Models ~ for Full Time Training

under revision – April 5, 2022 

Three Main Models for Full-Time Training

Students and trainers come from a variety of church families and traditions, see here.   For more about mission details, mission locations, full-time workweeks, full-time prayer, and covenant-agreements for training. see here, here, and here.  Examples of practical, on-earth, physical and spiritual results that God creates to advance the Kingdom of God through ten-fold, exponential increases in effectiveness in corps, see  “Impossible – Specific, Concrete, Real-life Meaning.”  

Some models not listed below may be negotiated by special covenants with students (samples only, here).

 

1. Master Skill-Vocational – 2. Healing-Medical – 3. Warfare-Military

The following three models for full-time training are only starter examples.

Our training is done free of charge.  Our trainers are funded.  We do not operate on a for-profit model in the training.  We do not solicit nor recruit nor accept student applications online.  Our model of training is personal, relational, by referral, or by request face to face, and based on evidence of fruits of service and results grounded in facts.  See, “Requirements for Students.”

These three models are not an exhaustive list for full-time training.  Other valid models are noted below.  The models are not mutually exclusive because they blend into each other and work in combination.  In practice, both trainers and students are already working full-time in businesses, clinics, hospitals, military services, sciences, master-skilled trades, ordinary and simple shops, arts, and labors in semi-skilled or low-skilled work, including some with disabilities who have profound spiritual gifts, and time to devote to working in their gifts and full-time prayer, and who practice full-time the simple, highest virtues of faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13).

What these commitments have in common are:  a) full-time training and full-time learning in 40-80 hour work weeks and, b) discipleship training that lasts 2-5 years on-average at highest levels of discipline in small teams as corps of 2-12 members per mission and, c) the purpose of lifelong learning and service in the world in constant intimacy in receiving and obeying the input and direction of the Holy Spirit.

The rigor of this training is not because of adding more time to 40-80 hour work weeks. The rigor of these commitments is because of the practice of adding more listening in full-time prayer, and adding more full-time obedience to the Holy Spirit.  The integrity of listening and obeying in service is in learning through all our faculties and senses (heart, soul, mind, strength, Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27 ) refined by the Holy Spirit, and by actions in service.  We learn, cooperate, and witness how God manifests in practical, physical, on-earth effects that are the wonders of God – bringing us beyond elementary and intermediate teachings into intimate maturity – (“solid food is for the mature, who because of [constant] practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil,” Hebrews 5:14 NASB, and compare, “solid food is for those who are full grown, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil,” New Heart Bible, and compare, “strong meat is for the perfect [mature]; for them who by custom have their senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil,” Douay-Rheims Bible).

 

Three Models for Full-Time Training

Please remember that these three models end up getting blended in real life.

1. Master Skill-Vocational Model – our students have already been working a minimum of five years in their vocations, labors, professions.  This means they are already well underway toward the 10,000 hours required to master a set of skills (not master just a single skill, but master an entire set of skills).  Master skill levels usually require 7-9 years of training, at 6-8 hours of training per day (see Harvard Business Review,  and Skills Culture).  Notice the progressions in levels of skills, from novice, to educated, journeyman, then into mastery.   It’s all about starting humble and then keeping humble enough to keep learning in steps and stages.  In the scripture, see both the skilled craftsmen, and the master craftsmen, “filled with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of craftsmanship” (Exodus chapter 35).  See especially, “master of every craft … and the ability to teach,” Exodus 35:30-35).  It can be painfully lonely to have talents, skills, spiritual gifts and yet no one to train you in them and to feel your gifts and talents are nearly wasted for lack of training by loving and competent trainers.  Common lists of skilled vocations today include bus drivers, brick masons, construction equipment operators, custodians, welders, tractor-trailer drivers, hair stylists, cooks in restaurants, and thousands of other vocations that contribute good, value, love, decency, and blessings to others.  Our students and trainers are represented among these skilled workers (see list, Career Guide).   Jesus called fishermen like Peter just as surely as Jesus calls hair stylists and truck drivers today.  See especially the advice against working solo, learning alone, without seeking out mentors who are betters (“No Solo Lone Rangers“).   The thing about learned skills for vocations is that they are learned.  We all need each other.  It is another level of training to integrate full time prayer in listening to the Holy Spirit and full-time obedience to the Holy Spirit right in our vocations.  It is a calling of the Holy Spirit for every believer.  These vocations have a major place in the discipleship in the Kingdom of God.  Read the whole book of Acts and see the references to skilled workers in workplaces, homes, and markets. 

 

2. Healing-Medical Model (and all other sciences, and fact-based professions) – the standard for highest level mastery training in medical-surgical professions is not medical school (3 years medical school, after 4 years undergraduate college or university study).  The mastery standard is another 2-7 years of full-time residency training in a specialty (heart, cancer, neurosurgery, others).  Our training for full-time service in the Holy Spirit follows models of full-time residency medical and surgical training at up to 80+ hours per week.  The huge key is that students in full-time residency are in-residency because they must deal only with the patients who come in, as the patients come in, with the unique conditions presented by each patient, one patient at a time.   Similar residency requirements apply to mastering any other science, or business, or clinical and professional work  (counseling, business, social work, law, teaching, and others).  As in the scriptures cited above, our primary value added in spiritual service means integrating the healing medical-surgical full-time training into being “filled with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of craftsmanship” (Exodus chapter 35) and especially, “master of every craft … and the ability to teach,” (Exodus 35:30-35).   For one recent example see, “Gifted Hands:  The Ben Carson Story.”  Dr. Carson went from potential murderer to being a skilled surgeon.  Ben Carson integrated full-time prayer into his advanced neurosurgery skills at the highest level, in order to perform the first surgical separation of Siamese twins joined at the head.  Dr. Carson did this first-ever surgery with guidance from the Holy Spirit.  This surgery had never been done. He could not look it up in the books.  He used the best of his learning plus full-time prayer.  On the science side, see the example of the advanced biochemist and research professor, Kekule, discovering the chemical structure of benzene from an insight that Kekule had in a dream.  The dream needed to be tested and proven true by hard testing in the chemistry lab,  The examples of Dr. Carson and Kekule illustrate a vast difference between immature and young charismatic dreamers (and non-charismatic dreamers too) and mature believers who get revelations too, but the added hard, and very hard process of mature testing, and mature proving or disproving initial inward revelations and dreams, by testing revelations in the hard, very hard laboratory of life.  Untested inward revelations acted upon by immature or young believers without long and tested experience under mentorship of betters who demand testing have been the cause of injury and death (see the examples in Double Struck Dead ~ No Solo Lone Rangers).   The Ben Carson story is mandatory study (study, not entertainment) for all our students, whether vocational, medical (or business, counseling, legal, education), and military based students too, it is for every student to illustrate how Dr. Carson could not rush out immaturely and naively from a charismatic vision based on a dripping faucet in his house, and then start hacking, sawing, trashing and cutting on the heads of the Siamese twins – a very crude metaphor, but this crudity is what immature and young Christians sometimes do in rushing out to act on revelations that are untested in the laboratory of real life, and guided by seniors and betters with more years of experience in harder cases.  Dr. Carson had to test, long and hard, for many months, and assemble and test with his most mature surgical colleagues, how to apply this initial revelation given by the Holy Spirit.  It is never enough – at the mature level – to have a true revelation and then rush out and end up harming or killing someone for lack of mature, hard and thorough testing of revelations.  The promised “prophecy .. visions .. dreams” (Acts 2:17)  are only the initial heads-ups to pray and study further, they are not the final proof, because the final proof is testing the “prophecy .. visions .. dreams” in the lab of real life.  In this testing, we all need – including our trainers – testing and oversight by our senior betters with more years of experience in the hardest cases.  The more we mature in training, the more our advanced trainers themselves still seek out betters and overseers with more years of experience in our hardest cases.  This healing-medical model of full-time residency for training is a mandatory part of our full-time training. 

 

3. Warfare-Military Model – the military model applies to our full-time training,  and not just because of spiritual liberation and spiritual warfare models of service in missions and cases (see for example, Psychiatrist Dr. Richard Gallagher, Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal).   The military model of training applies because we are at war also with sickness, greed, and violent lust for power by slave-driving forces in individuals like sex and human traffickers, in tribes of oppression, and whole nations in real military combat.  We all are at war with all of the hard conditions and severe situations listed as impossible, in”Definition of Impossible Missions ~ And Why We Do Them.”  The warfare-military model of training has endless lessons to teach all of us, across all disciplines of life.  A huge part of the warfare is just staying in the warfare daily, no matter our daily duty-station in life.  Some of our trainers and students are vets of military service.  They bring their military discipline to bear on all of these impossible missions.  The military model of full-time training requires the fidelity of self-sacrifice at levels of military service by soldiers long graduated from boot camp, then hardened by multiple deployments in the field, seasoned soldiers who know by special training and by long field experience that battles are not won by lukewarm, unrefined, unsharp skills mixed with halfhearted, part-time commitments.   It comes as a surprise to some people that many of our vets as trainers, and students who are vets, do not mock or ridicule, but instead, they laud and love examples of full-time pacifists who have still served in war by serving as full-time medics, doctors, nurses, chaplains and other military support staff.  Mandatory for all full-time students is study of the movie and true story of the first conscientious objector and pacifist to be awarded the Medal of Honor, the pacifist-medic in wartime, depicted in “Hacksaw Ridge.”  As to spiritual warfare, we do agree with Psychiatrist, Dr.  Richard Gallagher (Catholic) and Psychiatrist, Dr. John White (Protestant-charismatic) that dark, very dark, demonic foes are constantly in spiritual warfare against the Kingdom of God across all levels of impossible missions, and in all domains in our lives, and we agree that we must fight back with full-time prayer and spiritual gifts in full-time military-discipline.   One favorite example for the warfare model is the example of Rees Howells and his college of intercessors in full-time prayer, at levels of 12 hours of intercessory prayer each day, having an impact for good during WWII (see the book, “God Challenges the Dictators“).  Such full-time intercessory prayer at levels of 12 hours and more each day is no less warfare service than is serving in a general’s war room, or serving in a trench.  We agree with General Douglas MacArthur: “the soldier above all others prays for peace.”  Military power can be horrendously abused – God reserved special judgment unto death on King Saul for both his sin of cowardice in battle against Goliath (under-using, and not using military power enough), and worse, judgment unto death for Saul using his military to loot and plunder for selfish, lustful gain (unjust military wars):  see 1 Samuel 15, Saul’s cowardice, disobedience to God’s specific warfare orders, and use of military for unjust looting and oppression, “and the LORD regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel,” and, 1 Samuel 17 adds, Saul’s cowardice before Goliath.   Our vets who are trainers agree that a badly neglected warfare discipline is full-time prayer, as recorded in James 5:17 – “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.” This prayer by Elijah defunded and destroyed the evil of an evil economy that supported an evil military.   Elijah was a human “just like us” – in this passage in James, Elijah is not noted for the fancy title of prophet.  Elijah is noted for being human, “just like us.”  He prayed an ordinary warfare prayer that God answered with extra-ordinary results to defund an evil economy that supported an evil military.   We are stunningly clueless and ignorant how many battles God will fight for us if we would simply humble ourselves, and pray like Elijah, who was a human, “just like us.”  See again the example of Rees Howells, above.  All soldiers, in physical or spiritual warfare, can agree with General Douglas MacArthur: “the soldier above all others prays for peace.”   Each of us is called to be that soldier.  The warfare-military model is indispensable as one part of our full-time training.

All three of these models combine and work together in real life.

As noted elsewhere (here, and here), the added rigor of this training across all three models is not because of adding more time to 40-80 hour work weeks. The added rigor of these commitments is because of the practice of adding more listening in full-time prayer and the practice of adding more obedience to the Spirit.  Elements from all three models of full-time training combined are mandatory for all full-time students.

The integrity of listening and obeying in practice is in learning through all our senses (heart, soul, mind, strength), and learning by actions in service how God manifests in practical, physical, on-earth effects that are the wonders of God (see, Hebrews 5:14), with all our senses trained by constant practice;  so we may cooperate with the Kingdom of God and see, as in Acts 2:6, the wonders of God manifesting on-earth.

 

submitted by Michael (M.D.), Inigo auto-da-fé (SJ). Anon/LOE,  and Jedburgh/SOESM

previous editions by:
Harold Behr (Brown Navy Vet, deceased), simple, home-church planter across 15 states,
Marte (mentor-mother to many street workers, walking by revelation, deceased),
“General of Intercession,” J. Jackson (Army Vet, in hospice care as of 2022),
Vern Spaulding, (deceased), missionary to ISIS controlled lands, notes on Rees Howells
major parts excerpted from the life of Gabriele Amorth (Italian Resistance Vet, exorcist)