Personal Development

Empowering Churches has four seminars that will greatly help your members in their personal spiritual development. Click on any of the following titles for a description of the seminar or workshop.

P1. MasterLife Discipleship Programme

P2. Experiencing God

P3. Get a Grip on the Word

P4. You Walk; He Leads

 

Email empoweringchurches.my@gmail.com to arrange a date for a seminar.


P1. MASTERLIFE DISCIPLESHIP PROGRAMME

MasterLife written by Avery T Willis, Jr. is one of the best discipleship programmes available. It has been widely used by churches all over the world and helped empower believers as disciples of Jesus Christ.

The programme is set out in four workbooks with six weeks of personal study and group meetings:

  • The Disciple’s Cross explains step-by-step how a Christian practices the six Biblical disciplines of an obedient disciple
  • The Disciple’s Personality shows how a Christian is to live in the Spirit and become more like Christ
  • The Disciple’s Victory trains a Christian to triumph over the world, the flesh and the devil
  • The Disciple’s Mission encourages the Christian to look within and teaches him to identity his own stage of growth and role in ministry

This seminar will be conducted like a TTT (Train the Trainers) to train mature and growing disciples who want a tool to empower them to develop disciples for Jesus. It is best that the pastor/church leaders choose the people to whom they will entrust the development of disciples in their church to attend the training.

In this 4-hr seminar, you will learn about the main purpose of MasterLife, be given an overview of each of the four books and of their main thrust, a methodology to conduct the weekly sessions, and to participate in a mock session to enhance your skill at conducting the course.

 

P2. EXPERIENCING GOD

Experiencing God—Knowing and Doing the Will of God written by Henry T Blackaby & Claude V King is undoubtedly the best Christian workbook available. It has been my own personal experience that learning and practising the principles shown in this workbook have both changed my life and how I do ministry in the churches I have pastored.

The basic diagram of the seven realities of experiencing God is in itself a gem.

  1. God is always at work around you.
  2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.
  3. God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.
  4. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.
  5. God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
  6. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.
  7. You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.

This 4-hr seminar will be conducted like a TTT (Train the Trainers) to train the leadership and small group leaders to take the whole church through a 12-week programme. You will be shown how to encourage your members to do their daily study and internalise the powerful spiritual insights that they will gain from the material. You will also be shown how to conduct the weekly small group study and use the material for the pulpit ministry.

 

P3. GET A GRIP ON THE WORD

It has been said that the Bible is so simple that anyone who can read can understand it, and at the same time it can be so difficult to interpret that it baffles even the scholars.

We may want to be simple in our approach to the Bible (“If the Bible says it, I believe it”), but we should never be simplistic. We must not allow ourselves to be accused of unfaithfully interpreting the Word of God (“A word out of context is a pretext”). On the other hand, we should not leave the interpretation of the Bible to only the preachers or seminary professors. There are ways in which any believer can accurately interpret the Bible and nourish her soul while reading and studying the Scriptures. How you can “get a grip on the Word” is what this seminar is all about.

This 6-hr seminar will help you to take in the Word of God in the most basic and necessary way—reading the Bible devotionally. It will also introduce you to a fundamental method of Bible study known as OIRA. Here you will learn about the key things you are to look for in order to accurately interpret Scripture. Furthermore, you will also be shown how to use the various kinds of Bible tools to help you study Word.

Get a Grip on the Word is suitable for anyone, whether you are a new Christian or a mature Christian (or anywhere in between). There’ll be definitely something for you to learn to make you a better student of the Word of God.

(Reference materials include Howard G. Hendricks & William D. Hendricks’ Living by the Book)

 

P4. YOU WALK; HE LEADS

Pastors and teachers of the Bible have too often given the impression that it is difficult to discover God’s will. That we need to take all the necessary steps; and, mind you, we need to get them all right, before the Lord will reveal His will to us. On the contrary, Jesus wants us to do His will. If that is so, it goes without saying , He will want us to know His will. All we need to do, is to be in a “receiving mode”.

This seminar is not your typical 7-Steps to discovering God’s will. In the 4hrs we have together, you will learn that “discovering the will of God” is more an art than a science. In truth, it is more of a walk—a walk with the Lord. But it’s not a walk just to know His will, but a walk to know Him who wants you to know His will. When you know Him, it’s not difficult to discern His will.

What you will learn in the seminar is not a formula, but principles gleaned from the Bible. They come from both the direct teaching of Scripture, like Prov 3:5-6 and Jn 5:19-20, and Bible stories that serve as examples, such as Nehemiah’s (Neh 1:1-11) and Philip’s (Acts 8:4-40). Interestingly, most of these men (and women) of God didn’t go out of their way to discover God’s will. You can almost say, they just walked with the Lord, and simply walked into His will.

 

Email empoweringchurches.my@gmail.com to arrange a date for a seminar.