How to Get Started with Bible Journey for Ministry Groups
Bible Journey is an excellent resource for ministry teams! Ministry teams of all kinds—from paid church staff to lay volunteers at churches and non-profits to teams of leaders within ministries of all sizes—can benefit from Bible Journey’s unique curriculum. Whether you want to provide effective and engaging biblical training to your team, deepen biblical engagement and support personal growth amongst your ministry staff, or provide interactive curriculum for discipleship and study, Bible Journey courses are an engaging and transformative resource.
Why Use Bible Journey with your Ministry Groups
Develop and prioritize spiritual growth for your leaders
Your ministry leadership team would benefit from the deep theological study of Scripture, cultural and historical context, and studies of how the Bible has impacted Christians around the world and throughout history. While it’s important to prioritize the spiritual growth and discipleship of your ministry staff as well as those you’re ministering to, it can be difficult to find time for everything in the midst of many demands. Bible Journey provides a thorough and transformative curriculum with in-depth biblical training while freeing you and your staff up to focus on other needs.
Effective training for ministry
Bible Journey courses provide effective and engaging training for ministry by providing your ministry leaders with in-depth and seminary-level biblical training. Historical, geographical, and cultural contexts are explored and reinforced in both their study of their Bible (with Behind the Text features) and in its application (with In Front of the Text features). Students will also take a deep-dive into the Scriptures themselves (with In the Text features). Bible Journey interviews, onsite videos and focus on how Scripture has influenced Christians around the world and throughout history provide a broad understanding of application and context for ministry.
Completely online curriculum
A completely online curriculum means that your entire ministry team can go through the Bible Journey together, whether you’re spread out across the nation or around the world. It’s easy to have your nationwide ministry team work through the curriculum at the same pace and then discuss in smaller groups. Localized teams can form smaller groups for discussion, or you can incorporate discussion via virtual groups using private Facebook groups, Zoom calls, message boards or other resources.
How to Use Bible Journey with your Ministry Groups
Consider a flipped classroom approach
The Bible Journey courses work well when incorporated to a flipped classroom approach. In this model, students will work through some or all of the lessons on their own and then return to the group setting for discussion and additional teaching. Depending on the nature of your ministry and group, you can easily customize which sections of Bible Journey you want students to work through on their own and which sections you’ll reserve—or return to—during the group discussion. Generally, we recommend having students work through the majority (or even all) of lesson content on their own and then spending most of the small group time on discussion questions and perhaps a lecture or onsite video to spurn further discussion.
Adjust training structure for the needs of your group
One of the things people love about Bible Journey is that it’s completely online, self-paced structure provides ample flexibility for your own ministry’s needs. If your ministry group has team members with busy schedules and outside work that may interfere with their ability to designate a good chunk of time to additional study outside of the group meeting time, that’s fine. Some groups and ministry teams have had success incorporating the entire curriculum into their teaching sessions—a great option for including team members who may not be able to engage if significant outside work is required. Of course, if you’re adopting this model, you’ll need to adjust the pace or amount of content you cover to ensure that sessions are not overwhelmingly packed with information.
Offer varying levels of training for different ministry team members
Your team likely has a variety of people serving on it, from seminary-trained pastors to lay staff who may have no formal training. Bible Journey is easily customizable in that those members who want or need to go even deeper with their studies can do so. Some members may wish to skip the bonus content or what is covered in group sessions. Other members, though, may want to go more in-depth when working through the Bible Journey courses. Churches and ministry teams have had mixed groups where students dove into the curriculum to varying degrees.
Decide on any additional training needed.
Some ministry teams prefer to use Bible Journey as the core of their biblical training for ministry staff and leaders and then supplement with further additional training. The Bible Journey curriculum can be supplemented by webcasts, podcasts, conferences and other training to share best practices and practical applications for your ministry.
Ready to get started with Bible Journey for your ministry team? Get started with a free, two-week trial of everything Bible Journey has to offer!