From an email by Will B., quoting an invitation to the training in Taiwan that he received from another missionary:

It is called “Jonathan Training” and was originally developed by OMF but has been used by multiple agencies in several parts of the world. The Jonathan training is not a cookie cutter package or “the 10 steps to plant your church”. It teaches good church planting principles and then requires you to build a plan to implement those principles in your specific situation. In fact, I think this is where Jonathan differs from other trainings I've seen. Every day, there are training sessions where one learns about the principles. But at night, there are assignments to help you work out how to develop these principles for your target group or target area. By the end of the training, you will have written a document that contains a people profile and steps and ideas that you can actually begin implementing on the ground. So it's not just a bunch of talk!

Just to share one simple example: one homework assignment requires you to brainstorm 100 unique ideas to sow the gospel among your people group. People really have to push themselves to come up with so many new ideas. But, out of the hundred ideas, by the time the training is over, you have a few really good ones that you can implement immediately.

I attended the training in 2002 and found it to be the most practical training I have ever done. There is even a session on raising prayer support and mobilizing folks back home. This is where we got the idea for “10 Seconds for Taiwan” if any of you have seen that.

Now a few details: The training itself is 2 weeks long. There is one weekend break in the middle and we want to do it without children because of the long hours and night-time homework. We prefer both spouses to be there but understand that this could be difficult because of the length and because kids can't come. We probably need to limit it to about 25 people. This means that we are first asking for people at the leadership level but who are still doing contact ministry. This is probably team leaders and/or strategic coordinators first. Then after that, we would invite team members assuming we still have space.