Blessing the Church

What can IFES give to the church? This is a question worth asking. We need the church to support student ministry, but we also want to be serving the church. Last year, EFES Egypt gave a valuable gift to the church in Cairo by inviting leaders and pastors to a Bible study training.

In December 2013, we offered three days of training for church leaders from Cairo. The idea was to train a small number of pastors and leaders in order to improve their skills and establish the idea of Bible study in the churches. By bringing these leaders together, we also wanted to increase the level of cooperation between them. Furthermore, we hoped that this training would help church leaders understand student ministry and support the start of Bible study groups in their churches.

The content of the program included:

  • The importance of the Bible
  • Reading the Bible correctly
  • The concept of inspiration
  • The Biblical canon
  • Old Testament background
  • An inductive approach to Bible study
  • New approaches to Bible study
  • How to lead a Bible study group

To our joy, 70 participants from 17 different churches came. It was a great experience to see leaders and older people still wanting to learn and improve their skills in studying the Bible. One pastor said afterwards: ‘Many aspects of this program were new to me. I now understand why students run away from our Bible study meetings in church. But now we can make them more attractive.’

The participants decided to have a follow-up meeting every six weeks. They plan to study the Bible together using the new approaches which they learned. As EFES, we plan to offer two further days of training for this group.

Running this training has also been a blessing for EFES. We have gained new relationships and friends for our ministry. This has opened doors and pastors are giving more support to student groups in their churches. Since our students cannot meet on campus, this is crucial for our ministry. In November 2014, we repeated a similar training for over 50 participants in another part of Egypt.

Shaher, EFES Egypt