Small Group – LEADERSHIP PAGE
General Information By Gene French
Ephesians – Book One

Each Adventure will have some comments and suggestions for the Small Group Leader. Before looking into the individual weekly Adventures, please take note of the following points that pertain to every Adventure in Ephesians-Book One for the next nine weeks.

Here are some practical pointers that will help you to be a successful leader.

• Each day before your group meets spend some time in prayer. Ask God to help you understand the text the group will examine, and ask for wisdom to give direction during the meeting.
• Be sure to start on time and end on time. If you don't start on time, people will come later and later. Most people also feel more comfortable if they know when things start and stop. This goes for work, play and learning.

At the beginning of each "Adventure" you will find a "Theme" page. This information will give you a brief look into the subject matter of that Adventure. On this page you will find some "nuggets of gold" that will give you a brief highlight of the verses selected for the adventure, you will also find the key verse for this passage of scripture. You can comment on these items to let the members know what to expect in this Adventure.

The next page will be "Staking your claim." Here the member will be asked to answer a few questions. The questions are easy and designed to simply review in written form what scripture says. This page must be completed at home, prior to the group meeting. Educators have found that when students both read and write information the retention of knowledge is much higher. Strongly encourage your participants to answer the questions prior to the group meeting. The leader can pause here to review some of the questions and answers, or he may just move on to the "Treasure Hunting" section. Next you will come to "Treasure Hunting." This is a very important part of the adventure. Treasure hunting is a verse-by-verse commentary of the text. It important that the leader spend time here and that each member read this carefully and prayerfully.

At the close of every meeting after prayer, emphasize the necessity for each member to take time to 1, read the text, 2, answer the written questions and 3, and read "Treasure Hunting." Each member must do this minimal homework in order to enjoy the spiritual enrichment of next week's adventure.

As you, the leader, read "Treasure Hunting" take notes; you will find many good questions and comments that you will want to use during the "Mining Together" which is the time for group discussions and comments. Treasure Hunting is not to be read in the group setting, this is an important part of the homework each member will do.

Following Treasure Hunting you come to "Mining Together." This is the time for group discussion on the verses that have been assigned. You will find some discussion topics listed, these are just suggestions, you will have others and the group members will have some. You will also discover some rich discussion topics out of the Treasure Hunting portion.

"Cashing In" follows the discussion time, just before prayer. This is a very important part of every adventure. Here is where the group will be challenged to think about what they have read and discussed. You will invite each member to tell how he/she might apply the lesson learned to his or her life. This is where you can get that individual who may be hesitant to speak to share. It will also be a great learning time for others.

You should also challenge the members to take time either that night or the next day to write out how they can apply the Adventure just finished to the various areas of their life. This will be an exciting spiritual growing time for them as they learn how to apply God's word to their lives.

"Investing your Treasure" is prayer time. Encourage each member to use the book to write down the prayer requests and then remember to pray for their fellow members during the week. This page not only becomes a prayer journal, but a lasting testimony that God did answer prayer for them in the past and will answer it in the future.

Each week the leader must focus on this page to encourage the members to write down the prayer requests given by the group, and then to use the rest of the page for their own personal prayer requests. This will be a very effective prayer management tool for your group and will revolutionize the prayer life of many.

Some adventures will have "Bank Deposit." This is the opportunity the group will have to memorize a special verse that has been chosen. After the memory verse has been introduced the leader will have a review of it each week thereafter. If your group is hungry to put to memory more scripture, encourage them by memorizing the key verse on the Theme Page.

Don't forget to come to the Web site often to review or to find resources
that will help you in your calling of a Small Group Leader. Encourage you
entire group to come to the site because the more you or your group are
learning the Word of God, the more God will shower you with His blessings.

Additional Help

1. How Does the Series Work?
The "Striking It Rich" Series is an in depth study of many books of the Bible (and someday, God willing, all of them). They are designed to take the reader through His Word, verse-by-verse, while building understanding and personal enrichment. The guide not only follows along with the Bible, but also brings the reader into it with descriptions, real life analogies, questions to ponder, and recommended verses for memorization. When this is done with your small group Bible study, the people around you aid in your
learning by giving other insights and helping you in understanding your own interpretation of the text. Before its publication, many of the "Striking It Rich" books were tested in various small groups in California. After seeing the great success, and positive feedback from these groups, it was obvious that the series needed to be available to people in order to build a strong Christian community in Jesus Christ. We hope and believe that you will be as happy with this series as so many others already have been.

2. What Other Resources Are Available to Me?
We are proud to offer along with the book a website that will further your learning. This is free to anyone in the world, and beneficial for both leaders and students. You have obviously found your way here, and we hope that you take advantage of all that we offer. There are additional aids that accompany the book to make the Leader's job a little easier, and information and discussion for the students. We offer constant live prayer requests that come in from people in need from all over the world. Here we hope that you will help to pray for these people, but also write your own prayer requests so that using this Internet technology, we may link all people around the world in Jesus Christ. We also offer bulletin boards to post ideas and information, live chats to discuss your small groups or anything relating to the Lord, and a question center that will be answered by Dr. George Hare, Chancellor of the Southern California Bible College and Seminary. This site also offers lots of information regarding the life and times of Jesus. We have maps, Greek word studies, and links to many of the best Bible sights around.

3. Why Should I Follow The Steps In the Books?
Every "Adventure" in the books follows seven distinct steps to lead you to a richer understanding of the Word of God. They are as follows: Staking Your Claim, Treasure Hunting, Mining Together, Cashing In, Investing Your Treasure, The Bank Deposit, and The Gold Mine. These steps, with the exciting theme of the '49ers, follow patterns that people automatically relate to easily. They deal with preparing yourself for the upcoming study, working with others, looking deeply into the material, and storing it for yourself forever. Experience with many small groups have proved to us that by breaking down the study into these easy to follow steps, there is better success for those truly interested in the understanding of the Bible, no
matter how much you already know.

Ephesians – Book One