The Church's Mentoring Ministry And Community Television
After reading the first four modules in this consideration of the potential benefits of a community television initiative within a local church, it will be evident that such an initiative provides a context for fulfilling many of the ministry mandates of the church. The Church's mandate to mentor its members into a mature faith and quality life is no exception to this.A problem faced by many [particularly rural]Churches is that of rapid turnover of membership owing to movement away from the community for a variety of reasons. This can be frustrating in terms of the development of core leadership who no sooner are brought up to speed and they are gone to other communities. I well remember as a young boy our congregation in suburban Winnipeg during the heyday of corporate executive transfers. In a few years we had turned over two thirds of our congregation, some of whom had been-returned-and-gone-again. The biggest breakthrough for the congregation was a change in attitude from building leadership for their own purposes to building leadership for export to other Churches. Once they came to accept that their role in the larger scheme of things was to upgrade and export leaders, the focus of activity and excitement shifted from failed production to that of "value added".
It seems to me that churches in Brandon could adopt that attitude towards at least certain sections of its population to great benefit. When one's outlook is export, the turnover frustration transforms from a liability to an asset, and the focus becomes one of maximizing the value of each person's stay in Brandon. The issue of facilitating a smooth transition to a new parish context, and addressing the questions of how the Brandon experience can best be of use in the new context, then becomes part of the congregation's agenda. Getting new people up and involved as quickly as possible becomes imperative, cutting through the tendency to have newcomers put in their time in the back benches until they earn the right of being included. If the initiation process is delayed too long, it foreshortens the time for training and upgrading.
If a mentoring program is in place with ready openings for newcomers, complete with a logical progression for skill and personal development, all of which is integrated with the larger operation of the Church, then rapid assimilation of new members can be facilitated. The key to all of this process is to structure in depth to the mentoring process right from the first. The fastest way to see the program falter is to try to address the training needs with a focus on the operational frontline people from the outset. What is needed is to develop the mentors while the initial training is going on. That is, the initial front-line training is conducted not to train new crew, but to train mentors in how crew are trained. Never conduct any training of anyone without a mentor watching over one's shoulder to see how it is done. After the crew-training session ends, the mentors-in-training are de-briefed as to process. The new mentors are eventually given their own mentors to train as they go about training crew in the same fashion. Crew training is always conducted as a context for mentor training. This allows for the coming and going of the transient front-line crew.
The process, of course is not a new one, but rather one that Jesus himself used in the development of his Church. In my estimation, whatever else he was, he was an adult education administrative genius. Within three years, he had three thousand folks up and running...without his physical presence, in an initiative which has lasted two thousand years.
If the mentoring program is designed to handle not just the obvious production skills but also the types of items outlined in these five modules, the practical growth of the participants in a community television initiative could be quite significant.
As with Jesus' approach, we might well shift our focus to intensive training of mentors here in Brandon with an eye to their departure to other locations. Shipping out crew to places which do not offer community television initiatives as a church programming option, is likely to be frustrating for those who transfer out. At best, their only residual benefit will be a productive personal experience while they were here. The export of fully trained mentors who can establish mentoring programs elsewhere is quite different. In that case, they do not need to be transferred into a church with an established program. Rather, they can develop a mentoring program from scratch in the smallest of towns. Further, they can be helped to transfer the basic process to any existing initiative the new congregation might have in store. I have often wondered why the women's groups, which are so pervasive in local churches of every size, have not adopted a similar approach. The particular activity context really is secondary to the process, the objective, and the orientation to export leadership.
Brandon Issues Which May Be Addressed In Part By Mentoring in a Media-Based Program
Pioneer Philosophy The mentoring process is one which blends with Brandon's underlying rural philosophy in many ways, and thus may be able to harness its latent energy if the style can be fine tuned.
49/51% Racist Joint ventures with other groups, conducted inclusively with a place for everyone on a crew enables production to be a place for experiencing cross-cultural and inter-racial or inter-class growth experiences.
A Pass Through Center If a Church was in this activity for the long haul, the export of such staff with mentoring training would be a positive experience for all.
Under High Economic Pressure An initiative which furthers a broad range of skills and implements them within a mentoring relationship, in a practical setting which dovetails with job or career preparation and guidance, is very appropriate in tight economic times.
Mediocre Standards Even if the Cable Company is not in a position to implement a long-term mentoring program which presses for excellence both individually and collectively, it doesn't stop the churches from doing so. The Staff at the Cable Company are certainly in a position to assist with both the program design and the process.
Exports Its Youth One very successful skill mentoring shoots I was involved in establishing, put senior volunteers as crew on a five-day paid commercial shoot on behalf of a non-profit group. When they returned, they said they learned more in five exhausting days than they could have imagined. There are many joint ventures which could form part of the overall experience of our soon-to-be-exported youth.
Silos of Excellence Joint productions with non-profit organizations and Social Service departments can become involved in many quality productions where the learning is high and the barriers between "silos of excellence" are crossed. The activities of Brandon area's SMART network had this vision for the region also.
Labor Factor Quality mentoring of crew in a variety of situations will inevitably involve opportunities to deal with labor related issues. Content of programs dealing with labor issues in light of the Gospel is another opportunity to address these issues in the context of a mentoring arrangement.
Navagation