CNBC.ca - Canadian National Baptist Convention

New online training curriculum nears completion

By Frank Stirk

COCHRANE, AB—Just over three years ago, Dr. Rob Blackaby, president of the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary and College, was approached by a CNBC church member with an urgent request.
Blackaby recalled him saying that his pastor had asked him to preach in five-and-a-half weeks. “He asked me, ‘Is there anything the Seminary has for me that I can go online and just look at and get really good help quickly on preparing the sermon?’

“At the time,” Blackaby said, “the answer was no. Now the answer’s yes.”

The difference between then and now is a new Internet-based teaching tool called LEAD360. (LEAD is an acronym for Leaders Equipped And Deployed.) When it goes online this fall, it will offer a range of courses, mostly taught by church practitioners and seminary faculty. People can either take individual courses or enrol in a three-year program that leads to a certificate or diploma from the CNBC in conjunction with the Seminary.

“Every course is no longer than eight hours, and there are nine courses that can be offered in a year that form what we call a cycle,” said National Ministry Leader Gerry Taillon. “We have a spiritual formation cycle, a biblical foundations cycle, a church leadership cycle, a church-planting cycle, and a pastoral leadership cycle, and then a practicum.”

And it is all for free. “It’s really not free,” Taillon said, “but it’s paid for by the Cooperative Program.”

It will be up to churches and associations to deliver these courses. Any church can apply to become a LEAD360 centre. It must name a director to run the program and tailor it to the specific needs of that church or community.

“Our desire is to keep things as close to the local church as possible, and so we’re trying to make it as simple as possible for a church to become a LEAD360 centre,” said Associate National Ministry Leader Bob Shelton.

“We have developed a platform where everything is automated. The software’s there for the directors to go in, set up their own school, choose their own teachers, determine what classes to offer and when.”

Directors can also select from three ways to present the video courses—either through a mentor who will work with a single student, a facilitator who will work with a group of students, or a live teacher who will adapt or contextualize the course material.

“The courses in the first year and the second year, I think, would be profitable to any person in any church,” Taillon said. “There are things like world view, how to share your faith, New Testament survey, Old Testament survey, systematic theology. At least this gives the average person in church an overview of these subjects.”

Blackaby wishes LEAD360 had been available when he was senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Calgary and was trying to do discipleship training.

“We had four people on staff who took turns teaching courses,” he said. “I didn’t have time to prepare a thorough systematic theology course. Well, [Seminar professor] Jimmy Cobb’s now done that. It would have just helped immensely.”

Ray Woodard, church planting coach with the WestCoast Baptist Association, also sees LEAD360 as an incredible opportunity to unplug the “bottleneck” of leadership training required of new planters and leaders.

“We are going to be able to equip faster a larger number of people on the field, and in places where they can put their training into practice right where they are, to accomplish the goals that the convention has set,” he said.

Since April, the WBA has been piloting LEAD360 with the help of Gary and Carol Oaks, Mission Service Corps missionaries from Phoenix, Arizona. Gary is the school’s director and Carol is a mentor to one of four students enrolled.

So far, said Gary Oaks, the system is working well—the teaching is excellent, the software is proving to be easy to use, and everyone exposed to LEAD360 seems to be excited about its potential. That includes ethnic church leaders.

“One of the first comments we received was, ‘This is great, but nobody in my church would understand this English terminology,’” he said. “They immediately started to think of how to either close-caption it or have someone view the material with the teacher’s notes and be able to deliver it in their language and record it.”

One “weak point” they have noticed, Carol Oaks said, is a lack of guidance on making assignments. “The teachers probably need to put more resources up front, maybe even some training,” she said. “Maybe they could even recommend some assignments.”

Churches will be introduced to LEAD360 at the convention meeting in July. After that, Taillon said, they hope to have a limited roll-out in September and a full launch by January 1.

Woodard is certain its greatest advocates will turn out to be not just the people who envisioned and created it, but the students who “go through it and see the quality of it” and “the churches that are changed by the people that are changed.”

“And when that transformation begins to happen,” Woodard predicted, “you’ll have a hard time keeping it up on the shelf.”