Have you ever seen someone become a Christian and found yourself wondering how you can best serve him as he grows in his new-found faith? It’s something I’ve wondered often. “Now that he’s a Christian, what can I give him to help him learn the basics?” In those early days a person is best-served by having a Christian come alongside him, so the kind of resource that can be done one-on-one is especially valuable.
Matthias Media offers a very good solution in their For Starters booklets. The first two resources are geared toward follow-up, toward establishing the basics after a person has made a profession of faith. The third is meant to follow and will lead the person a little bit deeper.
Just for Starters looks at what the Bible teaches on seven fundamental topics: Saved by God, Trusting in God, Living God’s way, Listening to God, Talking to God, Meeting with God’s Family, Meeting the World. It is intended for use in one-to-one discipleship, so a more mature Christian will go through this material with a new Christian, leading him through the seven lessons. The booklet is in a Q&A format: you will read a passage of Scripture and then answer questions related to it. There are questions of comprehension, questions of application and verses to memorize. Each lesson is just a few pages long and could be completed in 30 minutes or so.
Christian Living for Starters is the follow-up, continuing where the first one leaves off. It looks to seven more topics related to Christian living: Confident Hope, Living by Faith, Love like the Son, Joy in Adversity, Gracious Generosity, Holiness and Spirit-Filled Living. It is identical in format, with the same Q&A format, the same emphasis on both comprehension and application. And again, the lessons will not take too long to complete.
After these two, Matthias Media offers Short Steps to Long Gains, which consists of 26 short Bible studies (starting with A for Assurance and finishing with Z for zeal), each one based on a Bible verse, with half a dozen questions to stimulate encouraging conversation and prayer. It’s meant to be the kind of thing you can do over lunch or breakfast once a week with a friend.
So there you have it–three resources you may want to stock up on in order to go through with a new believer. Priced at just a couple of dollars each, they certainly won’t break the bank.
