Trained to
Train Others.

§ 01One Formation Philosophy.

Our aim is simple to say and slow to reach: disciples who make disciples, and churches that plant churches. Training serves that aim. Churches that multiply need shepherds who can feed and protect a flock and prepare others to do the same, and forming one takes years, a mentor and a congregation that knows the person well. That is why, in a work we describe as train, send and multiply, training comes first.

James Bell tells the fuller story on The Mission page. In eleven years as a pastor in church revitalization, he and the church have seen God do great things. He has also learned that much of the model he has helped build rests on “come and see,” a good invitation (John 1:46) that has become the main one: build the church, come to the programs, come and attend. The same few teachers have taught year after year, and faithful believers have rarely been shown how to make disciples themselves. Training that reaches only the pulpit keeps that pattern in place, so this curriculum is written for elders and groups as well as pastors.

So there is one curriculum, written for three kinds of people and meant for every place the work takes root. The convictions stay the same wherever it is taught, while the schedule, the examples and the delivery change with the place. Five commitments run through every pathway, written for shepherds and met by every believer in a simpler form:

• Character. A shepherd's life is examined before his gifts are celebrated (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9).
• Scripture. The Bible read as one story centered on Christ, and each passage interpreted carefully in its context before it is taught.
• Doctrine. Sound teaching about God, Christ, the Spirit, salvation and the church, held clearly enough to explain simply and to guard against error (Titus 1:9).
• Shepherding. Feeding, leading and caring for real people, willingly and as an example (1 Peter 5:1–4).
• Multiplication. Preparing others to do the same, so the work continues beyond any one person's reach (2 Timothy 2:2).

§ 02Who We Train.

We hope to train three kinds of people, each to the depth their calling needs: pastors, elders and groups. Together they make a leadership pipeline, the path by which a church notices, forms and sends its next leaders, from the newest believer to the pastor.

Paul tells Timothy to entrust what he has heard to faithful people who will be able to “teach others also.”

2 Timothy 2:2

The verse holds four generations in one sentence, and the three kinds of people we hope to train stand inside it. Training that stops with the first student has missed the point of the verse.

§ 03One Curriculum, Three Pathways.

Each pathway lists what it would study, module by module, and every title opens the full module. All three draw on one curriculum, written by ENDS and still a draft; the pathways for elders and groups are proposals built from it.

Two gates were written with village ministry in mind: a house gathering at the end of Phase III, and a named people group with a three-year plan at the end of Phase IV. In other settings, and for elders, the sending church would set gates that fit the place; the groups pathway has no gates. In rural America, most new churches planted from a hub would begin in a home, and some in a storefront, a shared building or a rented hall; a home is never required, and lower overhead never means weaker teaching, unsafe ministry or thinner care.

§ 04How Training Works in a Hub.

A hub is a healthy local church, or a trusted partner ministry, that trains pastors, elders and groups and sends them out to plant and strengthen churches. The churches it plants are small, sustainable and low in overhead, and led by trained elders. Each is its own church, with its own name, elders, members and decisions. None is a campus, and none carries the ENDS name or the hub's. Those churches may choose to join a network for training, care, accountability and shared mission, and in time a mature church can become a hub and train others. We hope to plant a church in rural America that grows into one, and the whole model is set out on The Hub Model page.

In a hub, training for pastors and elders would follow six steps. Those who lead groups, women and men, would follow a lighter form of the same pattern: a group to learn with, someone more experienced alongside, and ministry practiced first with help and then alone. Assessment against the elder qualifications and congregational affirmation belong to the pastor and elder pathways.

1. Assessment

   Assessment, as church-planting networks use the word, is a careful, prayerful look at whether someone is ready to lead and what would help him get ready. His walk with Christ, character and household would be examined against 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, with a mentor and references who know him well. Some discover that they are called to serve before they are ready to lead, and that is an honorable outcome.

2. A cohort

   Study happens in company. A cohort trains together on the same schedule from beginning to end, praying for one another and keeping one another going. In a hub, it could gather pastors, church planters and future elders from several churches, in person where distance allows and online where it does not.

   Before the next step: He can explain what he has learned in conversation and use it rightly in his teaching.

3. A mentor and a coach

   Each man would walk with a named mentor, a pastor or elder with time to give, who prays with him, asks about his soul and his home, and watches how he handles Scripture and people. Coaching sits alongside it: regular conversations about the work itself, its goals, obstacles and next steps.

4. Observed ministry

   He would teach and care for people while others watch and help. He teaches a passage before a mentor, the elders and, in time, the congregation, who tell him honestly how faithful, clear and caring it was. He also shares in real pastoral work beside an experienced shepherd: visiting the sick and grieving, walking with a new believer, helping with conflict, and following safe practice with children and vulnerable adults.

   Before the next step: He has taught an assigned passage accurately and clearly, more than once, under observation, and has shared in pastoral care under supervision.

5. Congregational affirmation

   The church that knows him best is asked whether it recognizes the qualifications in his life. Under elder-led congregationalism, explained below, its elders examine and recommend (in a new church, the pastors who serve it), and the congregation recognizes its leaders. That recognition belongs to the church, whatever training he has completed.

6. Continuing support

   Training does not end at recognition. Shepherds would keep a mentor, meet with peers, keep studying, rest, and have someone who asks about their household and their soul. Much of this is what the network would give the churches that choose to join it. It is part of the design and not yet in place.

A ministry pathway for training. The steps overlap in practice, and the notes marked “Before the next step” describe what should be visible first. No one moves through it on a fixed timetable or toward a guaranteed result.

For someone preparing to plant, a hub would add a residency: a set season of serving inside the hub church, under its elders, before being sent. A church planter would usually go with a planting team, sometimes called a core team: the women and men, families and single adults who begin a new church together. Neither is running yet.

§ 05Who Serves as an Elder.

Scripture says more about an elder's life than about his gifts. In 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9, Paul describes the man a church should recognize as an overseer, and his qualifications can be gathered under four headings.

• His conduct. He is above reproach and respectable; self-controlled, sober-minded, upright, holy and disciplined; a lover of good, and gentle. He is not violent, quarrelsome, arrogant or quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, and not a lover of money or greedy for gain.
• His household. He is “the husband of one wife,” manages his own household well with his children kept in good order, and is hospitable to others (1 Timothy 3:2–5; Titus 1:6–8).
• His maturity and reputation. He is not a recent convert, and he is well thought of by those outside the church.
• His teaching. He is able to teach and holds firmly to the trustworthy word as he was taught, so that he can give instruction in sound doctrine and correct those who contradict it.

The elder training we propose follows the Baptist convictions James Bell holds as a pastor, stated plainly here so that no one has to guess. The New Testament uses elder, overseer and shepherd for the same office (Acts 20:17, 28; Titus 1:5, 7; 1 Peter 5:1–2). That office is held by qualified men, as 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 describe. Where a church can recognize more than one qualified man, it should have a plurality of elders who share the work. How soon a young church reaches that plurality is a practical question, and as a starting arrangement it may begin with one elder and pray toward more.

In the pathways we propose, elders serve churches that practice regenerate church membership and are governed by elder-led congregationalism, two terms worth explaining.

Peter, writing as a fellow elder, urges elders to shepherd God's flock willingly and eagerly, without greed and without domineering, as examples to the flock, and promises that when the chief Shepherd appears they will receive the unfading crown of glory.

1 Peter 5:1–4

Training can prepare a man and help a church see him clearly, yet completing modules, finishing a pathway or holding a certificate never confers pastoral office. Returning through Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas, sent out by the church in Syrian Antioch, strengthened the disciples of the young churches they had planted and appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting (Acts 14:21–23). ENDS claims no apostolic role like theirs. Under elder-led congregationalism, as Baptists hold it, each church today recognizes its own elders, and our part is to help prepare men and serve the churches that will weigh them.

Faithful Christians in other traditions read some of these passages differently. We state these convictions so that churches and candidates know how the training materials are written, and we hold them with respect for those who see things otherwise. Partners overseas lead their own work under their own leadership; the ENDS standard for doctrinal agreement with partners is on What We Believe.

§ 06Equipping the Whole Church.

Christ gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to equip his people “for the work of ministry,” so that the body builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

Ephesians 4:11–16

Asking who may hold the office of elder is a narrower question than asking who may serve. In Ephesians 4, the leaders Christ gives equip, and the saints do the work of ministry. A church where the pastor does nearly all the work has quietly reversed that pattern, and a pastor can create it without meaning to, simply by doing too much himself.

Many pastors feel that weight. In a 2025 Lifeway survey of rural Protestant pastors, about 53% agreed that they often feel their congregation looks to them to do most of the church's work, and about 60% chose developing lay leaders from a list of their congregation's current challenges¹. In an older study of funded church plants, about 79% of plants whose planter provided leadership training to church members were still open four years later, against about 59% where the planter did not; the study shows an association and cannot prove cause².

So training reaches well beyond elders. We hope every church in this work will train women and men throughout the congregation for meaningful ministry, with the same seriousness about Scripture and character, beginning with the groups pathway. In practice it would include:

• Teaching. Leading Bible studies, teaching children and students, older women teaching younger women (Titus 2:3–5), and men further along in the faith encouraging younger men and setting them an example, as Paul charges Titus to do (Titus 2:6–8).
• Care. Visiting the sick, the homebound and the grieving, and staying with people through long seasons of need.
• Hospitality. Opening homes and tables to newcomers, neighbors and people with nowhere else to go (Romans 12:13; 1 Peter 4:9).
• Evangelism. Explaining the gospel clearly to a neighbor, co-worker or family member, and reading Scripture with someone who is curious.
• Mercy. Meeting practical needs in the town: meals, rides, repairs and help for families in crisis.
• Discipling. Meeting regularly with another believer to read Scripture, pray and help each other follow Jesus in ordinary life.
• Administration. Keeping honest books, organizing volunteers and arranging safe children's ministry.

None of this is a productivity test for membership. Every church includes people who mostly need care right now: the grieving, the sick, the new believer, the worn out. They belong to the church fully, and caring for them is part of the work of ministry Ephesians describes.

§ 07Built Around a Working Life.

Many elders, and many pastors of small churches, will serve while earning some or all of their living elsewhere, so the pathways would be built around a working life. Each arrangement below is an operating choice, to be revised with the churches that use it.

• Work schedules. Sessions would fit around evenings, weekends, shift work and the seasons of farming and the trades. The pace could slow in a hard season and pick up again, because the calendar never decides readiness.
• Travel and winter. Distances and winter roads shape how often people can meet, so the pathways would combine local time with a mentor, occasional gatherings at the hub, and remote sessions when travel is unsafe.
• Reading and audio. Reading would come with audio, recorded teaching and guided discussion, so someone who drives for a living can study as seriously as someone with evenings at a desk.
• Local safeguarding requirements. Observed ministry, and any work with children or vulnerable adults, would follow the church's own policies, its insurer's conditions and state law, including background checks and training where required.

Caring for bivocational and covocational shepherds

A shepherd who also earns his living elsewhere is often called bivocational. Some prefer covocational, for someone who holds the other job by calling as well as necessity, as a daily place to know neighbors and make disciples. Paul at times worked with his own hands (Acts 18:3; 20:34). The pathways would plan for their care from the start: reasonable responsibilities agreed in advance, shared leadership so that preaching, care and decisions do not rest on one man, a mentor who stays after training ends, and real rest, including protected time with his household. Compensation should be appropriate whenever the church is able, since Paul counts elders who lead well worthy of double honor and reminds Timothy that the laborer deserves his wages (1 Timothy 5:17–18).

An elder's household serves freely, as members of the church like everyone else, and must never become invisible unpaid staff. Full-time pastoral support remains a good and valid option wherever a church can provide it.

§ 08Where It Will Be Taught.

Thailand taught us where training belongs. The Servant Leadership Ministry Foundation (SLMIF) in Chiang Mai, where James Bell serves on the advisory board and teaches in the Servant Leadership Academy, sums up its Frontline Mission in three words: “Find. Train. Release.” It finds called workers already serving among their own people, trains them, releases them and keeps resourcing them where they are. In SLMIF's words on its Frontline Mission page, “We don't recruit them to leave; we resource them to stay.” We keep that instinct: train people where they already live and serve, inside a church that knows them, and keep standing with them there, whether they stay to shepherd that church or are sent to plant another.

With partners among the nations

James Bell has helped equip national pastors in Thailand and India. In Chiang Mai, SLMIF leads its own training. It describes its Servant Leadership Academy as a 123-hour program for pastors, church planters and lay leaders, taught in online cohorts by an international faculty, and it now also lists a USA–Canada cohort for 2026–27³. In Andhra Pradesh, Mission Impact India, led by David Livingstone, leads its own work and reports a network of national pastors. Both ministries, and their programs, belong to their own leaders.

The ENDS curriculum was written to be taught alongside partners like these, in a pastor's own setting and language. Neither SLMIF nor Mission Impact India has yet reviewed it, and whether any part of it is used overseas will be decided with the partner who leads that work. ENDS has also published the thirteen areas it intends to use in assessing a national pastor before support, on How We Vet a National Pastor; that standard has not yet been used with any candidate. The wider picture is on Where the Work Takes Root and Thailand and India.

Through a hub church here

Now we are seeking to do the same work here in rural America, like a missionary sent at home as well as abroad. The training on this page is what the hub we hope to plant would teach. Until then, we are praying for sending churches that want to prepare elders and train groups this way, and the pathways would be shaped with them.

§ 09Where This Stands.

Training touches a person's calling and a church's trust, so it matters to be precise about what is and is not on offer.

§ 10Common Questions.

§ 11Next Steps.

If you sense a call to shepherd, or your church hopes to prepare elders or train its groups, the right first step is a conversation. Write through the contact page and choose the topic “Elder formation” or “The training / curriculum”; James Bell is the contact. Describe yourself and your church in general terms, and keep confidential pastoral history out of a first message.