I strongly encourage you to be prayerfully watching for signs of interest in the people you are teaching — there are people who God will bring into your sphere of influence who are part of the next generation of Bible teachers.
Don’t just look for volunteers — God doesn’t.
Instead, as the Holy Spirit leads you, approach the men and women and youth in whom you see potential. Give them the challenge to teach, and help them grow into that challenge. Speak into their chests! Give them encouragement, and guidance, and feedback as they develop. You are God’s ambassador, developing apprentices in the craft of Bible teaching.
You should mentor new and developing Bible teachers for two main reasons.
First, we have a responsibility to shepherd the next generation of teachers.
Second, there are things you will not learn yourself until you mentor others in this craft. Your own development will tend to plateau until you take steps to bring others along.
We aim to develop Bible teachers in every corner of the world — men and women competent to teach from the Word of God to His Glory, so we can teach a billion souls. Why a billion? By 2021 there will be an additional billion people on Earth — all precious souls. How can we develop enough Bible teachers to teach them? It will take at least 400,000 teachers!
We can’ t rely on seminaries and colleges. They do excellent work, but they can’t produce enough trained teachers fast enough. We can’t rely on pre-made Bible study guides and lessons. We simply can’ t produce them in enough languages and get them into people’s hands. We can’t use approaches that require a lot of materials or money.
To develop 400,000 Bible teachers by 2021 we must rely only on the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and the power of teachers training teachers, using proven methods of effective teaching to change lives. And everything must be free of charge.
If we begin with a few thousand teachers, each training 3 more teachers over the next three years, and then each of them training 3 more teachers, and so on, we can reach 400,000 teachers by 2021.
Year # of Bible teachers
2009 2,500
2012 10,000
2015 40,000
2018 160,000
2021 640,000
(We’re praying that we can begin with more than 2,500 teachers in 2009, and realistic that not everyone will be able mentor three teachers every three years. Our God can accomplish more than we ask or imagine!)
Below you will find the download link to a free ebook which provides basic coaching in how to teach from the Bible effectively — and how to mentor other new teachers! The approach we describe has been used by thousands of Bible teachers — at all levels of prior experience — to dramatically improve the effectiveness of their teaching.
There are four elements required for great Bible teaching that changes lives:
1. Excellent content (that’s the Bible!)
2. Receptive students
3. A prepared teacher (because YOU are the tool God will use)
4. Effective methods of teaching
Will you take up the challenge — developing your teaching skills, and then training more teachers? Working together we can teach a billions souls!
To God be all the Glory,
Glenn Brooke
About the Author:
Glenn is the author of several books for Bible teachers, including Teach the Bible to Change Lives. He has coached thousands of Bible teachers to be more effective.
Right-click on this button to save the free ebook Teach A Billion Souls to your computer:
