TRAINING
& NETWORKING
Youth Worker Training
DiR Training
When you boil it all down, what’s the simplest understanding of a Jesus-like approach to disciplemaking? The Disciplemaking Is Relationships training is an invitation for you to explore being a disciple… who makes disciples… who makes more disciples. It’s a fresh, simple, and profound look at what it means to follow Jesus together. This training does not impose a specific model onto your ministry, but instead helps you and your team wrestle the question: What does 1st century Jesus-like disciplemaking look like in the 21st century Western world?
EiR Training
In the Evangelism Is Relationships training experience, you will learn to live a biblical process for impacting your world like Jesus. This training will help you and your team gain God’s heart for those in your relational sphere of influence, authentically invest in them, identify where God’s grace and truth intersects their lives and how to clearly share God’s story, your own God story, and how to invite others into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
DLCs
Our great desire is that every Student Minister will passionately pursue making disciples that make disciples. Regional DLCs are cohort learning environments consisting of youth workers who are eager to live and multiply Jesus’ disciplemaking way of life. Leaders are committed to meeting together regularly (usually monthly over a period of eight months), studying the life of Christ, and assisting one another in integrating disciplemaking priorities into family, friendships, and local student ministry. We would like to see every student minister be a part of one of these Learning Communities.
Want to learn more? Email sbrentthomas@outlook.com
Today, the Central District consists of 129 churches, church plants, planting projects and associate churches. This number of 129 divides into 5 congregations in Arkansas; 88 in Iowa; 33 in Missouri; and 3 in South Dakota. These congregations range in size from less than 100 to around 3000.
The EFCA is committed to “Multiplying Healthy Churches Among All People” and the Central District believes it takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. Our commitment as a district is to offer the unique ministry of the Evangelical Free Church to every geographical area of our district. Specific information about the district churches is available according to each state in alphabetical order.
Regional Networks
We believe that no youth worker should be an island. We have 5 Networks in Iowa where student ministers get together monthly to invest in one another and sharpen our disciple-making focus.
We also meet together as a whole District about 4 times a year, usually in Ames, IA.
Youth Pastor & Spouse Retreat
Every year in the spring we have a Youth Worker and Spouse Retreat, usually in Iowa at a quality hotel. It’s a wonderful opportunity for you as a couple to be refreshed for ministry. We eat a nice meal together Friday night. Sometimes we have an evening event to enjoy together. Other times we have a time of fellowship after we eat for those interested. We usually end our retreat with a mid-morning breakfast on Saturday. We greatly discount the cost of this so it doesn’t take much out of your student ministry budget.
Retreats typically happen in March or April.