www.BelieverAssist.com offers free downloadable online Christian resources and materials that are helpful to assist believers in doing ministry, such as downloadable printable expository sermon preaching outlines with included Bible study lesson questions and notes in 4 file formats (.htm, .rtf, .doc, .pdf) that can be easily browsed, copied, edited (in .rtf and .doc), or projected for preaching a sermon or for teaching a Bible study, home group, or Sunday School class of adults or teenagers.  These sermon-or-lesson outlines are intentionally designed: to expose the meaning and implications of each verse, its phrases, and its key words; to drive home a particular 'big idea' main point; and to provide plentiful corresponding applications for the lives of the people in the audience.  They include lesson questions that are designed to facilitate group thinking, discussion, investigation, analyses, discovery, and learning.

Free helpful information is also available here for achieving spiritual healing, growth, and mental health.  In supportive conjunction, Biblical counseling and training materials are also available for free download.

Note: The intention in the future is to add more free downloadable expository sermon preaching outlines with included Bible study lesson questions.  Thank you for your patience.  May you find these resources helpful and a blessing.

Dr. Mel W. Coddington, Ph.D., M.A.B.C.

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Ministry resource documents:

To download a document, place your cursor over the format type (.htm, .rtf, .doc, or .pdf) for the document you want, then right mouse click to cause a pop-up menu to appear, then in that menu select "Save Target As..." to copy the document file onto your computer in a directory you designate.

Counseling used with Leadership:

Physical Environments:

Small Groups:

Teaching:

Pastoral Ministry:

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Ministry Tips:

- - Qualified pastor:   Every pastor that is employed in a church should minimally have a seminary master's degree, so that he is fully trained in the Scriptures and fully trained in how to properly lead a church.  Employing a pastor with insufficient formal academic training substantially puts your church into risk of stagnating in spiritual growth, learning erroneous doctrines, and potentially self-destructing.  Youth pastors should minimally have a Bible college bachelor's degree.  Pastors who lack this formal academic training should be requested and facilitated by your church to work on completing it.   (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17)

- - Always teaching the "milk", never teaching the "solid food":   Almost all of the Bible teaching and preaching that occur in churches never progress beyond being "elementary".  A chapter or a large section of the Word of God is read and then a few main points within it are briefly highlighted and summarized.  Like skipping from the top of one wave to the top of the next wave, this overview approach fails to dive deep into the contents of the Scriptures.  Thereby, no "solid food" of the Word is ever dispensed to the listeners, rendering them stunted and hindered from maturing in the faith.  If you want to be making fruit-bearing disciples, then somewhere within your church's programs there needs to be occurring verse-by-verse and phrase-by-phrase in-depth expository teaching and preaching of God's Word.  (see Hebrews 5:11-6:1a, Ephesians 4:11-14)

- - Is your church significantly deficient?   If your church does not have an element that is actively and frequently engaging in presenting the gospel with an invitation to receive Christ, then your church is significantly deficient of fulfilling a main activity that God has designed and instructed all of His churches to do (Colossians 1:6).  God intends that evangelism is to be conducted on all levels: personally by true believers in the church; corporately within the preaching, teaching, programs, and events of the church; locally in the community; nationally in the country; and internationally within other countries (Colossians 1:6-7).  Therefore, minimally, small churches should have at least one person who is encouraged, supported, and requested to do evangelism throughout the church's programs and events.  Medium-size churches should minimally have a group of persons who fulfill these evangelism functions.  And large churches should minimally have an entire ministry devoted to fulfilling these evangelism functions.  Even if the pastor(s), elders, and leaders in your church are not inclined to do evangelism, your church nevertheless should have an endorsed element which or who is actively doing evangelism as suggested herein (e.g. Romans15:15-16).  Those persons who do evangelism need to be trained to do it properly, otherwise the results will be people erroneously thinking they got saved when in fact technically God has not saved them because their evangelism was not conducted in accordance with what God designates in the Scriptures (Galatians 1:6-8,11).  A good document for this training to do evangelism is available on the "Counseling" page of this website, entitled "Session 02 - Presenting The Gospel" .

- - Evangelism:   The most resistant and difficult place to do evangelism is in the church, but the most fruitful place to do evangelism is in the church.

- - Highly-Qualified Volunteers:  Pastors, consider that historically, your church or ministry is perpetually deficient of having enough trained and qualified volunteer workers.  You and your staff even regularly pray fervently that God would send you more workers.  Also, consider the reality that Bible colleges and evangelical seminaries have been and are continuing to produce far more ministry graduates than there are openings for in churches and ministries.  So, there is a likelihood that occasionally, one of these highly educated, trained, and experienced workers may show up and volunteer to help as a leader or Bible teacher in your church, like a self-supporting missionary.  When you receive a volunteer response from one of them, be extremely careful how you react.  Because if God has indeed specifically sent that highly educated and trained ministry worker directly to your church or ministry perhaps as a response to your fervent prayers, then you would be wise to seriously consider and investigate forthright plugging that person into your ministry somehow.  Stay fully aware that on Judgment Day, God may ask you why you failed and refused to plug in and activate in your church or ministry the highly educated and trained ministry worker that He sent you - and furthermore why you essentially told that willing worker with an excellent ministry track record and references to "Sit down and shut up!!!!!".  (see Matthew 23:29-39)

- - Train your elders:  A church is a ministry.  Churches should not be run as a business.  Even though there are similarities between being run as a ministry or run as a business, churches are to be guided spiritually by appropriately and faithfully following the principles contained in the Scriptures, whereas businesses are guided financially by aggressively following the principles that produce a profit.  Therefore, elders who direct the affairs of the church need to be trained in how to run a church as a ministry.  Failing to adequately train every elder is to allow the running of the church to default to being run as a business.  In the same way that people need to be trained in how to do ministry, so too elders need to be trained in how to run the church as a ministry.  Head pastors, you should have as a very high priority and thereby be consistently implementing the ongoing training and refining of every one of your elders on how to run the church as a ministry (see 2 Timothy 3:17).  You can start the training by doing extensive verse-by-verse studies of the Books of 1 & 2 Timothy with them.

- - Build A Team:   There are some kinds of ministry work that God has for us to do which require collaborating with one or more other persons to fulfill.  Through collaborating together, 2 (or more) people are accomplishing a ministry work for the Kingdom that neither one can accomplish on their own.  Both persons have the complementing ministry skills that the other needs in order to take on that particular ministry work and to successfully produce the necessary ministry functioning.  Therefore, it seems obvious that God wants to and does match up people to work together to accomplish some tasks He has for us to do - together.  God requires COLLABORATION sometimes.

Current events:

- - End-times drug usage:   In America now (and perhaps in other nations soon), there is a deliberate push and a momentum to legalize the recreational use of marijuana - a plant whose leaves are dried and smoked to produce a physical and mental 'high' or pleasant intoxication.  In the midst of the public discussions about this issue, perhaps people should stop to consider what God has to say about this.  One direct reference in Scriptures to this activity of widespread recreationally taking drugs to produce intoxication is in Revelation 9, which contains a prophetic account of the events that will take place in the Tribulation period wherein God pours out one cataclysm after another on the humans on the Earth because they are not repenting from their evil ways (verse 9:20).  In Revelation 9:21 among the list of evil deeds that humans will be continuing to do, in the original Greek is cited the word "pharmakeia" (romanized Strong's #5331; from which we get the English word "pharmacy") , which means 'medication or pharmaceutical drug used in an illicit manner or as part of sorcery or witchcraft'.  So from this direct and clear evidence in Scriptures, the assertion can be rightly made that the time will come when God will bring 7 years of numerous sequential cataclysmic judgments of destruction, suffering, and death upon the humans of the Earth because of the evil they are doing, one of which is the improper use of pharmaceutical drugs.

- - Mass-broadcasting slander:   On Judgment Day, God will hold every single person accountable for every instance of slander and malice they have spoken or written in their life to every person that they had any involvement in communicating it to.  This accountability will include every instance for every person that heard or read the slanderous or malicious statement.  So consider this: For slanderous or malicious statements by politicians, lawyers, news editors, news reporters, news commentators, and etc., the guilt of their speaking or publishing of slanderous and malicious statements is being multiplied by millions (or more) when their statements are broadcast through mass media or social media.  (see Matthew 12:36-37; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

Concepts to ponder:

- - Life is one big test.

- - The Bible teaches that some psychological and medical conditions can have a spiritual component and a spiritual source (see "Psychological Conditions" on the Counseling page). 

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Recommendations When Looking For Ministry Employment:

If you have been unsuccessful in your extended quest to secure a ministry employment job, I recommend that while you are waiting for God to open a ministry employment job opportunity, consider the possibility that maybe God wants you to start your own ministry, and that is why He has not opened any ministry employment job for you.  Therefore, look for a way to start or invent your own ministry:

- - Your new ministry likely will need to be a free ministry because realistically it probably will flop if you try to charge money or rely on donations.

- - Your new ministry may not be the exact type of ministry you were planning on, or feel called to, or were preparing for.  So be flexible, and look at types of ministry you normally would not look at or think about.

- - Come up with a way to be self-supporting.  One really good way is for your spouse to hold a full-time job that sufficiently provides your household income while you do free ministry.  Statistically speaking, raising full support through donations is likely to fail.

- - Allow plenty of time to see if God is going to make your attempt at starting a ministry take off, in other words sprout and blossom into a significant ministry.  If after perhaps one year it is still fizzling and dying, then most likely God is not supportive of that idea - in its present form.  So either modify or adjust that ministry, or else dump that idea and look for a different idea.

- - The success of your start-up ministry attempt to become viable will be heavily dependent upon your giftedness that corresponds to the nature of the ministry attempt.  Some skills can be developed.  However, if you are unable to satisfactorily function for some aspect of your start-up ministry attempt, then search for someone to partner with you who has that giftedness, and consider your spouse first.  I am convinced God really delights in using and thoroughly blessing husband-and-wife ministry teams.

- - A wise approach would be to not invest too much work, resources, and money into your start-up ministry attempt until you determine that God is approving and supporting it.  You want to test the waters, so to speak, to see what God is going to do with it.  Begin by supplying the minimal essential basics for that start-up ministry attempt, making necessary adjustments or tweaks as you go along, and watching to see if God is either making it take off or letting it crash and burn.  It is going to be His ministry, so you need to determine what He thinks about it.  If you see evidence that God is active and moving in some aspect of your start-up ministry attempt, then be flexible and run with that, now more fully investing your time, resources, and efforts into that specific aspect He is moving in.
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Recommended resources:

Books:

The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament, by Spiros Zodhiates, Th.D. (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 1992.  ISBN: 0-89957-663-X, hardcover, 1505 pages.) A dictionary of the New Testament Greek words keyed to Strong's numbers, with thorough definitions that align with sound Bible doctrine. A dictionary of the New Testament Greek words keyed to Strong's numbers, with thorough definitions that align with sound Bible doctrine. Has been available on Ebay.com and Amazon.com.
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The New Unger's Bible Dictionary, by Merrill F. Unger, Th.D. (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1988.  ISBN: 0-8024-9037-9, hardcover, 1416 pages.) A dictionary of names, places, and objects in the Bible, with descriptions and definitions that align with sound Bible doctrine. Has been available on Ebay.com and Amazon.com.

English dictionary software:

The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition, version 3.6a (CD-ROM). (Cambridge, MA: SoftKey International Inc., 1994.)  This older version works on Microsoft Windows 3.1 or later, on 16-bit or 32-bit but not 64-bit Windows operating systems, and the entire program (324 MB) can be installed to the hard drive so that it will fully run from there.

Internet website where Bibles in various languages and translations are fully accessible online:

www.biblegateway.com/versions/

Bible College: 

Moody Bible Institute 820 N. LaSalle Blvd. Chicago, Illinois 60610, USA www.moody.edu
Moody's Mission Statement:  "Moody exists to equip people with the truth of God's Word to be maturing followers of Christ who are making disciples around the world." This Bible college focuses on, specializes in, and excels at training its students to do ministry.

Online Bible College and Seminary: 

Trinity College Of The Bible And Theological Seminary
4233 Medwel Drive  Newburgh, Indiana, 47630, USA www.trinitysem.edu
Trinity's Mission Statement:  "To equip men and women with a Christian worldview of leadership and service in life, work, and ministry through distance education that encourages professional and academic excellence."   This online Bible college and seminary offers various ministry degrees in Bachelor, Master, and Doctorate level programs.  They have an excellent Master of Arts degree program for Biblical Counseling.  All of their degree programs are taken entirely through distance learning from your home and essentially at your pace.  Through the Internet, you download the course materials and then submit the completed assignments electronically.  This school does grant a substantial tuition discount from the rates listed on their website that makes this degree quite affordable but you have to ask them for the discount.

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Philosophy:

A main goal and focus for BelieverAssist.com is to nurture God's people so that they excel at becoming fruit-bearing disciples, who then proceed to excel at making other fruit-bearing disciples, growing the local church, and serving in its ministries.  

Another main goal of this website is to cultivate, develop, train, and equip leaders to do the work of ministry and possess and exhibit the qualities of gentle persuasion, patient endurance, servant leadership, Kingdom perspective, shepherding the flock, feeding the Word, spiritual maturity, and ministry oriented.
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Practical Ministry:

Sometimes, doing ministry involves encountering situations that require challenging improvising in using the resources God has given you:

                    What's New
                   (free downloads):

_______ November, 2020 _______

- - A new document, 'Spiritual Gifts', has been added to the 'Doctrines' web-page, to assist believers in better identifying, comprehending, and using their spiritual gifts.

________ August, 2020 ________

- - A new document, 'End Times Speculations', has been added at the top of the 'Doctrines' web-page, to provide information about the shocking sudden worldwide event, known as the 'Mass Abductions' or the 'Mass Vanishings', in which countless numbers of people float up into the sky and then disappear - all at the same time.   Also included are other select aspects of end times events of the 'Great Tribulation'.

- - Almost all documents are now also available in .rtf format, for free download (of course).

_________ May, 2020 _________

- - A new web-page, 'Photos', has been added, to provide photographs of nature, which can be used for such purposes as backgrounds, wallpapers, PowerPoint slides, and etc.

________ April, 2020 ________

- - A new web-page, 'Children's Ministry', has been added, to provide free resources for ministering to children.