Two weeks into the first-year timetable at William Booth College, I am noticing that some of the most important formation may be happening outside the formal teaching sessions.
A timetable looks like an administrative tool.
It tells us where to be. What starts when. Who’s teaching. When we stop for coffee. When we gather for worship. When lunch begins.
But two weeks into the first-year timetable at William Booth College, I am beginning to wonder whether the timetable is doing more than organising the day.
I think it is teaching.
Not just through the sessions printed on it, but through the rhythms, the habits, the relationships and the interruptions that surround them.
And that matters for formation.
The formal curriculum is only part of the story
When we think about training people for Salvation Army officership and for ministry, it is natural to focus on content.
What do cadets need to know?
What skills do they need?
What experiences will help prepare them for ministry?
Those questions matter. But formation is never limited to what happens in a classroom.
A cadet may spend a session exploring doctrine. Then, on their attachment placement, someone asks them a deep question about faith.
They may discuss Salvationist history in class, but they are also learning about Salvation Army leadership in the present.
They may study prayer in spiritual formation class, but they are also learning from the place prayer is given within the rhythm of college life.
The formal curriculum teaches.
But so does everything around it.
Rhythm forms us
Every timetable creates a rhythm.
We gather. We learn. We pray. We eat. We work. We pause. We begin again.
Repeated often enough, that rhythm starts to shape us.
This is one reason I love the language of knowing, being and doing that we use to shape cadet training.
We can separate those things for the sake of planning. It helps us ask good questions.
What does someone need to know?
Who are they becoming?
What do they need to learn to do?
But life does not keep those things separate.
What I learn changes the way I see.
The way I see shapes the way I act.
The way I act reveals something about who I am becoming.
And experience sends me back to think, pray and learn again.
Formation happens in that movement.
The timetable may divide learning into sessions.
Formation joins it all back together.
There is always a hidden curriculum
There is another kind of learning happening too.
The lessons nobody writes into the session plan.
What happens when someone asks a difficult question?
How do we respond when someone makes a mistake?
What do we do when the tech doesn’t work as it should?
How do we speak about people who are not in the room?
What gets dropped when the day becomes busy?
What do we do when someone needs time?
Can people admit that they are struggling?
How do leaders behave when things don’t go to plan?
None of those questions may appear in the curriculum.
But answers are being given every day.
That is both encouraging and challenging.
It means those of us involved in formation are always teaching something.
Our tone teaches.
Our priorities teach.
Our reactions teach.
Our use of time teaches.
The culture around learning is itself a form of learning.
Ministry rarely fits neatly into a timetable
Perhaps this is good preparation for ministry.
Ministry doesn’t normally present itself in tidy blocks.
A sermon may need writing while someone needs pastoral care.
A leadership issue may emerge in the middle of something else.
A theological question may suddenly become urgent because someone is sitting across the desk asking why God allowed something painful to happen.
Mission, worship, administration, pastoral care, leadership and discipleship constantly overlap.
So perhaps good formation is not about preparing people for every possible situation.
That would be impossible.
Perhaps it is about helping people learn how to notice.
What’s happening here?
What’s happening in me?
Where might God be at work?
What am I learning?
What might faithfulness look like now?
Those questions matter.
Experience on its own doesn’t always form us.
We can simply repeat habits.
Reflection helps experience become learning.
Formation is often slower than we would like
Two weeks is not long.
There is a temptation in education and training to want to see quick progress.
We like outcomes.
We like evidence.
We like being able to point to something and say, “That worked.”
Some learning can be seen quite quickly.
Formation is different.
Character takes time.
Confidence grows slowly.
Self-awareness develops through experience.
Old assumptions are exposed.
New habits take root.
Sometimes the most important change is almost invisible at first.
That means formation needs patience.
Not vague hope.
Not a lack of challenge.
But patience.
We need to trust that Scripture, prayer, community, teaching, experience and reflection can work together over time.
We all have a timetable
The more I think about this, the less it feels like a question only for theological education.
We all live by some kind of timetable.
Even if we never write it down.
We have routines.
We have habits.
We have repeated conversations.
We have things we make time for and things we keep putting off.
We have patterns in how we work, rest, pray, listen and respond.
Those patterns are forming us too.
So perhaps the deeper question is not only:
What am I doing with my time?
Perhaps it’s:
What is my use of time doing to me?
What kind of person are my daily rhythms helping me become?
What do the repeated patterns of my life reveal about what I value?
Where might something need to change?
Two weeks into the timetable, I am increasingly convinced that formation does not begin when a teaching session starts.
It’s already happening.
In the corridor.
Over coffee.
During worship.
In the interruption.
In the mistake.
In the way we respond when the plan changes.
In the ordinary rhythm of another day.
The timetable is teaching.
The challenge for those of us involved in formation is to notice what it is teaching - and to ask whether the lessons we live are consistent with the lessons we hope to teach.
For those involved in ministry, leadership or formation: what do you think the hidden timetable of your setting is teaching?