Weekly Leader Training for Adults: Unit 3, Session 1—A People Promised

Tips for Teaching This Week’s Session of The Gospel Project for Adults

Every week for Volume 4: From Captivity to the Wilderness, Ken Braddy, Lifeway’s director of Sunday School, will offer guidance to help leaders prepare to lead and teach each session of The Gospel Project for Adults.

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This week’s training notes:

This week, your group is kicking off Unit 3 of The Gospel Project for Adults, which is called “I Will Make Your Name Great.” This unit covers the time of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, surveying Genesis 12 through 50 over six sessions. Session 1 is called “A People Promised,” and focuses on God establishing a covenant people through whom He would bring blessing to the world. Here are three things to know, read, and do as you prepare for this week’s session:

Something to know

Because this session is about God’s establishing a covenant with imperfect people, it leans heavily into an essential doctrine called the People of God. We’ve included a video explanation that you can share with your groups, as well as play in your group time, in the Additional Resources. The reason that this is important enough to mention here is that God’s covenant is central to what makes us God’s people. It’s not a covenant made with perfect people—Abram was hardly that, and the same is true of us. So as you prepare, spend some time reading the definition of the doctrine found on page 98 of your leader guide, watch the video, and be read to ask your groups about how we can work together to help one another grow in faith and maturity in Christ.

Something to read

For something to read this week, first, I would encourage you to read the illustration about genealogies on page 101 of your leader guide. This is a helpful overview of their purpose and the good news that we can find in them. Second, read the article linked in the additional resources called When God Calls by David McLemore. This is a beautiful meditation on the passage itself, and a call toward personal belief, that will stir your affections and provide some additional flavor for your study. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts:

How does one’s faith become one’s own? By believing God’s word at the deepest personal level. When what God says stops becoming a theory and becomes a reality, when you stop thinking about obeying and begin to obey, when you forsake your plans for your life and accept God’s, you know you’ve stepped across the line from unfaith to faith. When you hear God’s word as a word for you, you step over the line of unbelief into belief. That’s what Abram does in Genesis 12:1-9. He steps over the line. Abram becomes a believer.

Something to do

Finally, as you prepare for this session, I would encourage you to watch the video featuring Dhati Lewis in the additional resources for this session called The Mission of God. This video is a message from the 2016 Legacy Disciple Conference that focuses on God’s call and covenant with Abram shape our understanding of our mission we’re called to be a part of. So watch that, even if it’s just to feed your soul, and be encouraged as you seek to inspire your groups to live on gospel mission wherever they are sent.