A series of Church Ministry Training Programs, with appropriate support that will allow a church to provide a series of personal ministry opportunities to its congregants that will allow them to effectively minister to fellow congregants, as well as individual in the community. Each succeeding program builds on the previous program and provides ever deeper levels of ministry to the body, soul and spirit of the individual.

Each of these programs is based on Ephesians 4:10-13 “And the One who climbed down is the One who climbed back up, up to highest heaven. He handed out gifts above and below, filled heaven with his gifts, 11 filled earth with his gifts. He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher 12 to train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, 13 until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.” (MSG)

Everywhere we go we find that Pastors, Elders, Deacons, Home Group Leaders, and congregants alike, are overwhelmed with the needs of the hurting around them, and find themselves in a place of having to choose who gets their time, when all deserve it. There are too many issues among which to time-share scarce resources. And the needs seem to get more and more dire every day. Let’s face it, the societal ills of my generation have little in common with what we’re experiencing today. Just the amount of sexual abuse that is surfacing today is almost overwhelming all by itself.

The other thing that we find is that most Christians do not feel competent to help someone else because they feel that they have not been properly trained. Most of our training has indeed be ineffective because it did not recognize the fact that individuals can absorb knowledge and take a test to prove that they have memorized the information. But because they were never put in a safe place to practice it, they have no personal confidence that they can actually do what they’ve been trained to do.

What is required to meet the needs of ministry in the local church is a trained cadre of competent and confident lay ministers (volunteers) who are able to share the load. That’s the essence of the Ephesians 4:11-16 passage; providing the ministry tools that you can hand to trusted lay men and women and equip them to do the work of the ministry. That is precisely what the following programs are designed and dedicated to providing.

Because these “programs” can be obtained and entered into individually, a church may chose to engage slowly, by doing a Spiritual Cleansing Weekend, adding another module six months later, or may chose to build a entire lay ministry program over a period of a year by engaging in all of them. A church can customize its approach to building effective lay ministry programs by selecting from all the available alternatives to meet their specific needs.