I’m a big fan of training group leaders. In fact, one author I just read in the last 30 days says that if you aren’t going to train your leaders, you shouldn’t bother enlisting them in the first place. He says that a commitment to lead (on the part of the volunteer) calls for a reciprocal commitment on the part of the church to provide training. I agree.

I have just begun a part-time ministry on a church staff here in the Nashville area. One of the first things I did was to create a year-long training plan for the group leaders. I used a new resource from LifeWay to do this quickly and easily. In fact, I had a year-long plan in just 20 minutes. We begin our first training event on February 11!

The Georgia Baptist Convention surveyed over 2500 churches there, and learned that if churches conducted monthly OR quarterly training for leaders, there was an average of 13%+ growth in a four year period. I decided to schedule quarterly training for the church where I’ve just assumed responsibilities as their Minister of Education. I’m using 2 of the 12 videos in the new Sunday School Matters training series, and I’m adding one live training event in which I bring in trainers to lead training on site at the church. We’re going to read and review a book at our final training event of 2018. My training plan for 2018 is here to the right. Just click on the image and you can enlarge it to see our training plan for 2018.

Friend and colleague Allan Taylor has just released a new training resource for churches. This training series, Sunday School Matters, will help local churches build, expand, and maintain a healthy Sunday School ministry. I’m using it to train workers in the skills required to grow the Sunday School and bring vibrancy to the church.

The kit features a variety of videos and topics that are important to growing a healthy Sunday School. The session titles are:

1. Leadership Matters
2. Vision Matters
3. Souls Matter
4. Teaching Matters
5. Transformation Matters
6. Curriculum Matters
7. Ministry Matters
8. Organization Matters
9. Assimilation Matters
10. Growth Matters
11. Groups Matter
12. Now Matters

I simply selected 2 of the session videos based on what I perceived the needs of the Sunday School to be, then chose two other kinds of training to round out the four training events we’ll have this year. In about 20 minutes, you could have a plan for training leaders, too! And remember: A plan is better than no plan!!

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