First Steps: New Believers Training Kit

By Joseph D. Perry

Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day, our daily bread.” But what does that really mean? Obviously, Jesus was not telling his disciples to simply pray for a morsel of literal bread every day, right? Isn’t that obvious? Bread in the Bible was a powerful symbol of God’s provision—the act of supplying with food, drink, or equipment for a journey. So when you pray, “Give us this day, our daily bread,” you are actually saying, “God I need you to supply me with everything I need to make it through this journey of life, and I need you to do it EVERY DAY.”

Well, here it is: all contained in this workbook, coupled with the corresponding video presentation.

Simply spend 20-30 minutes with God every day, and He will serve you His daily provision, and every area of your life will grow to a remarkable and exponential proportion.

You will become very close to your Heavenly Father. You will feel Him and hear Him speak to you every day. What a wonderful unexplainable feeling.

Here is the daily “Time with God” formula: P.R.S.P.

P - Pray 3-5 minutes,

R – Read 5-10 minutes,

S – Study 10-15 minutes,

P – Pray 3-5 minutes.

You’ve prayed for years, “Give us this day our DAILY BREAD,” well now, here it is

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781644688243

Book preview

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First Steps

New Believers’ Training Kit

Joseph D. Perry

ISBN 978-1-64468-823-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64468-824-3 (Digital)

Copyright © 2021 Joseph D. Perry

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Introduction

Message To Pastor

What are you doing about your Extremely High Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate?

What is that, you might ask?

Well let’s first remove the word spiritual and define Infant Mortality Rate (IMR).

Infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of deaths per 1,000 live births of children under one year of age.

So based off of that definition above, what do you think is the Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate?

Let’s see. Everything we do in church is for the purpose of spiritual rebirth, or a regeneration of the human spirit from the Holy Spirit, contrasted with physical birth. When a person accepts Christ as their personal Savior, it is likened to a new birth. I know I am not telling you anything new. That person is then likened to a spiritual infant. The question is Where are they one year later? If you add up the number of spiritual new births and subtract the number that is remaining after one year, then divide that number back into the number of new births, you will come up with your Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate. For example, let’s say you have a weekend revival, and, or, a crusade and the power of God swept through and many came to the altar and made a decision to give their life to Christ. Let’s say thirty or three hundred or three thousand. What a time of rejoicing there is in heaven.

In the same way there is joy in the presence of God’s Angels when even one sinner repents. (Luke 15:10)

As a spiritual leader, you are mandated to keep track of these souls, as one day all pastors will be required to give a report on them.

Obey your spiritual leaders and submit to them because they keep watch over your soul and must give an account. (Hebrews 13:17)

One year later, 5 from 30, or 75 from 300, or 320 of 3000 are accounted for—meaning, you see them in your congregation every week. So in order to calculate your Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate (SIMR), subtract 5 from 30 or 75 from 300 or 320 from 3000. Five minus 30=25, 75 minus 300=225, 320 minus 3000=2680.

Now divide the total back into the number originally saved and hit the % key on the calculator and you have your SIMR (Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate). 25 ÷ 30 = 83%, 225 ÷ 300 = 75%, 2680 ÷ 3000 = 89%.

It is estimated that the average church in the world has a Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate that exceeds 65%. That’s 65% of new spiritual infants dying and returning back to the world in which they came before the spiritual age of One.

Let’s compare that to the physical infant mortality rate around the world.

According the Library of Central Intelligence Agency, the county of Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate with 110 infants dying per 1,000 births. That’s 11%, followed by Somalia at 9.4%. The Country of Monaco has the lowest at 1.8 deaths per 1,000 births .018% followed by Japan at .02%. The United State of America reports 5.8 deaths per 1,000, which is slightly over ½ % while the United Kingdom is under ½ % with 4.3 infants dying per 1,000.

The counties of Nigeria, the Congo, and Angola, all report 69 deaths per 1,000 which is slightly less than 7% while South Korea, France, Spain, and Italy, all come in around 3000 deaths per 1,000, which is less than 1% at 1/3%.

We can now look at the infant mortality rate of some countries, and gasp, as they’re in a National crisis that needs to be addressed immediately. Some of these countries needs to declare a national emergency. One hundred ten deaths per 1,000 is a crisis of enormous proportion; 94, 86, 69 and 58 deaths per thousand is colossal and mammoth disaster.

Yet the Kingdom of God is averaging approximately 627 spiritual deaths per 1,000 new births. More than 62%. Now that’s a tragedy of catastrophic proportions. And no one talks about that. There is no plan in place to address that. If this was a country the president would declare a state of National Emergency. Well, I am declaring a state of National Emergency in the Kingdom of God and I am calling on every pastor, bishop, archbishop, prophet, prophetess, evangelist, and whatever your spiritual leadership title is. There is a crisis of national proportion and it’s right under your nose. You are a tool of God as you help usher the lost into the kingdom of God, but you have ignored those spiritual newborns who die within a year, never to be seen again. That we can do NO LONGER.

Soul Retention Department

I recently called Comcast to close my account as I was going to switch to another provider. Upon hearing my reason for calling, I was quickly transferred to the Customer Retention Department. I remember thinking, What’s that Customer Retention Department? I soon found out. That rep on the phone in the Customer Retention Department must have been a highly trained specialist. The tenderness and delicate manner in which he spoke to me was soothing, comforting, and relaxing. He wanted to hear all my reasons as to why I wanted to give up on his service, Comcast. With precision, gentleness, and caring persistence, He answered all my objections with the utmost compassion, empathy, and kindness. He then meticulously and craftily presented me with a plethora of additional options and discounts, so that not only did I not close my account, but ended up signing an additional two-year contract.

I believe every church needs to have a Soul Retention Department (SRD). When a believer decides to quit and switch to another provider for his soul, the Soul Retention Department should be notified immediately. These saints of God should be highly trained specialists. With tenderness and in a delicate manner, they should begin speaking to the wayward soul in a manner that soothes and comforts their spirit. The SRD should have the unique ability to create such a relaxing and trusting line of communication that they reveal all the reasons they are considering giving up on the service of the church. The personnel of the Soul Retention Department should, with precision, gentleness, and caring persistence, compassion, empathy, and kindness. They then should meticulously, with craftiness present the disheartened soul with a plethora of additional options and features that not only causes a change of heart but encourages them to join in serving.

What a dream! What an ideal new department in the church! This department, along with this workbook, would drastically reduce the Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate.

So how do you incorporate new believers? What system do you have of assimilating and transforming new babes into spiritual adolescence? What are you doing about the ones who are viewing your services online and never step foot in your church? One of the biggest problems in many churches today, is that when a new believer joins our church, we simply give them a handshake, a few hugs, a great big applause, then, we send them away and pray they return the next Sunday. Other churches take the new believer into a separate room, council them, pray for them, have them complete paperwork, and then try everything in their power to get them to commit to attending new members’ classes. Still, some other churches attempt to immediately upon joining, force, coerce, and pressure the brand-new born-again Christian into a stranger’s home for weekly small group Bible study. In either of the ways, the new believer then receives some instructions to start reading the Bible daily. Some churches even present them with a Bible. Really?… Read? when reading is at an all-time low. According to the latest American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it reports that "the share of Americans who read for pleasure on a given day has fallen by more than 30 percent since 2004. In 2004, roughly 28 percent of Americans age 15 and older read for an average of 23 minutes per day. In 2017 only 19 percent of Americans read for 17 minutes per day."

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisure-reading-in-the-u-s-is-at-an-all-time-low/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3e9a2e01a5d1)

So we still send them off with a brand-new Bible with instructions to read.

The new believer goes away excited about their new relationship and opens up the Bible the next morning to start reading but…freezes. Okay… Hmm… Where do I start? So they start in Genesis, and by the time they get to Numbers and experience the frequency of the word begat…begat…begat…they become overwhelmingly confused and quit. Then someone tells them… Oh no…you should have started in the four gospels.

The four what? they exclaimed.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

So they waltz off and start reading Matthew and end up petering off after a few weeks, never to hear from them again.

Another baby dies before he turns age one, adding to the disheartened Spiritual Infant Mortality Rate (SIMR).

This one single workbook series, along with the corresponding videos, will change all of that. When a believer joins your church or accepts Christ, he should be immediately given this book and compelled, beseeched, pressed, and required to begin the next morning. I mean, you as a pastor or your people need to coerce, compel, drive, press, push, or even threaten the new convert to, without delay, block out thirty minutes per day and open up the book immediately to page 6 where they will get a message from you the Pastor. Look at how it begins.

Congratulations. So I understand that you have taken a very big step and have decided to become a follower of Christ by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. If so, this is the greatest, wisest, best decision you have ever made. You are now what we consider as a Christian.

Now what happens? This is just the beginning. The next few weeks are the most important weeks of your life. It’s as if you are a brand-new baby…You know, "born-again"… When a baby is born, the first few days, he is under the close watch of the physician. Why? Because the first few days are when the baby is the most vulnerable toward disease and anything that may come to destroy, harm, or injure him.

This workbook series was designed by a pastor.

During my twelve years as a pastor, I discovered that the Bible study and Sunday School curriculum on the market, although basic, was still too advanced for my newly converted followers, in which many had never in their lives, attended a church. I simply began writing specialized and tailor-made curriculum for what I referred to as my embryos in Christ. An embryo is different from a babe in Christ. Embryos are unborn and just in the process of development. One of my most passionate, loyal, dedicated parishioners, after my Christmas sermon on Mary and Joseph, actually thought I had preached a sermon about me because my name is Joseph. It was her first time ever hearing the story.

God is moving in the hearts of people who are even more elementary than babes. Most material is written to babes who have a basic understanding of the Bible. Feeling someone frustrated, I felt God’s urging to create and write spiritual embryonic curriculum and study guides. I created one chapter at a time and taught it. It took ten years to write, develop, teach, and rewrite this First Steps In A Christian life study guide to what I thought was simply for the few sheep God had placed into my fold.

God had bigger plans. I retired as a pastor, after 12 years, to focus on full-time writing, as God has called me to take this curriculum and translate it into many languages, so it can be utilized in many countries around the world.

This workbook, along with corresponding videos, should be used as a supplement to your current discipleship-making system. It’s theological positions, lines up with your Christian theological positions, without getting into the intricate, multi-faceted, differences, that separates denominations.

Together we can do something about the disturbing awakening statistics below.

Two-thirds of all American churches are experiencing (1) NO GROWTH and (2) a DECLINE in NUMBERS.

State of American Theology, Lifeway Research, 2014

Fifty percent of those in church last Sunday cannot remember a single spiritual insight from that sermon.

The Barna Group

POLITICS

APRIL 18, 2019

U.S. Church Membership Down Sharply in Past Two Decades

BY JEFFREY M. JONES

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Half of Americans are church members, down from 70% in 1999

Most of the decline attributable to increase in percentage with no religion

Membership has fallen nine points among those who are religious

WASHINGTON, D.C. As Christian and Jewish Americans prepare to celebrate Easter and Passover, respectively, Gallup finds the percentage of Americans who report belonging to a church, synagogue, or mosque at an all-time low, averaging 50% in 2018.

US church membership was 70% or higher from 1937 through 1976, falling modestly to an average of 68% in the 1970s through the 1990s. The past twenty years have seen an acceleration in the drop-off, with a twenty-percentage-point decline since 1999 and more than half of that change occurring since the start of the current decade.

Line graph. The percentage of U.S. adults who are members of churches fell from 70% in 1999 to 50% in 2018.

The decline in church membership is consistent with larger societal trends in declining church attendance and an increasing proportion of Americans with no religious preference.

This article compares church membership data for the 1998–2000 and 2016–2018 periods, using combined data from multiple years to facilitate subgroup analysis. On average, 69% of US adults were members of a church in 1998–2000, compared with 52% in 2016–2018.

The decline in church membership mostly reflects the fact that fewer Americans than in the past now have any religious affiliation. However, even those who do identify with a particular religion are less likely to belong to a church or other place of worship than in the past.

Trend Toward No Religious Preference Key Factor in Declining Membership

Since the turn of the century, the percentage of US adults with no religious affiliation has more than doubled, from 8% to 19%.

Pie graph. 19% of U.S. adults have no religious affiliation, up from 8% two decades ago.

Although some of those who do not identify with a religion nevertheless indicate that they belong to a church, the vast majority of nonreligious Americans do not. In 1998 through 2000, one in ten Americans with no religious preference said they belonged to a church, as did an average of 7% in the past three years.

As such, there is an almost one-to-one correspondence between not being religious and not belonging to a church. Consequently, the eleven-point increase in no religious affiliation accounts for the majority of the seventeen-point decline in church membership over the past two decades.

Fewer Religious Americans Are Church Members

Although there has been a steep increase in the proportion of Americans who do not have a religious attachment, they remain a small minority of the US population. Three-quarters of Americans, 77%, identify with some organized religion though that is down from 90% in 1998 through 2000.

The still-sizable proportion of religious Americans also contribute to declining church membership, as fewer in this group belong