There’s no debating the credentials of GCA’s trainters. They are all seasoned practitioners. They’re not gurus. They’re not celebritiy pastors. They’re experts.
But they’re experts in a specific sense. They don’t claim to be experts at church planting ‘in general’ (is there even such a thing?). Instead, they are experts–or, better–students, of their locales. Their expertise has been hard-won in the kingdom conflict that is being waged on the streets of their particular communities.
That’s not to say that there aren’t general principles of church planting that are applicable in any situation. There certainly are. But the GCA curriculum and training is designed to explore these principles, not to insist on specific contextless models and practices. The same material–on launching a worship service, let’s say–might be taught by different people in different settings. What each of GCA’s trainers brings is their own personal case study, along with loads of ‘intelligence’ from their fellow church planters laboring in different fields.
What this means is this: a church planter or team member or coach, two weeks after a GCA training event (like right now) has to go through the material, think about the case studies, and reckon with the appropriate application of the principles in their local context.
And this is really the way it must be, if we are to pattern our ministry, and proclaim the gospel to a specific people group, like our Lord Jesus himself did, and like the Apostle Paul did in imitation of his Master.