Jesus Club Update | August 2022
Volunteer Training
Our combined volunteer training this year was held at Bethesda Church Bukit Arang on 20 July, where about 30 volunteers gathered to learn how to better serve and love our members.
Our main session this year was on how to communicate more effectively with our friends with special needs. Yafen, a speech therapist, helped us to understand how autism, cerebral palsy, and intellectual disability respectively affect a person’s ability to communicate.
We learnt 2 golden tips on how to better communicate with our friends with special needs. First, communication takes many forms. If our members at JC have difficulty speaking or writing, we could use alternative forms of communication such as gestures, pointing, visual cues, and technology.
Second, use the 4 ‘S’s of communication:
Breakout Groups
After our main session, we had 2 breakout groups:
Leading small group time
Preparing a Jesus Club talk
In the first breakout group, small group leaders were given a talk with a set of discussion questions. They had hands-on practice on tailoring the discussion to suit the learning needs of their JC group members. They were encouraged to prepare well for small group time at JC so as to help their group members understand the Bible talk and live out what they learn.
In the second breakout group, those who regularly give talks at JC learnt about how to prepare and deliver a JC talk. Volunteer William shares:
The challenge is to understand our audience and learn how to refine, revise and simplify the Big Idea for a talk using simple words and good visual cues. We also learnt that the goal of the talk is not simply about “getting people to understand biblical truth” but about “pressing biblical truth on their lives” i.e. about application according to the author’s purpose. The different elements of the talk shared were also very helpful, especially the use of the “Hook” based on real-life experiences to draw the hearers’ interest.
Please pray that we will continue to sharpen one another and grow together as we serve our friends at Jesus Club!