27 May The Shepherd’s Staff – June 2022

The elder team has recently completed two sessions of our small group leader training. We had over 30 people attend the sessions and had good discussions about the elder’s role in supporting the leaders, sought to establish a good rapport between the leaders and the elder team, discussed the resources available for small group studies, and considered some helpful tactics in creating community amongst the groups.

One of the challenges that the elder team faces is to evaluate resources that are being used in our group studies throughout the church. It is our goal to flush out studies that go against our core values, but most importantly, that are not in line with the Bible. The following points were made in our training to listen carefully to anything an author or presenter says about…

· any deviation of salvation any other way but through Jesus

· works-based salvation

· prosperity-oriented teaching

· overly emotional teaching that has a thin focus on Scripture and/or God

· ideas that may be “radially altered” to cater to today’s church,

· minimizing or ignoring sin and repentance

· overly interested in mystical ideas, strange or unusual prayer

· hyper-focused on spirituality/demons/gods

· overly interested in prophecy or end-times, and

· minimalizing any part of Scripture (OT vs NT)

These are principles that we are using to qualify studies. The elders are very interested in what is being studied and welcome the opportunity to evaluate and discuss the materials available to present to small groups. This will continue to be on the front-burner for the foreseeable future and we look forward to growing our small groups and offering support to congregation as they learn more about the Bible and Jesus Christ.

We learn in 1 Timothy 3:16-17 that: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Whether that is in small groups, family Bible studies or reading Scripture, our prayer is that our congregation is growing in faith. Please let us know if we can be of any assistance in recommending materials for study.

• Bo Sink
• Joe Hayworth
• Eric Hilton
• Steve Cranford
• Kevin Logan
• Jay Payne
• Vince Brown
• Daniel Rich
• Jon Sloan