{"id":126,"date":"2007-01-13T23:58:01","date_gmt":"2007-01-14T04:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucog.org\/blog\/?p=124"},"modified":"2007-01-13T23:58:01","modified_gmt":"2007-01-14T04:58:01","slug":"an-oldie-but-a-goodie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/01\/13\/an-oldie-but-a-goodie\/","title":{"rendered":"An &quot;oldie but a goodie&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;Practice makes perfect&quot; is one saying that applies to a leadership training program in the Netherlands.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The question <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:12px;padding-top:7px;float:right\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ucog.org\/BILDER\/dutchsc01.jpg\" title=\"Martin Arendsen at Dutch Spokesman Club\" alt=\"Martin Arendsen at Dutch Spokesman Club\" height=\"296\" width=\"275\" \/> of how to provide more speakers for regular church services has been on our minds in the Netherlands and Germany for some time. Some months ago our UCG-Holland treasurer Marcos Rosales came up with the idea of reviving a type of &quot;Spokesman Club&quot; for any of the men who might be interested. So he and a small group from the UCG-Holland congregation began meeting every 2-3 months or so on a weekday evening for a practice speaking session. With the Netherlands being a relatively small country with an excellent highway network, the time commitment involved for the men (with their family and job responbilities) was manageable. Each of the men present could give a 10 minute speech, with one of the men functioning as a director\/evaluator during the session (on a rotating basis). I had positive reports on each session, with the men involved all being enthusiastic about the opportunity. <\/p>\n<p>After about a  <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:12px;padding-top:5px;float:right\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ucog.org\/BILDER\/dutchsc02.jpg\" title=\"Eric de Moei at Dutch Spokesman Club\" alt=\"Eric de Moei at Dutch Spokesman Club\" height=\"305\" width=\"275\" \/> year or so of the revived Dutch Spokesman Club having regular practice meetings, it was time for the group to demonstrate its progress in a special afternoon club session following regular church services. So today was the day! A &quot;table topics&quot; session was included, allowing the entire congregation to participate in that part of the meeting (in the top photo you see Martin Arendsen making a comment during the topics session). Afterwards it was time for the men to give their speeches, and their messages were well received by the &quot;audience&quot;, making the special session a success. Have you ever heard the cynical comment in reference to former days in the WCG (as I have) &quot;What was good about it?&quot; Well, Spokesman Club is an example of speech training that provided a positive benefit for hundreds of men, even helping them on their job (as a number have told me). That &quot;oldie but a goodie&quot; has done the same thing in the last year for the men involved in the Dutch Spokesman Club &ndash; congratulations to you all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;Practice makes perfect&quot; is one saying that applies to a leadership training program in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ucg-holland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}