This morning, just for something different, and not at all because some of the Sola Panellists have gone quiet and there's nothing in the cupboard (guys!), let me suggest that you spend your time doing some listening instead: check out this month's Briefing Lounge podcast, ‘Shifting to the personal’.

One thing nearly all the Sola Panellists have in common is that, at one stage or other in our ministry lives, we've been profoundly influenced and trained by Col Marshall. When people think of the ‘St Matthias Movement’ of the 80s and 90s, the planting of 17 churches, the massive growth in people going into Moore College, the large and paradigm-shifting campus work at UNSW, the change in ministry culture that was influential in so many places, and all the rest, they tend to think ‘Phillip Jensen’, and understandably so. And they tend to think that the whole movement was built around Phillip's singular preaching gifts and personality and energy.

But those of us closer to the action know that none of it would have happened, humanly speaking, without Col Marshall. Col was the ‘ministry brains’ of the operation (if I can put it like that). His relentless focus on people, and his equally relentless determination to keep going back to the Bible and rethinking what we were doing in ministry, shaped everything that happened in those extraordinary years.

Col is probably best known for his leadership of MTS (the Ministry Training Strategy), but in ‘Shifting to the personal’, he talks about how institutionalization affects all of us (including MTS), and how we are drawn almost magnetically to structures and programmes rather than people. What would Christian life and ministry and church be like if our priority was to build and work with people as individuals, and to disciple and train them as followers of Christ, rather than to keep the wheel turning on all the programmes and events and structures that seem to take on a life of their own? And what if our home groups really functioned as small ‘c’ churches, and took responsibility for their members, with thoroughly trained leaders who taught and pastored them? And what if the fad for ministry ‘training’ didn't just equip people with skills, but shaped their whole life, character and discipleship?

All this and more, as they say, in this month's Briefing Lounge (the best yet, I think). Have a listen, and pop your comments and questions back here.

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