The past year has been full of challenges when it comes to ongoing Bible study groups, especially groups that meet before or after a worship service. Getting resources into people’s hands, keeping in touch with people, making sure leaders have what they need, finding enough leaders to staff the groups, and the changing recommendations and attitudes have been just a few of those challenges.
These challenges contributed to Lifeway making digital curriculum available through Ministry Grid. Let’s look at what this way of delivering ongoing Bible study resources can do for you.
Flexibility: The delivery tool gives you a means to deliver the study helps to anyone with an email or a smart phone. A link to that week’s study can be sent by text as well, making it even more flexible. You can also set the date for when the study starts. This gives you multiple ways of delivering Bible study resources even while people are quarantined, isolated, or away for other reasons.
Weekly Contact: The delivery tool is designed for weekly messages to be sent to everyone in the group that points them to that week’s study resource. This keeps you in contact with each person receiving the message and reminds them of the expectation of studying even if they rarely attend or participate. This also gives the leader of each class or group the opportunity to have contact with everyone in the group. Personal visits are always best, but when a personal visit can’t be conducted, a weekly personalized message with a link to that week’s study is the next best thing.
Enabled Teachers: One issue with digital resources is the teacher sometimes must go to different locations to get all that is needed. With Ministry Grid, everything the teacher needs is displayed on the screen. They may not use everything, but they at least know where to look for it if they need it. Those extra clicks from one file folder to another add up so this gives the teacher back some time that could be used to carry out other ministry actions.
One less thing to do: Most pastors and leaders need some extra time. With Ministry Grid, there is no sorting of books, no items to unbox and re-box, and no finding a place to store the resources until used. Instead the church leader reviews, clicks, and goes, freeing up time that can be used for caring for people, building relationships, and developing others.
Digital resources are not the cure all for everything, but they are one more tool we can add to our toolbox to help us effectively lead the ongoing Bible study ministry of our church.
You can find out more about using Lifeway’s new digital delivery system here (lifeway.com/digitalstudies).