RIDGECREST, N.C. (BP)–“‘Transformational Church’ is not a model, it’s a description.”
That’s how Bruce Raley, director for leadership and evangelism training and events at LifeWay Christian Resources, set the stage for attendees of Sunday School Week this year at the LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina.
Raley, along with Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, taught Sunday School leaders about key facets of transformational churches across the country gleaned from extensive research conducted by LifeWay Research involving 7,000 churches, 250 pastor and staff interviews and 20,000 church member surveys.
The teaching helped Sunday School leaders consider how to utilize insights of LifeWay’s Transformational Church project to help their churches gain greater growth and impact for the Kingdom of Christ.
The leaders were encouraged to:
— Discern their contexts and have a missionary mindset for reaching people in their communities.
— Embrace values of vibrant leadership, relational intentionality and prayerful dependence.
— Engage in biblical actions in areas of worship, community and mission.
Sunday School Week attendees at the LifeWay Glorieta (N.M.) Conference Center received the same instruction. “Great Expectations for Sunday School in the Transformational Church” was the theme at both locations this summer.
“This year was different,” Raley said regarding Sunday School Week, a long-running LifeWay conference. “We tried a new format than in previous years that included corporate worship, large group teaching, focus group facilitation [and] affinity group training.”
At Ridgecrest, a “Great Expectations” online training event drew a global audience of more than 10,000 Sunday School leaders.
David Francis, LifeWay’s director of Sunday School, discipleship, church and network partnerships, said the conferences provided opportunities for Sunday School leaders to see their ministries move to the next level. He added that they were “getting it” when it came to the impact that “Transformational Church” might have for their churches.
“I am surprised — though obviously pleased — about the overwhelming positive response of the participants to the Transformational Church research,” Francis said.
“I sensed that people left our Sunday School Week events with a strong measure of hope, which is the chief message of ‘Transformational Church.’ These training events may serve as a catalyst for the cathartic event commonly discovered in transformational churches that moves their ministries forward to greater effectiveness. That’s our prayer!”
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Micah Carter is director of communications and associate to the vice president of the executive communications and relations division of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Transformational Church project is on the Web at www.TransformationalChurch.com and is the focus of a new book with the same title by Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, and Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, released by LifeWay’s B&H Publishing Group.
