About me

My name is Ryan Hayden, I have served as the pastor at Bible Baptist Church in Mattoon, Illinois for over twelve years. God has blessed me with a beautiful wife and five awesome kids - two of which made the trip with me. I look forward to teaching you this week and have been working hard on these lessons for several months.

My teaching method

Throughout this course I'm going to ask you to do a lot of the following:

  1. Read scripture
  2. Answer questions about scripture
  3. Make applications of scripture

Ultimately, your success as a pastor (and as a Christian) depends on your ability to interact with scripture, to ask the questions you need to be sure you are understanding it, and to make application for your life. We are just going to do this as a group.

I believe that there is no better way to learn than by doing. So I am not going to lecture for straight hours and I will not be doing all of the talking. There will be periods where you are expected to quietly work and then share your answers.

Why a notebook?

I have spent considerable time not just coming up with these lessons but giving them to you in this notebook form. I did this for three reasons:

  1. To help you to follow along and to do your assignments.
  2. So you can have this material as a reference when you are pastoring.
  3. So that you can have this material to work through with your own students someday.

For the future

If you go to the link below, you will be able to download the following: - A blank version of this material, which you can print and share - My notes for this course - A list of supplemental resources you should read.

My goal in providing this is that you can use it with your own ministry students someday.