Archive for Teaching

Developing Apprentice Teachers

“How could I be so stupid?”  Maybe you’ve never asked yourself this question.  But I have—lots of times.  I’ll never forget the day that my perspective on Sunday School teaching changed forever.  I had always been a good Sunday School teacher.  I had shepherded my students.  I had tried to ground them in the key doctrines of Scripture.  I had tried to encourage them to live for Jesus, in church and out of church.  But I had failed to develop apprentice teachers.  I had sought to gather students in my classroom, rather than equip students to minister in other classrooms. 

I was attending a LifeWay Sunday School training, when 2 Timothy 2:2 gripped my soul.  “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”  The verse became my life verse.  I determined that I would no longer evaluate myself based on the size of my class.  I would evaluate myself based on the Christian leaders, especially the Christian teachers, who came out of my class. 

We tend to grieve over the loss of students, even the students who leave our class to teach other classes.  In some ways, that’s understandable.  The world judges us by the number of students who sit in our classroom.  But Christ judges us based on our impact on his kingdom.  We should always be looking for that student who has the potential to teach.  We should be seeking to multiply our ministry, as the Apostle Paul did, through the lives of others.

Prepared by Dr. Fred Creason

Leadership Strategist, Wyoming Southern Baptists   

Meeting Online When Live Is Impossible

There is no substitute for live social interaction–even meeting online. You cannot pat someone on the back or hug them by phone, online, or by mail. Eye contact is impossible by phone, text, email, mail, and even one-way video (challenging even with two-way video).

Knowing that, what can be done when circumstances prevent meeting in person? As a nation and world, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 virus (Coronavirus) pandemic. Limits have been set on group gathering size.

That impacts churches. If worship does not happen in person, groups are usually cancelled as well. But even without a virus crisis, sometimes groups cannot meet in person. Vacations happen. Illness, family member death, and a litany of reasons occur that take members or even the leader away. My question in this day of technology is why cancel?

Meeting Online

There are tons of methods for connecting when you cannot meet in person. Consider some of the following ideas:

  • Conference calls (for groups less techno-savvy) can enable a lesson to be taught with Q&A or discussion, announcements, and prayer together;
  • Facebook Live and YouTube Live can enable the group leader to pray, share announcements, and teach a lesson; while this is one-way communication, it can be supplemented by text to receive prayer requests and lesson questions/comments;
  • Zoom, GoToMeeting, Google G Suite, and others can enable groups to see and hear each other and tend to work best for smaller groups if there will be much interaction; they offer chat during video which allows written prayer requests, announcements/reminders, and lesson questions/comments (the video link and the chat conversation can be emailed to those who missed it);
  • Facebook Groups and other social media can provide posting of lesson outlines, questions, and discussion along with announcements and prayer requests;
  • Text generally works best with really small groups (2-4) and short texts; if the group or texts gets larger, then participants won’t have enough time to read what is texted.

Again, I am not advocating online meeting in place of live meetings in person. But your class or group can meet online when special holidays or circumstances prevent meeting live in person. A small group could still meet online when a group leader or host has to travel. A D-group could still meet online when a discipler is out of town. And these ideas can also work for the sick, traveling, etc. to join when the rest of the group is still meeting live in person.

Comments?

Do you have additional experiences, resource suggestions, or ideas you could share? Press Leave a Comment to share. Don’t stop meeting just because you can’t meet live in person.

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Darryl Wilson serves as the Sunday School & Discipleship Consultant for the Kentucky Baptist Convention. He is the author of Disciple-Making Encounters: Revolutionary Sunday School and the Sunday School Revolutionary blog.

Connect through Others: Identify Your One

To my delight, my oldest son recently got engaged. My wife and I already love his fiancée and welcome her into our family. I’m also excited about the prospects of becoming a granddad, finally catching up with many of my friends who tell me how wonderful it is. There’s something about knowing your family will continue for another generation that feels good and right, isn’t there?

The same thing could be said spiritually. When someone we helped to follow Jesus begins to show someone else how to follow him, we know our faith will live for another generation. It’s the Great Commission come to life!

The Who’s Your One? process has now come full circle in this series of August posts for group leaders.

You helped group members identify “their one”—the person God has placed in their lives who needs Jesus. You encouraged members to tell the stories of transformation week by week in these relationships. You affirmed members’ faithful obedience and celebrated new birth in those who have trusted Jesus as Savior.

End of story, right? Hardly! It’s just another beginning!

Ask your group members:

  • Who has God put in my life that needs to meet and follow Jesus?
  • What needs do they have that Christ and/or the church can meet?

Now is the best time to help a new believer identify “their one.” It’s also the best time to help a more mature believer identify their “next one.” Tomorrow we’ll think about prayer as a catalyst for this process.

Beyond Disciple Now: Ongoing Student Disciplemaking

It is inevitable. Pizza gets cold. Popcorn turns stale. Soda gets flat. Even our favorite popular Christian songs of the now will be the songs we skip over on our Spotify playlists tomorrow. Much of the elements we often spend the majority of our time in Student Ministry eventually go the way of cold pizza and flat soda pop. They are temporal in nature and that is not a bad thing. It only becomes a problem if ALL that we do in student ministry is based in the temporal things of ministry. We need to be intentional about investing in things that matter, the eternal things of Student Ministry. One of the most important things we can do for our students is help them make disciples that make disciples.

First, let’s look at what Discipling Students is NOT:

• Discipleship is not an event: We plan amazing weekend discipleship events and gather active students and first time guests together in one place. We set them up in homes with young and motivated student leaders that point them toward life transformation. We call these events Disciple Now Weekends and they are a staple of youth groups across the country. But they are just an entry point to discipleship encounters with students. They can be launching pads for ongoing discipleship journeys, but we fall short if we think that they, alone, will make disciples of our students.

• Discipleship is not a midweek message: We pour hours of preparation into the perfect message, a combination of relatable illustrations, funny stories, video clips and cap it off with sound, verse by verse exposition of scripture that would make any preaching professor proud. While great Bible teaching is certainly needed in our youth groups, that alone will not lead students to ongoing discipleship encounters. As much as we work to put the right words together, it is unlikely that any of the students will remember most of what we share one year from the day you present it.

• Discipleship is not easy: You can’t just add a few hours of time into your schedule to invest in a handful of students and expect to create followers of Christ. Disciple making cannot be compartmentalized like we do with other aspects of our lives. Students are complicated, messy, and a myriad of other adjectives. They are all of these because they are fallen like we are. When we dedicate ourselves to intentional discipleship, we need to be prepared to die to ourselves.
So, if it is NOT all these things, what is Discipleship of Students?

• Discipleship is biblical: We have many passages of scripture that point us to the command to make disciples. Matthew 28:19-20, 2 Timothy 2:2, Romans 10:14-15, and many more. We need to heed the commands in scripture to replicate who we are in Christ with others. Jesus used scripture to teach his followers the ways of his father, God. We need to do likewise.

• Discipleship is relational: It does not call for a program. It calls for a relationship. You must invest in the lives or your students beyond the calendar of activities. Encourage your student leaders to spend time building godly relationships with students in ways that build trust, transparency, and earn the right to speak into the lives of your students.

• Discipleship is who we are, not a part we play: Making disciples is not one of the many tasks that appear on a Student Pastor job description. It becomes part of your DNA. When you are a disciple maker, it becomes part of who you are. Even when you make mistakes, you use those times to mold students into an understanding of God’s grace and how you respond should be a mirror of how Christ would respond in a given situation. Let your life be a reflection of Christ in you.

Jason McNair is State Missionary for Strengthening Churches at Utah Idaho Southern Baptist Convention. He has worked in Student Ministry at churches and ministries in Texas, Utah, Georgia and has served as a national trainer for LifeWay Church Resources in the area of Student Group Ministry.

Teach Dynamically

VERSE:  Whcreativeteachingatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. Colossians 3:23, ESV

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? According to merriam-webster.com one of the definitions for dynamic (dy·nam·ic) is “marked by usually continuous and productive activity or change.”  In the Christian realm, I think that most of us desire for our relationship with God to be dynamic in the sense that we want to be in a continuous state of growing in our relationship with him – which would often produce activity and change.  So it is important that this carries over into our teaching time on Sundays, Wednesdays, or whenever we are teaching at church.

WHAT DO I DO? As I began to think of the topic of teaching dynamically and the definition above, several key thoughts and actions came to mind:

  • Spend time in God’s word on a daily basis
  • Pray for God’s directions, for your class time, for the kids in your class and their families.
  • Prepare.  Take time to prepare to teach God’s word and to share the Greatest story ever
  • Develop relationships with your group members. Get to know them.  They are all created in his image.
  • Take advantage of training opportunities.
  • Choose to take time to teach creatively to different learning styles.

What would you add to this list to have a dynamic teaching time?


Maria Brannen has served as a State Missionary with the Georgia Baptist Mission Board since 1998 and is a Kids Groups and Faith Development Consultant. Prior to that, she served on church staff in Georgia and Texas. She has produced multiple resources including Bible Drill Devotional Books, Youth Bible Drill Leader’s Guides and a Bible Drill app in the iTunes store.  Connect with Maria at facebook.com/gbckidsministry,    
or https://www.pinterest.com/gabibledrill/ . Maria’s e-mail is mbrannen@gabaptist.org