New Believers Course - Leader's Guide
This is a discipleship pathway built to be led rather than watched. It needs open conversations. Essentially, open the Bible together, ask questions, the new believer does the wrestling, and only then frame the truth clearly. The content does the teaching but the relationship should be the thing that forms.
A faith you inherit will eventually fail you. Not because God is unfaithful, but because it was never yours to begin with. The whole point of this course is to hand someone the Bible and the tools to read it themselves, so that by the end they can go to Scripture without you. Don't just replace one borrowed framework with another, teach them to build their own framework on Scripture.
How to Use This Guide
- Each session is its own note.
- Work through them in order.
- Don't rush. don't feel you have to finish a session in one sitting, especially the heavier ones.
Every session follows the same seven steps. Same every week, so the new believer learns how this works and hopefully even eventually runs it themselves.
- Connect - How's life? How did last week's step go?
- Read - Open the anchor passage and read it aloud together.
- Dig - Work through the discovery questions. They answer first. You draw it out, don't answer for them.
- Frame - You name the one core truth plainly. A few minutes of clear input, not a lecture.
- Land - "What does this change for you?" Personal before practical.
- Step - One next step for the week.
- Pray - Pray it together. Model prayer out loud.
The Reading Method (teach This in Session 1, but Use it Every week)
Give one simple pattern in the first session and use it on every passage after that. Three questions:
- What does it say? Read it again, slowly. Just observe.
- What does it show us about God, about us, about the gospel? Interpret.
- What does it ask of me? Apply.
By session three or four, let them run these questions on it themselves. By the end they should be able to open the Bible and do this alone. That's the win. If they leave this course loving Scripture and able to read it, most other things follow.
The Sessions
| # | Session | Anchor text | The one core truth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 01 - The Call to Follow | Mark 1:14-18 | To be a Christian is to repent, believe, and follow Jesus with your whole life. |
| 2 | 02 - What Happened When You Were Saved | Romans 3:23-24; John 3:3-7; John 1:12 | Salvation is a real event with real parts, and it gives you a new identity. |
| 3 | 03 - The God We Believe In | The Nicene Creed; John 1:1-14 | One God, three persons, coequal and coeternal. This is what Christians have always confessed. |
| 4 | 04 - The Story of the Bible | 2 Timothy 3:16; Luke 24:27 | The Bible is one God-breathed story, and it's all about Jesus. |
| 5 | 05 - Thinking Like a Christian | Genesis 1:1, 1:27; Colossians 1:16-17 | Everyone has a worldview. Following Jesus reshapes how you answer the biggest questions. |
| 6 | 06 - The Church | 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 | You can't follow Jesus alone. The local church is where this life is meant to be lived. |
| 7 | 07 - Meeting With God | 2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 6:9-13 | You build a real relationship with God through his Word, prayer, and worship. |
| 8 | 08 - Becoming Like God | Galatians 5:16-26 | The Spirit grows Christ in you over time. Fruit, not willpower. |
| 9 | 09 - The Flourishing Life | Philippians 3:8 | The best thing about following Jesus is that you get God himself. Now keep going. |
A Leader Notes
- You are the curriculum. The reason this beats a video series is that new believer watches you pray, handle doubt, and talk about God. Be honest about your own walk.
- Discovery over teaching. The instinct will be to explain everything, but a question they answer themselves is worth way more.
- Don't fake certainty. If they ask something you can't answer, say so, and go find out together. That models exactly the kind of faith we're trying to build.
Sessions 3 (the Trinity) and 5 (worldview) are the heaviest. They lean hard on philosophy vocabulary. Try keep the language simple.