THE secret to Sunday School growth

I subscribe to several Sunday School related blogs. I received
this one recently from Daryl Wilson of the Kentucky Baptist
Convention. I asked him for permission for forward it own to you. It
is great.


If you would like to subscribe to Daryl's blog, go to



http://www1.kybaptist.org/revolutionary 



The Secret of Sunday School Growth:


Steve Grose shared his testimony about being
a twenty-three year old church planter in an article entitled

The Secret of
Church Growth: MULTIPLY UNITS. He attended a
three-week church growth seminar in which he heard from men like
Chuck Swindoll, John Macarthur Jr, Gene Getz, Bill Yeager, and
others. One of the men was Bill Taylor who at that time was the
Minister of Education at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas,
Texas (later served as Director of Sunday School for LifeWay
Christian Resources). In the seminar, Bill Taylor said:


“Your body grows each daily by multiplying
units of itself. When parts of your body stop doing this, then
that area stops growing” he said, patting his balding pate. “The
same is true in the Body of Christ! For any area to grow, we
must first of all multiply units. If we want more small group
Bible studies, we must multiply the number of small group
leaders. If we want a larger Sunday School we must multiply the
number of effective teaching and recruitment units in Sunday
School. If we want more men in discipling ministry, we must
multiply disciplers.”


Paul summarized it simply to Timothy when he
said, "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of
many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be
qualified to teach others" (2 Timothy 2:2, NIV). This should be
built into the fabric of the body of Christ. Sunday School
classes should be working to multiply themselves. Small groups
should be working to multiply themselves. Teachers/group leaders
should be working to multiply themselves. Outreach and ministry
leadership should be working to multiply themselves. Christian
disciples should be working to multiply themselves.


A sheep pen can only hold so many sheep. A
shepherd-steward can only care for so many sheep at one time
(John 10:1-16). In order to hold onto new wine, new wineskins
are needed (Matthew 9:17). For Sunday School to grow, new units
are absolutely necessary--even if space is still available in
the old units. But new units are always easier to start when a
God-called teacher/leader has been trained and is ready to step
forward.


What are you doing to apprentice new leaders?
What are you doing to discover, train, and prepare them to
launch new units? Consider some of these steps each of which
should be done in a spirit of prayer for God's leadership and
help:



  • ask God to guide you to a potential apprentice;

  • ask the potential apprentice to help you with small
    portions of the task over a period of time (like preparing a
    short report, making a visit, calling some guests, preparing
    for a fellowship, etc.);

  • ask the potential apprentice to teach a session when you
    plan to be present (give him/her feedback);

  • show, watch, and assign other tasks to prepare him/her;

  • help the potential apprentice to discover his/her gifts,
    abilities, and experiences that God wants to use as a
    teacher/group leader;

  • at the appropriate time, ask the potential apprentice to
    become your official apprentice (this heightens the
    intentional learning/teaching process);

  • ask the apprentice to teach once each month;

  • as new unit launch time approaches, ask the apprentice
    to teach more frequently, perhaps even the entire final
    month; and

  • launch the apprentice: either send the apprentice out
    with a seed group of 1-5 persons to start a new class or
    leave the apprentice in charge of the old class while you
    the teacher goes forth with a seed group of 1-5.


Do you want to grow? Then start new units. Do
you want to start new units? Then apprentice new leaders. Do you
want to apprentice new leaders? Then begin today praying that
God will guide you to a potential apprentice. Don't go through
another year maintaining the status quo. Pray and plan to grow.
Multiply units. Be revolutionary!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to keep the next generation in church.

Image
The latest research indicates that 70% of the kids who grow up in our youth groups are not staying in church. Project that out for about ten years and we have disaster. Based on data from Essential Church, the trend looks like this: For a free sample of the book, see http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/files/lwcF_PDF_Rainers_Essential_Church_Sample.pdf Another good book on the subject is Ed Stetzer's Lost and Found. Let's look at it more personally. My oldest son graduated from High School in 2004. He walked across the stage at church at the recognition ceremony along with 20 or so of his classmates. Most of them had been very active in youth group. Very few of them are active in church today. In fact, my son may be the only one. If you are in the mood for a good depression, do the math at your church. Dig up the list of the kids that graduated five years ago. See if you can figure out how many of them are in church
Read more

Sunday School revival

It is amazing what happens when you listen to people. Everyone should be slow to speak and quick to listen. Somebody smart wrote that! For the last several months I have been listening to the people who attend my conferences. I have been using a very simple evaluation form -- one with two questions: What did you like? What could I improve? People always said kind things. I think that has more to do with them being kind than anything I did. I was not surprised at all by two of the suggestions. I was shocked by the third. I didn't actually track it, but it was probably the most common suggestion for change. First, here are the two I was not surprised by. Slow down. I work on that, but unsuccessfully. You just get me talking about doubling groups and I get all fired up. Provide a fill-in-the-blanks note-taking piece. I actually used to do this. Occasionally hosts would drop the ball and not make copies. I always did better when that was the case. I just speak better w
Read more

Puzzling data regarding lecturing teachers

Image
Many of you know I am working on a new book on What Makes Groups Grow. I am puzzling just now over the data regarding teachers to lecture. Here is the puzzle: Teachers who use all lecture were the second mostly likely group to be growing Teachers who use all lecture were also the most likely group to be declining (by a wide margin) I have my own theories as to why this is true. What do you make of it? How could the lecturing group be both likely to grow and likely to decline?
Read more