Have you heard about T4T?

 Although the title T4T: Training for Trainers has been used for a wide variety of secular training programs including suicide prevention and human resource development, there are training materials that IMB has employed that have been widely published in several forms. Originally crafted out of a church planting movement environment in China, the training program is based on a practice for developing reproductive disciples primarily in literate cultures. Although there are storying versions of T4T and regional variations, the basic content of the material is the same. Even Dr. David Garrison has produced a new online training for using T4T. IMB's East Asia region’s original version was organized around eleven training points that exhibit both strengths and weaknesses in discipleship programs in general, but T4T is filling an innocent void in Christian discipleship.

T4T Program Summary

The goal of T4T is for each person who is led to Christ to become a trainer as immediately as possible. Initially this process is instigated by an outside source, like a missionary, but the program revolves around indigenous leadership training through small incremental lessons. When a person begins his walk with Christ, his trainer starts him on a practical training tract that demands immediate obedience and reproduction. Although there are other discipleship programs available, T4T boasts that it is not a leadership development tool nor a simple discipleship program as much as it is a specific training module for immediate implementation and duplication.

            Using 2 Timothy 2:2 as the biblical basis, the program insists that each person trained also becomes an active trainer. The creators of the T4T program acknowledge the fact that there will be some who will not successfully complete the trainer–trainee loop, but they insist that even thirty percent is an “amazing” result. One particular nuance to the T4T materials is that although the primary content of the program in written form is similar in different regions of the world, there are nevertheless some variances in supplemental sections that facilitate regional standards and cultural or linguistic limitations. For example, the Russian T4T version only slightly differs from an African version.

            The specific Church Planting Movement (CPM) version of T4T training distributed by the East Asia region of IMB consisted of eleven points to “build a trainer,” but that has been adapted to other cultures within 7 or 9 sessions. The first three training points lay a biblical foundation by drawing the trainer into interaction with the Bible itself. Macro themes like authority, commandment, will, and love are explored. The program teaches the trainer to hear four callings to witness, namely Jesus from above, hell from below, internal direction, and external pleas. The trainer takes a survey of Old Testament and New Testament texts to see the biblical basis for winning his own family to Christ and the biblical promise of power to do so. In order to be a faithful trainer, he must then develop himself through spiritual warfare preparation, praise, prayer, spiritual anointing, and godly attitudes. This is done to elicit boldness from the trainer as he actively engages his lost family and friends.

            In the fourth training point, the trainer surveys various ecclesiastical styles, but he is ultimately led to understand the CPM church model as the preferred model. Using six basic discipleship lessons, the trainer must begin to plant a new church through his own new converts. As people are saved, they are grouped and given the command to witness as well. The trainer also explains the four callings and the Father’s will to reach his family. They are taught how to apply the armor of God, how to develop a CPM church, and how to witness. They must list their own prospects and learn their testimony to share with them. When sharing the testimony, a plan of salvation is included. Sometimes this is accomplished through incorporation of the Four Spiritual Laws or another personally developed tract, while at other times the trainer may show movies or tell stories.

After the first lesson, any conversions are directed to lesson two while those who reject will continue to hear more testimonies. Those who become new believers during the testimony sharing time will begin another strand of training, forming a new church and multiplying further. The first three lessons relate to accountability to God through prayer and bible study, but each lesson demands that the learner begin to teach it to someone else accordingly. Lessons four through six continue to model ministry as the new group forms into a separate church. A graphic representation of this process is included in the training materials.

Training points five through seven allow for introspection. They address the source of a Christian’s joy by linking it directly to this training. They address failures to share testimonies as misunderstandings of the target or the method. They also outline specific steps to begin the testimony sharing process by asking the trainer to create a prospect list of at least twenty unsaved friends.

Training point eight consists of the actual six discipleship lessons the trainer must use when he leads someone to Christ. These lessons begin with assurance of salvation and move into prayer, quiet times, church attendance, God’s paternal relationship, and witnessing. The witnessing lesson is both a repetition of the four callings the trainer has already learned and a new direction to start a house church.

Training points nine through eleven serve as a guide to develop further steps the trainer himself will customize. Point nine is a guide for using inductive Bible study methods. Point ten helps the trainer establish numerical goals for training other trainers. The final point is a checklist of twenty-one CPM principles that, if facilitated, work to write Acts 29 or the ongoing history of the expansion of the New Testament church. These principles include holistic prayer, finding persons of peace, broad seed-sowing, immediate follow-up with instant obedience, new church planting, local and shared leadership, a high level of accountability, on-the-job training, participative small groups, the Model-Assist-Watch-Leave (MAWL) approach, reproducible methodology, and resources being in the harvest. The T4T program reiterates that the goal is not to create disciples but trainers, so the expectation of spiritual reproduction is high.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This leadership training model exhibits some strengths and a few weaknesses. Because T4T was born out of an actual CPM context, the program materials fit neatly within CPM methodology. Perhaps this is why the program is so transferable from region to region even though the written material is altered somewhat to suit the needs of the location. One thing that never seems to change at all is its insistent reliance on Bible teaching. Apart from the Scripture references in the six discipleship lessons, the program has forty-four verses to learn for ongoing guidance.  Regardless of the translation, the Bible message itself does not change. Since this program seeks to be a biblical approach to making disciples that make disciples, it has a universal quality with cross-cultural application.

            Regardless of the strong foundation in Scripture, it could be argued that the reduction of discipleship to six very brief lessons is too simplistic at best, and at worst it sets an unprepared trainer up for potential failure and discouragement.  Even though the program is designed to keep the trainer one step ahead of his trainee, the dynamic nature of spiritual warfare in the Christian life might warrant some other variation in lesson planning. Unfortunately, the lesson structure is rigid and allows for only one option.

The program boasts of turning every convert into a trainer. In the Second Timothy foundational passage, the Apostle Paul included the adjective “reliable” as a prerequisite for training. However, this is something that T4T does not appear to take into consideration. Perhaps this is why a thirty percent success rate would be “amazing.”  

Different people have different learning styles. Some are visual learners, others are auditory learners, and yet others are more tactile in their approach to processing new information. Some cultures are more oral, while others are more literate.  However, a marked quality of T4T is its deference to the literate learner. When graphics appear in the material, as in the case of the explanation of models for ministry and developing groups, they are very helpful. For the most part, however, the material is almost void of graphics. This might be intentional so as to make the material more reproducible, so this could be a positive aspect. Nevertheless, the material is so blatantly biased in favor of literacy that an entire “Storying” version has also been produced for illiterate cultures.

The infusion of western ideology is also pervasive throughout the training as well. Apart from the linguistic factors, there are consistent references to biblical concepts as seen through a western hermeneutic. Even though the authors point out that the church is not a building, they still persist in questioning the trainer’s commitment to church as a location. In stark contrast to CPM mentality, the discipleship lesson four questions the trainer about “attending church” instead of congregating with other believers as the church. Imagery of western legal documents like birth certificates and legal contracts also appear throughout the discipleship material, as the new believer is issued a spiritual birth certificate and must sign the devotional commitment. It is also doubtful that western traffic laws governed by red, green, and yellow lights are universally understood (in Russia, for example, the lights change in a different order). The issue of storehouse tithing makes sense to most westerners, but there is no instruction as to how this is handled in a new house church with six-week-old believers. They are simply told that it must be done.

Although the materials are useful for immediate follow-up with new believers and can be useful for equipping soul-winners, it may be doubtful that the materials by themselves are strong enough to produce true trainers beyond an elementary level. For that reason, the materials could be seen as an initial step to developing leaders or even as supplementary materials. Because the strongest aspect of the program is its insistence on obedience to Scripture, the materials never claim to be exhaustive, only preparatory. Instead of being a published guide for the Christian life, it is an introduction to the Holy Spirit’s work as lifelong companion. Perhaps this is the naïve, innocent approach to obedient Christianity that Jesus referenced when he said we must be like little children in the Kingdom.