I'm sure most of us would agree that training small group leaders is an incredibly important task for the local church. We hear Paul’s call to entrust the gospel to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim 2:2) and we know that well-trained small group leaders are better able to teach and care for the wider body of the church.
But how do we even begin training these leaders? Especially with the different constraints faced by many local churches (time is scarce, resources are limited, trainers are hard to come by, etc.).
This post won’t be able to address every constraint out there, but today I’d like to share how our church overcame some of those challenges and also share some training resources you could use for your church.
Back in September, my colleague, Ivan, and I caught up with Andrew Ong, a minister from another local church, Bethany Trinity Presbyterian Church. The three of us got chatting and realised that both our churches saw a great need for our small group leaders to be better equipped, but both our churches lacked the resources to run a full training course by ourselves. And so we thought, ‘why not work together to train our leaders?'
What resulted is what we now call the Ministry Training Course (MTC), a training course jointly developed and jointly run by Bethesda Church Bukit Arang and Bethany Trinity Presbyterian Church, which saw 100 small group leaders equipped with foundational skills for gospel ministry. MTC will continue to run over the course of 2020 as we conduct further training on how to read the New and Old Testament.
And so, if you're currently in a situation where you'd like to get your small group leaders trained, but maybe your church doesn't have the resources to do so by itself, why not consider training your leaders in partnership with another local church?
And to help you along with this important task of training small group leaders, over the few weeks, we'll be posting material on the training sessions we’ve used with our leaders. Here’s what to expect:
MTC Intensive Weekend - Foundational ministry skills for small group leaders
1. How to prepare for a bible study
2. How to write a bible study
3. How to lead a bible study
4. How to pastorally care for a bible study group
MTC Year-long sessions – Reading the NT and OT
1. 5 training sessions on How to read NT Letters (Philippians)
2. 4 training sessions on How to read OT Narrative (Ruth)
We hope this gives you some ideas on how to get started and we pray that these resources will be a blessing to your leaders and to the people they'll be ministering to!
But before we get down to the task of training our small group leaders, it might be worth us taking a step back and asking - why bother studying the bible in small groups in the first place? For this, do check out our latest module on Why study the bible in small groups?
If you are based in Singapore, and would like to join us at our next MTC Intensive Weekend on 27 June and 4 July 2020, you can sign up here: https://forms.gle/dGqejBJinw3gMCpa9 ]
Commentaires