Leo Reynolds (2005), Creative Commons
The second stage of training a new Bible study leader is “I do, you help.” When your apprentice is ready to help, will you have something for that person to do? Here are some areas to consider.
1. Help with Logistics
As you give your apprentices some responsibility for the group, they can feel more ownership and demonstrate faithfulness. And as they show faithfulness in small things, you can entrust even greater things to them. Helping with logistics may involve recruiting, hosting, communicating, advertising, bringing a snack, or planning a group activity.
2. Help with Shepherding
Your goal in training a new Bible study leader should ultimately be to raise up a new shepherd of God’s people. So apprentices will learn much by learning to help you shepherd people. Apprentices can help shepherd people during the meeting: Asking good questions, encouraging quiet people to speak, or following up with prayer requests from previous meetings. They can also help shepherd people between meetings: Calling folks in the group, meeting with them for lunch, or connecting with outreach contacts. Ministry experience will help apprentices learn to lead better Bible studies.
3. Help with Preparation
Include your apprentice in your Bible study preparation. Though you could get it done faster by yourself, apprentices won’t learn unless you let them in. Meet with them before the meeting to go over the passage. Show them how to observe and investigate the text. Give them a voice to help shape your main point and craft specific applications for the small group.
4. Help with Evaluation
After the meeting, ask your apprentice how it went. How clear was the study? What was helpful or unhelpful? How were people responding? What was good? What could be better? What could we do to follow up on things that were said?
When leading a group, it’s great to have some help from an apprentice. This means we have to ask for help. But sometimes we fail to think of how apprentices can help because we’re too busy keeping all the responsibility for ourselves. So the main idea is to give apprentices real responsibility. In the next post I’ll expand on why it’s often difficult for us to do this.
Leave a Reply