The Sunday School Leader – Leadership That Grows Your Church
www.m2820.com
Topic: The quality of your Sunday school leaders / leadership determine the numerical and spiritual growth of your church.
How Sunday school leaders grow your church
When thinking about how your Sunday school and Sunday school leaders can fulfill the Great Commission, you first need to understand your church’s universal purpose and then develop a plan to fulfill this purpose. The actual plans or methodology will vary from church to church, so I will only express your church’s God-given purpose and how it can be fulfilled through your Sunday school leaders. To help illustrate, I will equate the three “calls” Jesus gave to His disciples with the three primary “Calls” I believe God has given to His Church.
Jesus calls Sunday school leaders to invite the lost to “come and see”
We find that Jesus’ first call to the disciples was simply, “come and see” (John 1:38-39).
Likewise, the first purpose God has given your church is to invite non-Christians to “come and see” who God is and what the church is all about. This will give the uncommitted, watching person enough exposure and time to understand the fundamentals concerning God, salvation, and the church. This will allow him to make an intelligent decision concerning his own involvement and commitment to Christ. Your church can easily fulfill this first call if your Sunday school leaders and members will invite their friends, coworkers, and others to join them on Sunday morning or during a Sunday school social.
Jesus’ calls Sunday school leaders to ask others to share in the ministry
The Sunday School Leader’s second call: As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’
Matthew 4:18-19
A short time after Jesus gave this first call, He gave a second one, “come and follow me” (Mt.4:18-22; Mk.1:60-20). Jesus was now asking the disciples for a low level commitment, so He could ground them in the fundamentals and start training them for ministry. Jesus trained new workers first by modeling the skills for them and then by ministering with them (a type of on-the-job training). Your Sunday school leaders can fulfill this second call by developing new workers from within their class. Since ministry is the privilege of all Christians, a great deal of time and energy must be spent helping others develop ministry skills along with their personal lives and relationship with God.
Jesus’ calls your Sunday school leadership to train, equip, and disciple new leaders
The final call Jesus gave was the most exciting of them all – “come and be with me” (Mk.3:13-14; Mt.9:35-10:8)! This call involved a commitment of the disciples’ entire lives since Jesus was going to equip them to take over His ministry. During this stage, Jesus spent even more time with the twelve so that He could train them at great depth. God has also called the Church to equip men and women, who are solely committed to Him, to lead in the leadership positions and ministries in the church. This equipping ministry is the primary responsibility of the pastoral staff and other Sunday school leaders. Ephesians 4:11-13 explains this,
“And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”
In short, what I have just described is more commonly known as the Great Commission. I believe that this is God’s ultimate purpose for the Church and that each of the three stages given above plays a critical part in the whole. Your church will never fulfill the Great Commission if the task is left to the pastoral staff alone. Instead, as Paul urged Timothy, your Sunday school leaders must also be investing their lives in the lives of other faithful people in their class who will then invest their lives in others (see 2 Timothy 2:2). As you spend time in your ministry position, make sure it includes training, equipping, and mentoring others who can begin new ministries within the church.
The Sunday School Leader – Sunday school Leadership:
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. 2 Timothy 2:2
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The above article, “The Sunday School Leader – Leadership that Grows Your Church” was written by www.m2820.com. The article was excerpted from https://www.m2820.com/sunday-school-leader-sunday-school-leadership.
The material is copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study or research purposes.
This article may not be written by an Apostolic author, but it contains many excellent principles and concepts that can be adapted to most churches. As the old saying goes, “Eat the meat. Throw away the bones.”
