Some of your ministries are meeting in modified ways now, while others are virtual. In either case, ministry has presented new challenges. Thankfully, the new vaccines mean life will return to some form of normalcy in 2021. Now is the time to be prayerfully considering what changes, additions or goals you have for your ministry next year. Below, you will find this week’s social media challenges that may provide some inspiration.
Monday: Your Bible students may enjoy celebrating Halloween. They need to be taught though that delving into things like “witchcraft”, seances, psychics and other things that claim to interact with the “spirits” can be dangerous in many ways. Most likely, they will be scammed out of money and their emotions will be manipulated. As Christians, we also know that Satan has demons and playing with that world could have consequences none of us truly understands. Teaching your Bible students what the Bible teaches about avoiding Satan and the dark side of the spiritual world could save some of your students a lot of grief and pain in the future.
Tuesday: Are your Bible students back in physical school and some of their activities? Are they still totally at home, living with stressed out parents trying to balance working from home and overseeing their kids’ distance learning? Either way, your Bible students may be having issues with lack of sleep, too little positive, engaged attention from stressed parents or a myriad of other stressors that seem to have come with this year. Unfortunately, those who may normally provide emotional support or a listening ear are finding themselves overly stressed with little emotional bandwidth to help others. As we head into winter, with added hours of darkness and gloomy weather, try to find ways to connect with and support your students. For some, it may make all the difference in the world.
Wednesday: Did you know brain science has information that can help you make your Bible lesson more impactful? Learn more by searching our blog or reading one of our two new ebooks on ministry…Effective Ministry to Teens and Effective Ministry to Children. Making a few tweaks can make your Bible lessons even more impactful.
Thursday: Baby birds are always crying for more food and are excited when they get it. We’ve learned over the years that kids and even teens hunger for God’s wisdom more than most adults realize. They may not ask for you to teach them more, but they soak up God’s words excitedly when you also teach them how to use God’s wisdom in their lives. Encouraging them to ask their questions can lead to even more excitement about studying the Bible.
Friday: When you teach a Bible class, make sure there is always an empty chair in the room. Remind yourself and your students the chair represents the millions of people who don’t know about Jesus. Use the empty chair as motivation to find ways to do outreach in the community to fill that chair. Then bring in another empty chair. Outreach should always be on the “to do” list of every Christian.