SALT Concepts and Comments
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Strategic Alliance for Leadership Training Newsletter, vol. 4 June 2003 |
Training leaders to teach others. 2 Timothy 2:2
Equipping leaders requires more than transplanting information. Truth must be implanted into their lives. Last month’s newsletter focused on transplanting versus planting. It is the germination that makes the difference. In a transplant, germination has already occurred before the plant is introduced into the soil, which remains basically passive. In planting, the soil must penetrate the seed, transforming it into a new plant capable of reproduction.
Effective training requires putting truth into seed form rather than merely transplanting information. Content must be converted into concepts around which information is organized. SALT defines a concept as a personalized truth, or a truth conceived. Conception occurs when knowledge is joined to experience.
The last time you had a training session, taught a lesson, or preached a message, did you identify the seeds that you were seeking to implant into the experience of your hearers? Did you ask why these truths were necessary to them? Did you anticipate how these truths would bring change into their lives?
When truth is not personalized the hearer often remains passive, accumulating knowledge but not experiencing life change. To hear that God is love is to acquire knowledge about God. This knowledge is truth, but it is not personalized truth. However, to understand and accept the truth that God loves me is to unite this knowledge with my experience and to begin to rearrange my life around it. God loves me is a concept that demands a personal response. It has the potential to germinate and produce fruit in my life.
How do we convert content into concepts? Since a concept is a seed truth, the best way to answer that question is to look at a seed. Two things about seeds are obvious: seeds grow out of existing plants, and seeds have the potential of growing into new plants. What we teach others must be the fruit of change that has already occurred in our own lives. Why and how we teach will be related to the changes we anticipate in the lives of others. Teaching is for obedience, and it must flow from obedience.
Many trainers are content to merely determine what they should teach. Effective trainers have learned that in addition, they must also give meaning to truth by establishing why it is being taught, and expect response by anticipating how the truth will effect change in the experience of the hearer. What, why and how—these are essential for converting content into concepts.
Concepts are the building blocks of our experience. They are the windows through which we perceive reality. They are the catalytic truths that give meaning and synthesis to our knowledge.
And they are seeds which, when they fall on good soil, have the potential of bearing fruit, “some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred fold.”
Further comments from Bruce Triplehorn relative to implanting truth:
I have been studying some about the mind and about knowledge. I liked a concept that I learned just today from 1 Thessalonians 1:6. It says that they "received the Word"…..it means that they seized it so as to make it their own (katalambano). I like that.
Paul said (1 Thessalonians 1:5), "For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance.." The Word had a real impact. In fact, this passage could be translated, "For our gospel was not born in you…"
The question that I have always asked is how does the Word penetrate a person's life to that degree that all of the above is true. The answer is tying worship and the Word together. Every lesson of the SALT training has worship exercises related to some passage of Scriptures. The students are asked to worship through a passage.
I believe the emphasis on worship is what is making the "seed" truths from the Word germinate and bear fruit more than traditional teaching. The students are expected to spend time worshiping God through passages of Scripture according to each lesson. People have taken this seriously and they have gone beyond the reading of the Scriptures to meditation, which is a combination of prayer, worship, and contemplation of God’s Word.
(The SALT Newsletter invites your comments.)
On May 31 twenty-four students graduated from the Decentralized Training Institute in Manila, Philippines. This institute, with training given by Clay Hulett, Christian Beuggert and Ted Ruiz, is actively implementing the SALT conceptual training philosophy. Christian Beuggert is also working with the Cambodia SALT team in an in depth study of the culture to determine which seed truths are most needed, and how these can best be planted.
In spite of the confusion and difficulties following the coup d’etat in the Central African Republic, the participants of the first two SALT training sessions are continuing their ministry of training leaders. Andre Mboi is asking for prayer for the organization of another training session for the evangelists in the eastern part of the country. Augustin Hibaile, the coordinator for SALT in the CAR, writes, “I am planning to begin a SALT training with some key laymen during the time I am here in Bangui. I have made a contact with a man who owns a hotel and is a Christian, to do some training in his hotel. I think that is a good place to get more leaders involved. I believe that Christ want us to go to the people where they are to call them to be part of His Church. Few people believe that here. But I pray to begin such ministry with key leaders.” In the Chad, Samuel Dadje continues to coordinate an extensive leadership training program in his training center, “Chateau Bethany.”
Benjamin Navarro, native of Argentine and Spanish professor at Grace College, will be leaving next week to conduct the second SALT training session in Mexico. Before his departure he will meet with Edouardo Coria, a member of the SALT teaching team in Argentina, for a personalized seminar in conceptual training.
(SALT training is now being implemented in Central African Republic, Chad, Europe, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Philippines and Cambodia. Please send us information concerning your SALT ministries throughout the world.)
June 5, 2003
Summer 2005 Inside Out or Outside In
Spring 2005 Creating a Leadership Development Culture
Winter 2005 Leadership Training Clinic
Autumn 2004 Church Based Leadership Training
Spring 2004 Making Truth Personal
Jan- Mar 2004 Holistic Training
Nov-Dec 2003 4th Law-Law of the Harvest
Oct 2003 3rd Law-Law of the Sower
Sept 2003 2nd Law-Law of the Soil
Aug 2003 1st Law-Law of the Seed
July 2003 Teaching or Training
June 2003 Converting Content to Concepts
April 2003 Concept: Implanting vs. Transplanting
March 2003 Training Leaders to Teach Others
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