What Does a New Christian Need to Know?

Last year I agreed to help a pastor in another country equip men in his underground churches to follow up new believers.  We spent five days together first brainstorming what a new believer in that country needed to know and then outlining how to help them make that a part of their lives.

In the past several months I have been meeting with a guy in my city who has apparently seen that list, not really.  We started meeting for another reason but he quickly told me that he needed help in the basics.

We started with how to have a devotional, a quiet time.  Soon after he asked me how to pray.  Both of those are on the list.  So what does a new believer need?  Here is a suggested list (in no particular order):

• Quiet Time
• Prayer
• Scripture Memory
• Bible Study
• How to use Christian Meetings
• How to share one’s faith
• Assurance of Salvation
• The Lordship of Christ

In my wife and my collegiate ministry, we helped those who were learning to help young believers develop content for each of these topics.  That content included an objective, a motivation, how to get started, how to keep going, and how to know when it was part of the person you were helping’s life.  That is what we did at a slightly modified level with the pastor’s men.

These are fairly universally basic topics.  Don’t you think?