you, because you have all this debt to pay back; whereas, otherwise, you could try something. If you weren't in debt, you could start as a volunteer. It's a great place to start. And then move into a part-time. And if God blesses you, and you know what you want to do, then you might move in your training. All along you're getting more and more training, and then eventually, you might become a career. But you end up at the place that sort of fits you rather than being pigeonholed. People will go to four years of seminary, get this huge debt, and then they go out in the real world and discover that's not for them. That's not their thing.

Henry Reyenga: And the benefit of training here is whatever your thing may be, you're not in debt. And you can utilize that training to make an impact for Jesus Christ. 

Steve Elzinga: Okay. So it's vocational, it's free, it's your place, your schedule. 

Henry Reyenga: Now one thing there, too, that is very similar is CLC. 

Steve Elzinga: CLC, yeah.

Henry Reyenga: That's Christian Leaders College. 

Steve Elzinga: As opposed to Christian Leaders Institute. 

Henry Reyenga: And even the Alliance. If someone is called to full-time, you may need a college degree, whether it's associate or a bachelor degree. We have a program that not only can you get your bachelor degree-- in our cases, in our particular denomination back then, you needed to not only get a bachelor degree, but you needed to go on to a master’s school to get a master’s degree if you're going to graduate. Or if you're going to be a a full-time chaplain, in the military, for instance, you'll need a bachelor degree, then you'll have to get a master’s degree. 

Now Christian Leaders College has partners where you can get the free ministry training, then there are fees, associated with the college because we're dealing with this whole thing about accreditation, which we'll get into later. All of those things are all part of that, but currently - as we're doing this video - for under $3,000 you can get a bachelor degree, which then can transfer over to a place like Ohio Christian University or Calvin Seminary or Sioux Falls Seminary. And I guess Sioux Falls and that group of seminaries, you can get a chaplain MDiv, by which you can go into the military. Or at Calvin Seminary, the same. Or at the Ohio Christian University, you can get a ministry masters, and if you want to get an MBA, you could get an MBA. So maybe you wanted to go into a business-type ministry or just want to be a businessman for 10 years before you went into ministries. So, you have your bachelor in ministries and divinity here and you have your masters of business over there. So, the options for you to think about career ministry is also here at Christian Leaders for you to consider.

Steve Elzinga: It's almost unbelievable. In our denomination, you have to go to college, you have to get your degree. That's $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 just for that. If you live there, it's $200,000. And then you have to go to seminary. Whereas for $3,000, you can get your whole bachelors taken care of on your own terms, your own time, and then you can go to this graduate school. 

Henry Reyenga: So, when we see free there, we're saying free classes. Okay. And there are fees for this program, but you will not go in debt to get a high-quality degree. 

Steve Elzinga: So, what are you? Are you a volunteer? Are you a bi-vocational? Are you a career? Maybe you're one of those things already. Or maybe you're none of these things, so what do you want to be? Maybe right now, a volunteer. You want to start there. Or maybe you have been volunteering in a church, and you would like to work towards bi-vocational. Or maybe you've been bi-vocational and you want to work for the career.

Henry Reyenga: I think this is a great opportunity. I wish we had this opportunity when we were young. I think you and I would have thrived with this. I know we would have.

Steve Elzinga: And the courses we have are so high quality and practical. We have over 100 of them. I mean, just the options.

Henry Reyenga: We have 50 professors.

Steve Elzinga: Right. You can take a class, and if you like that professor, you look for another one that he may have done, and you can get in every class. I remember when I was going, here's the class I want, but it's full already and I couldn't get into it. 

Henry Reyenga: And the mini classes are a game-changer, because now you can go into some specific area. We have programs for the commended minister, the licensed minister, the ordained minister, which we are going to talk about later. But they have like little combinations of mini courses. You can get right into volunteering in ministry. 

Steve Elzinga: And within three to four hours, you could take whole course in a certain area and find out if this is an area that you might want to go into ministry in. But it only cost you four hours. You don't have to get into a whole course and at the end go, "Maybe this isn't for me." So that's, I think, is why it's such a game-changer. 

Henry Reyenga: Yeah. It's like back to we don't want anything to disqualify you from trying.

Steve Elzinga: Maybe you're looking at some course and you go, "I don't know if I can ever be this, but do you know what? It might be fun just to look into it anyway." I remember when I was at college. I thought, "This is my one time in life where I can try anything. There is no preconceived thing. I can just see whether this is for me." 

And again, do you remember when we talked about gifts? Maybe you didn't have this particular gift your whole life, but you enroll in this mini course, and all of a sudden, God just says, "Do you know what? I'm going to give you this gift, because I want you to go into this." 

Henry Reyenga: Right. This is God's work with you whether you are called to volunteer in ministry, part-time ministry, or full-time ministry.