Josh Hunt's blog

One of the most common questions I am asked is, "I know the hospitality-based strategy will work. How do I motivate my people to do it?" I am asked this by laymen wanting to know how to motivate their groups, as well as pastors who want to motivate their people. I just read a great book on this topic: Influencer, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. It is a great book. If you are interested in how to influence people, run, don't walk, to get this book. If I were a pastor, I would be studying this book with my staff. If I were a Minister of Education, I would put this on the schedule to study with my teachers. . . soon. I love this book so much I bought the book and the audio. I will likely listen to the audio more than once. Here is a story that illustrates the power of using the principles in this book. Imagine it is your job to fight a disease that has plagued humanity for over ...

Asking questions is the best way to teach adults. And a few questions can be used over and over and never get old. Here are four questions you ought to ask your group regularly.   1.  How are you doing these days in terms or your time alone with God? I have asked groups to discuss this at conferences many times at it is always a positive, encouraging thing. Most of us want to have a quiet time. We just need a little help from our friends. We need to encourage one another to have a quiet time. One way to do this is to ask the questions regularly: how are you doing these days? The quiet time is the fundamental discipline of the Christian life. We want to create people who start their day with the Bible on their lap. Most people need a little help from their friends to do this. I have found that in in own life my consistency in time alone with God ebbs and flows a bit. For me, I tend to do better when I am at home and worse when ...

When I was in sales, my broker taught me about the sales funnel. It occurs to me there is great application for growing a church. We sold commercial property. The steps to selling a property looked like this: Get a listing Develop a brochure Place ads Receive calls/ send brochures Call back/ assess interest/ answer questions Negotiate an offer Sign a contract Due diligence Close sale We get paid The key point my broker wanted to communicate to me as he explained this was, you have to have a bunch of #4 if you ever expect to get any of #10. The mistake of the rookie salesman is assuming every inquiry is a paycheck. Seen graphically, it might look like this: The Growth Funnel Just as salesmen have a sales funnel, churches have a growth funnel. (This is the idea behind the parable of the seed and the soil.) The Growth Funnel might look like this: Pre-evangelism events Visitors Repeat vis...

It is possible to double a class every two years or less. I have heard testimonies of hundreds of teachers who have doubled. (See http://www.joshhuntnm.blogspot.com/ ) It is possible, but it is not easy. It is hard work, and it takes time. In order to double a class every two years or less, we must learn to manage time well. The good news is, this skill of managing time will help us in every area of life. Here is the magic: we work on doubling the class, and God works on us, making us to be the kind of people He wants us to be. One of the qualities of being the people He wants us to be is people who manage their time well. Most of what I have read about time management is wrong. Or, at least, it didn’t work for me. Most time management courses will tell you to do this: 1. Make a list of things that have to be done 2. Sort them in the order of their priority 3. Start working on item #1 4. Don’t stop working on #1 until #1...

I had dinner with Chris Imbach, an early adopter to the double your class strategy a couple of weeks ago. I told you about him before. He told me once that he now has great great grand daughter classes. For that article, see http://www.joshhunt.com/mail179.htm As I reflected on our time together, I thought, "What makes doubling work for Chris and other teachers that I have known that have doubled not once, but several times over the years? What is it that makes some teachers so successful at growing classes?" There are a number of things involved, but there is one thing that is true of every doubling Sunday School teacher I know. You can have this quality and not double, but I have never known a doubling teacher who did not have this quality. And, I have known teachers that were dedicated, hard working, knowledgeable, and articulate and were largely ineffective because they lacked one quality: People didn't like them. ...

At what point do we quit doing scripture memory in Sunday School? Little kids do scripture memory all the time in Sunday School; at what age do we stop? Too soon, I say. At what age should we stop doing scripture memory in Sunday School? At what age do we graduate from this childish approach to learning? Never. If you want to create (spiritually speaking) meat-eating lions, if you want to create take-no-prisoners soldiers of the cross, if you want to create spiritual giants, if you want to create people who love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, if you want to create people who are being transformed by the gospel a little more each day, from one glory to the next, encourage people to memorize God's word. I know of no other spiritual discipline that will drive steel into the foundation of your soul like scripture memory. Want to sin less than you do? Consider the promise of this verse: I have hi...

Last week I asked subscribers to The Lesson Vault if they would be willing to write a one or two sentence testimony on the benefit of these lessons. I was hoping, if it was a good day, to get a half-dozen responses. Instead, I have been inundated with emails from teachers and Ministers of Education expressing their appreciation for the Lesson Vault At the end of this list, I want to share with you how you can try these lessons for free. You likely won't want to read all of these, but I hope you will read enough to be convinced The Lesson Vault could make a huge difference for your teachers. Feel free to skip to the end when you are convinced. Commendations on the Lesson Vault: God has utilized the Lesson's from the Lesson Vault to minister to us.  The questions are really good for facilitating meaningful conversation.  Our class grew from 10 people to more than 40 in one year!!!  We don't have a room big enough for us now....